Part 17 (2/2)

I said. 'Do you think they'll come looking for us today?'

'Shouldn't think so. They're not likely to notice we've gone.' That had been our intention, after all. We couldn't see Lord Howe from this end of the Pyramid, but there had been no sign of a boat all morning. My throat felt parched and I reached into my pack to check our diminished supplies. We had one small bottle of water each. With the loss of that fourth bag, our food store, scrounged from the kitchen as we were leaving, was now just as inadequate-a few crackers, a lump of cheese and an apple. The adrenaline and lack of sleep were getting to me, and I felt dazed.

Anna was scanning the ridge above our heads, and she suddenly frowned, pointing. 'What's that?'

I eased stiffly to my feet and looked. Something glinted in the sun. 'No idea.'

'I'll take a look.' She scrambled up the broken rock, sending small fragments skittering down behind her. All around, seabirds squealed in protest at our intrusion.

'Come and see,' she called over her shoulder.

I groaned as my legs flexed to push me up. Every muscle ached. I was definitely not fit. When I reached her she pointed to a stainless steel ring-bolt embedded in the rock. It looked very recent, different from the rusted mild steel aids we'd noted on the way up. You could see the lip of the epoxy resin that had been used to glue it in place.

'It's theirs, isn't it?' She was looking up the rock face. 'They must have gone further. Come on.'

'Do you think we should?' I looked behind me. The water already looked far below.

'Not much point hanging around here.' She sounded like my old gym teacher, annoyingly positive. She was holding up a lot better than I was. 'Might as well use the time we've got,' she went on. 'If we were picked up now we'd have achieved nothing anyway.'

We found another ring-bolt further up the ridge, then nothing more, and I just concentrated on each new step. We were giddyingly high now, with wide views across the ocean, though Lord Howe was still masked by the bulk of the peaks ahead. Huge numbers of birds wheeled and dived around us, filling the air with their forlorn cries. At one point we spotted a fis.h.i.+ng boat some distance off to the north-east, but too far to try to attract its attention. As the afternoon wore on my pace became slower and slower. I had to keep stopping to rest my swollen fingers and aching knees, and my movements had become clumsy with fatigue. Finally I looked up and saw Winklestein's Steeple towering impossibly high above us. I called up to Anna, waiting at the top of the next pitch, that I was b.u.g.g.e.red and couldn't go on.

'There's a sort of cave up here, Josh. Just get this far and we can rest.'

I struggled up, inch by inch, until I could make out the dark hollow beneath a jutting overhang. I heaved myself over the lip and lay there groaning on the ledge, while Anna crawled in past me and fixed a couple of anchor wedges to tie us in. The cave was deep and broad enough for us to lie down, its floor covered with rubble, which Anna began to clear away. Then she stopped and muttered, 'Oh G.o.d.'

'What's wrong?' I turned to look and saw a piece of webbing in her hand. She tugged it clear of the stones and I saw that it was the strap of a climbing harness, and with it came a cl.u.s.ter of climbing aids-wedges and snaplink carabiners. Anna handed them to me, and I held the webbing up to the light. It was a faded red, just like Luce's. Anna had crawled deeper into the recess, and now she pulled out a coil of nylon rope and a helmet. We stared at each other.

'Well,' Anna said slowly, 'she didn't jump or get pushed, or she'd still have been wearing this stuff.'

I nodded. Even when sleeping she'd have kept the harness on to attach herself to an anchor. 'She must have gone on free solo,' I said.

There are various styles of rock climbing. The one that I was most familiar with is what is called aid climbing, in which you use bolts already in the rock or the gear you carry to support you and help you climb. An alternative is free climbing, in which climbers use only their bodies to progress up the rock, but still carry ropes and pa.s.sive protection to save them if they fall. But there is another style, called free soloing, in which they go up without any hardware at all. It is the purest form of climbing, and some would say the most sublime. It is certainly the most dangerous, for if the climber slips there is nothing to save them. I watched Luce free soloing once, my body rigid with anxiety the whole time, expecting her to drop at any moment. Afterwards she spoke of a sense of liberation, and of confronting her destiny. I thought it was utter madness.

The thing about free solo climbing is that it's so dangerous it should only be done on routes the climber knows and that are well within their capabilities. This place was completely alien territory. Luce couldn't have had any idea what lay ahead. Without back-up or equipment, she could have found herself trapped in impossible situations, forced into hair-raising manoeuvres without any form of support. I felt my skin crawl, imagining it.

'Why would she do such a crazy thing?' For both of us, drained and almost defeated by the effort of getting this far, it seemed incomprehensible. Unable to come to terms with it, we turned away and busied ourselves with our meagre supplies.

We had what pa.s.sed for a meal with barely a mouthful of water. We were on the east side of the ridge, watching the long evening shadow of the Pyramid stretch out across the green water three hundred metres below us. There was a nor'-easterly breeze that was becoming fresher by the minute, and we had no blanket or sleeping bags.

'It's going to be cold,' I said and we squeezed closer together. 'They'll come looking for us in the morning.'

'Yes,' she agreed, nodding her head firmly, but we both knew that wasn't likely. The Kelsos would probably a.s.sume we just wanted a bit of privacy, and with Carmel away her boat might not be missed for weeks.

