‘Okay, mister. I can do. Velly good cook.’
‘See it’s hot,’ I shouted at him. ‘That’s all I care about.’
I turned then and went into the housing. The pilot motor was already running. The little Italian engineer grinned at me. The guard hovered uncertainly. The cable wheel trembled and the cage bumped as the rig truck was driven on to the staging. The guard touched my arm. His face was pale and he was still uncertain. He opened his mouth to say something and then the big diesel started with a roar that drowned all other sound. I saw a look of helplessness come into his eyes and he turned away.
I knew then that we were through the worst. He couldn’t hold the whole gang of us up with his rifle. Besides it must have seemed all right. I’d more than twenty men from the camp working with me. I had come in quite openly. All that made him doubtful, I imagine, was that his instructions had been dinned into him very thoroughly and forcefully.
Five minutes later the draw works began to turn and the first and heaviest truck went floating off into the whirling, driving white of the night. It was there for a second, white under its canopy of snow, looking strangely unreal suspended from the cable, and then it reached the limits of the lights and vanished abruptly. It was like a scene from a pantomime where some object takes to the air and is lost as it moves from the circle of the spotlight.
I stayed inside the engine housing. I was safe there. Nobody could talk to me against the roar of the engine. One or two tried, but gave it up. I had warned Garry to see that all his men knew the story and stuck to it if they got into conversation with any of the men from the camp or if the guard started asking questions. Shortly after two-thirty the Chinaman brought down big thermos flasks full of thick soup, piping hot, and a great pile of meat sandwiches. Three trucks were up by then. A fourth was just leaving. We sent one flask up with it. The snow was still falling. ‘It sure must be hell up top,’ one of the drivers said. His face was a white circle in the fur of his hood. ‘Have you been up on this thing, Mr Wetheral?’
‘Yes,’ I said. And suddenly I realised he was scared. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You won’t see anything. It’ll just be cold as hell.’
He nodded and swallowed awkwardly. ‘I’m scared of heights, I guess.’
Somebody shouted to him. His mouth worked convulsively. ‘I must go now. That’s my truck.’
‘Switch your cab lights on,’ I called after him as he climbed on the staging. ‘It’ll just be like a road then.’
He nodded. And a moment later he was on his way, a white bloodless face staring at the wheel he was gripping as the diesel roared and the cables swung him up and out into the night.
By four o’clock the sixth truck was being loaded. Every few minutes now I found myself glancing at my watch. Eight minutes past four and the hoist was running again. Only one more truck. ‘What’s worrying you?’ Garry shouted above the din of the engine.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
He didn’t say anything, but I noticed that his eyes kept straying now to the point where the roadway up to the camp plunged into darkness. Suppose Butler and his gang had smelt a rat. Or maybe he’d send a truck up for more equipment. They’d find the bridge down. It wouldn’t take them long to repair it. Any moment they might drive in, asking what the hell was going on. My hands gripped each other, my eyes alternating between the road and the big iron cable wheel. At last the wheel stopped and we waited for the phone call that would tell us they had unloaded.
‘They’re taking their time,’ Garry growled. His face looked tired and strained. I had started to tremble again. I tried to pretend it was the cold, but I knew it was nervous strain. At last the bell rang, the indicator fell and the engineer started the cage down. That ten minutes seemed like hours. And then at last the cage bumped into the housing, the diesel slowed to a gentle rumble and we could hear the engine of the last tanker roaring as it drove on to the cage. We went out into the driving snow then and watched the securing ropes being made fast.
It was ten to five and the faintest greyness was creeping into the darkness of the night as Garry and I climbed up beside the driver. I raised my hand, there was a shout, the cable ahead of us jerked tight and then we, too, were being slung out into the void.
I don’t remember much about that trip up. I know I clutched at the seat, fighting back the overwhelming fear of last minute failure. I remember Garry voicing my thoughts: ‘I hope they don’t catch us now,’ he said. ‘We’d look pretty foolish swinging up here in space till morning.’
‘Shut up,’ I barked at him, my voice unrecognisable in its tenseness.
He looked at me and then suddenly he grinned and his big hand squeezed my arm. ‘They don’t breed many of your type around this part of the world.’
The minutes ticked slowly by. A shadow slipped past my window. The pylon at the top. We were over the lip. Two minutes later our progress slowed. There was a slight bump and then we were in the housing.
Figures appeared. The lashings were unhitched, the engine roared and with our headlights blazing on to a wall of snow we crawled off the staging and floundered through a drift to stop above the dam.
As we climbed out the cage lifted from the housing and disappeared abruptly. The ground seemed to move under my feet. I heard Boy’s voice say, ‘Well. that’s the lot, I guess. You’re in the Kingdom now, Garry — rig and all.’ Then my knees were giving under me and I blacked out.
I came to in the firm belief that I was on board a ship. There was a reek of hot engine oil and the cabin swayed and dipped. And then I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the luminous dial of an oil gauge. Raising my eyes I saw a faint glimmering of grey through a windscreen. ‘You okay, Bruce?’ It was Boy’s voice. He was propping me up in the seat of a cab and we were grinding slowly through thick snow. ‘You’ll be all right soon. There’s hot food waiting for us at the ranch-house. We had to stop to fix chains. The snow is pretty deep in places.’
I remember vaguely being spoon-fed hot soup and men moving about, talking excitedly, laughing, pumping my hand. And then I was lying in a bed. But this time it was different. It wasn’t because I was ill. It was only because I was physically and nervously exhausted. And I was back in the Kingdom. The rig was here at last. We were going to drill now. And with that thought I went to sleep and stayed asleep for twelve hours.
And when I woke up Boy was there beside me and he was grinning and saying that the rig would be up before nightfall. When I went down to the drilling site next morning I found the rig erected and the draw works being tightened down on to the steel plates of the platform. The travelling block was already suspended from the crown and the kelly was in its rat housing. They had already begun to dig a mud sump and there were several lengths of pipe in the rack.
I stood there with Boy and Garry and stared across to the dam less than a mile away. The sun was shining and already the snow was beginning to melt. I was thinking it was time Trevedian came storming into our camp. But nobody seemed to be taking any notice of us. The hoist moved regularly in and out of the housing, the loads of cement were stacked under their tarpaulins, the mixers chattered noisily and every now and then there was the heavy roar of blasting and more stone was run down in the tip wagons or slung on the cable across to the centre of the dam. ‘We’ll have to mount a guard,’ I said.
Boy wiped the sweat from his face. ‘I’m sleeping down here,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got that pistol of yours. There are four rifles on the site as well.’