Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [108]
By this time he’d lost the thread, and just stopped listening; until the magic word ‘reward’ came once more.
‘You may be surprised when you find out what your reward is,’ Mother Hilda was saying. ‘Don’t be nervous. Just do as I say, and all the sadness, all the anger, all the loneliness in your life will be washed away; and the deepest longings of your heart... even if you’ve never recognised them... will be satisfied. The emptiness will be filled.’
‘You are about to have the most sublime experience a human being can possibly have. And you’ll never be unhappy again.’
At these words, there flashed across Jeremy’s mind a flickering picture show of all the times he’d hidden in a cupboard to escape the Bulstrode gang at Holbrook; and the times old Gaga got the class laughing at him; and the many times he’d huddled up in bed, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing until it hurt his throat, because Mama had been abroad for months, and Nanny had been so beastly; and the times that...
‘Now I want you to stand up. The time has come.’
Jeremy stood up, with tears in his eyes.
Oh, please let it be true! Please, please, please!
The teacher next to him stood up too, and put out a gentle hand to turn him so that they faced each other.
He looked up into the strangely beautiful face.
What was going to happen now?
There may have been a way through in 1923, but it had long been overgrown. The jungle was as thick as when Sarah had made her way back to the ship by herself, if not thicker.
Fighting your way through the prickly, coarse undergrowth was bad enough, but trying to do it when you were wearing a gas mask was just about impossible. Apart from anything else the sweat couldn’t get out, and it was like the steam room at a Turkish bath in there.
Sarah had at least made sure that this time she was wearing jeans, and a top with long sleeves. But this only made it hotter. She glanced up to nod a thank you to Bob Simkins, who’d chivalrously stopped to hold back a particularly vicious branch.
Well, really! He’d pulled his gas mask off his face so that it was resting on the front of his head.
And so had the others, Pete and the Cox’n... and the Brigadier had even taken his right off, and had got it hanging round his neck.
She promptly followed suit, and wiped the perspiration out of her eyes with her sleeve.
Just as well, otherwise she’d never have got up the slope of the volcano, especially as they were having to do the snaking bit again to keep out of sight. There were twenty-three of them, including the unprotected seamen with their automatic rifles, all trying to be as unnoticeable as possible in case they were seen by one of the guards. True, they were round the corner from the path, but you couldn’t be too careful.
At last they reached the top, and the Brigadier motioned to them all to stop and have a rest before tackling the last bit.
‘We’d have no hope at all in a face-to-face encounter,’ he’d said, when he’d spoken to the little task force just before they embarked. ‘Whatever weapons they have, we mustn’t give them a chance to deploy them. Luckily, they’ve positioned themselves in a situation which would be very hard to defend at the best of times and, given our limited fire power, there’s only one option. If we range ourselves round the top of the perimeter wall, we’ll have them at our mercy, even if they try to take to the air. But surprise is of the essence. And nobody must fire unless and until I give the order. Got it?’
It was obvious, really, thought Sarah, as she got her breath back at the bottom of the wall. Like shooting fish in a barrel, as they said in America. Good old Brig.
As long as it wasn’t too late.
At last he gave the go-ahead. Petty Officer Hardy and Bob Simkins led their men around the circle to the other side, while Pete and the Brig spread theirs at equal distances apart on this side. At a hand signal, they all started to climb to the top of the wall together.
‘Stay with me, and keep down,’ the Brig hissed