The shadow spread out across the ocean and finally faded into a darkening void. In the gloaming we tried to make our little cave more comfortable, sweeping debris aside, and in the process disturbed some brown centipedes that scuttled away into the far recesses. I knew that every living thing on b.a.l.l.s Pyramid, as on Lord Howe, had arrived either by floating through the air or on the sea, and I wondered how these little creatures had found their way to such a remote corner and how they survived. Now fate had placed them and us on the same small ledge of rock. Later, in the dark, as Anna and I clung together against the cold, we discovered they had distinct ideas about sharing their patch with us, as they attacked us with vicious bites. Soon we were scratching miserably at painful swellings on our wrists and ankles. Despite my exhaustion, it was a long time before I drifted off into a fitful sleep.

20.

We were wakened by the first glow of the sun directly in front of us. Anna jerked out a leg and kicked me on the knee.

'Sorry,' she mumbled, and we disentangled ourselves and sat up, yawning and scratching, to watch the golden disc rise free of the horizon into a hazy sky. The wind had died away and only the occasional seabird disturbed the silence.

'How do you feel?' I asked.

'All right, considering. How about you?'

I shrugged. 'Stiff, sore.'

'A bit of exercise'll fix that. Let's see your hands.' She peered at them; the previous day's swelling had reduced and she said they'd do. I found myself admiring her st.u.r.diness; the dogged persistence that had irritated me yesterday now seemed rather admirable. I smiled at her and she said, 'What?'

'Nothing.'

'We have to go on, you know-to the top if necessary.'

'Yes, I know.'

She hesitated, then said, 'This isn't too difficult, just b.l.o.o.d.y hard work. Luce could have climbed it in her sleep. I was wondering if it was about speed, leaving her gear behind. She'd have been able to move much faster.'

'True.' But what would have been the point in that? It seemed more likely to me that she'd just stopped caring about safety.

I thought about that a good deal as I led the way off the centipedes' ledge. My muscles were stiff and aching in strange places, my hands thick and clumsy and sore. I began traversing the flank of Winklestein's twin spires, making for the horizontal Cheval Ridge beyond. The height, three hundred and fifty metres of sheer cliff below us, worried me, and I was being very careful about where I looked and what I allowed my mind to think. But at least there were plenty of cracks and b.u.mps and other reasonable hand- and footholds on the weathered basalt, and I was making cautious progress until I came to a slab of smooth rock with no purchase on it at all. There was a promising crack on the far side, and I thought I could just reach it at maximum stretch. I tried, extending myself as far as possible, but couldn't quite make it, and suddenly found myself flattened against a smooth rock face with only my right hand and foot properly engaged, a position I couldn't hold for long. Terrified of developing sewing machine leg, I forced myself to spring the few centimetres across to the crack, in which I safely jammed my left fingers and toes. But now I saw that there was another smooth stretch ahead, and that I was in the same unstable position as before, with nothing for my right hand and foot to cling to. I was further from protection now, and vividly remembered those anchors pulling out on Frenchmans Cap. Heart pounding, I knew I only had a moment to get out of this, but couldn't see how. Then a memory came into my mind, of a manoeuvre I'd seen Luce perform on that same climb in Tasmania. It was called a barn door, and involved turning your back to the rock face and swinging out, as if on a hinge, to grab whatever lay beyond with your free hand and foot. I could hardly believe it when I saw Luce do it, and knew I'd never have the nerve to try if I gave it any thought. So I didn't think, I just swung, flinging my right arm and leg desperately out into s.p.a.ce and around to slam against the rock.

My fingertips and toes found something there, some minimal grip, though barely enough to support any weight. But the other problem was that, in twisting myself over, my rope had wrapped itself around my neck. I was now lying flat across a near-vertical surface, in danger of sliding off at any moment. If my anchors held I'd be strangled, if not I'd plunge three hundred and fifty metres into the drink.

'Anna,' I croaked. 'Anna ...'

I heard nothing but the cry of gulls and sigh of the wind.

'Anna, help. I need you.'

Some loose stones clattered down from above, bouncing off my helmet. I was frozen, unable to look upwards. I felt the strength ebbing from my fingers, and gazed out at the bright air, waiting for it to happen. Then Anna came abseiling down beside me, at what I thought was a rather leisurely pace.

'Having fun?' she said. She clipped a rope onto my harness, then unfastened the one around my neck. 'Come on, you're wasting time.'

'You saved my life.'

'Don't forget it.'

We were now faced with a vertical climb of about a hundred metres up the Black Tower, also called the Pillar of Porteus, an obstacle that took us until the early afternoon to pa.s.s. Ahead of us we saw the long Cheval Ridge leading to the base of the summit pinnacle, and beyond it we caught our first glimpse back to Lord Howe Island, looking very distant, with long white clouds trailing across the peak of Mount Gower. The sun was warm, and we lay on a gra.s.sy patch and stretched out to recover our strength. It was in that position that I heard the distant putter of an engine.

I wasn't sure at first, and when I struggled to my feet the sound faded away. Apart from the area masked by the summit pinnacle, I had a 360-degree view all round over the ocean, but I could see nothing. I stood motionless, trying to blank out the cries of birds.

<script>