“They might have stopped the ship,” cried Simon.
“On your story that you saw lights on the Peak? Yes, I know there was a definite sequence and that it was repeated. I myself believe you’re onto something, but you won’t move authority as easily as that.”
“To hell with authority!” poor Simon roared out. “I’ll go and knock Questing’s bloody block off for him.”
“Not again,” said Dikon sedately. “You really can’t continue in your battery of Questing. You know I still think you should speak to Dr. Ackrington, who, you say yourself, already suspects him.”
In the end Simon, who seemed, in spite of his aggressiveness, to place some kind of reliance on Dikon’s advice, agreed to keep away from Questing, and to tell his story to his uncle. When, however, he went to find Dr. Ackrington, it was only to discover he had already driven away in his car saying that he would probably return before lunch.
“Isn’t it a fair nark!” Simon grumbled. “What’s he think he’s doing? Precious time being wasted. To hell with him anyway, I’ll think something up for myself. Don’t you go talking, now. We don’t want everyone to know.”
“I’ll keep it under my hat,” said Dikon. “Gaunt knows, of course. I told you — ”
“Oh, hell!” said Simon disgustedly.
Gaunt came out and told Dikon he wanted to be driven to the Peak. He offered a seat in the car to anyone who would like it. “I’ve asked your sister,” he said to Simon. “Why don’t you come too?” Simon consented ungraciously. They borrowed the Colonel’s field-glasses, and set out.
It was the first time Dikon had been to Rangi’s Peak. After crossing the railway line, the road ran out to the coast and thence along a narrow neck of land, at the end of which rose the great truncated cone. So symmetrical was its form that even at close quarters the mountain seemed to be the expression of some grossly simple impulse — the impulse, one would have said, of a primordial cubist. The road ended abruptly at a gate in a barbed-wire fence. A notice, headed Native Reserve, set out a number of prohibitions. Dikon saw that it was forbidden to remove any objects found on the Peak.
They were not the first arrivals. Several cars were parked outside the fence.
“You have to walk from here,” said Simon, and glanced disparagingly at Gaunt’s shoes.
“Oh, God! Is it far?”
“You might think so.”
Barbara cut in quickly. “Not very. It’s a good path and we can turn back if you don’t think it’s worth it.”
“So we can. Come on,” said Gaunt with an air of boyish hardihood, and Simon led the way, following the outside of the barbed-wire fence. They were moving round the flank of the Peak. The turf was springy under their feet, the air fresh with a tang in it. Some way behind them the song of a lark, a detached pin-prick of sound, tinkled above the peninsula. Soon his voice faded into thin air and was lost in the mewing of a flight of gulls who came flapping in from seawards. “I never hear those creatures,” said Gaunt, “without thinking of a B.B.C. serial.” He looked up the sloping flank of the mountain, to where its crater stood black against the brilliant sky. “And that’s where they buried their dead?”
Barbara pointed to the natural planes of ascent in the structure of the mountain. “It looks as if they had made a road up to the top,” she said, “but I don’t think they did. It’s as though the hill had been shaped for the purpose, isn’t it? They believe it was, you know. Of course they haven’t used it for ages and ages. At least, that’s what we’re told. There are stories of a secret burial up there after the pakehas came.”
“Do they never come here, nowadays?”
“Hardly at all. It’s tapu. Some of the younger ones who don’t mind so much wander about the lower slopes, but they don’t go into the bush and I’m sure they never climb to the top. Do they, Sim?”
“Too much like hard work,” Simon grunted.
“No, it’s not that, really. It’s because of the sort of place it is.”
Simon gave Dikon a gloomily significant glance. “Yeh,” he said. “Do what you like up there and nobody’s going to ask questions.”
“You refer to the infamous Questing,” said Gaunt lightly. Simon glared at him and Dikon said hurriedly: “I told you I had spoken to Mr. Gaunt of our little theory.”
“That’s right,” Simon said angrily. “So now we’ve got to gas about it in front of everybody.”
“If you mean me,” said Barbara, whom even the mention of Questing could not embarrass that morning, “I know all about what he’s supposed to do on the Peak.”
Simon stopped short. “You!” he said. “What do you know?” Barbara didn’t answer immediately, and he said roughly: “Come on. What do you know?”
“Well, only what they’re all saying about Maori curios.”
“Oh,” said Simon. “That.” Dikon spared a moment to hope that if Simon did well in the Air Force they would not make the mistake of entrusting him with secret instructions.
“And I know Uncle James thinks it’s something worse, and…” She broke off and looked from one to another of the three men. Dikon blinked, Gaunt whistled, and Simon looked inescapably portentous. “Sim!” cried Barbara. “You’re not thinking… about this … the ship? Oh, but it couldn’t possibly… ”
“Here, you keep out of this, Barbie,” said Simon in a great hurry. “Uncle James talks a lot of hooey. You want to forget it. Come on.”
The track, curving always to the right, now mounted the crest of a low hill. The seaward horizon marched up to meet them. In three strides their whole range of vision was filled with blue. Harpoon Inlet lay behind on their left; on their right Rangi’s Peak rose from the sea in a sharp cliff. The fence followed the top of this cliff, leaving a narrow path between itself and the actual verge.
“If you want to see anything,” said Simon, “you’ll have to get up there. Do you mind heights?”
“Speaking for myself,” said Gaunt, “they inspire me with vertigo, nausea, and a strongly marked impulse towards felo-de-se. However, having come so far I refuse to turn back. That fence looks tolerably strong. I shall cling to it.” He smiled at Barbara. “If you should happen to notice the mad glint of suicide in my eye,” he said, “I wish you’d fling your arms round me and thus restore me to my nobler self.”
“But what about your leg, sir?” said Dikon. “How’s it holding out?”
“Never you mind about my leg. You go ahead with Claire. We’ll take it in our own time.”
Dikon, having gathered from sundry pieces of distressingly obvious pantomime on Simon’s part that this suggestion met with his approval, followed him at a gruelling pace up the track. The ocean spread out blandly before them as they mounted. Dikon, unused to such exercise, very rapidly acquired a pain in the chest, a stitch, and a thudding heart. Sweat gathered behind his spectacles. The smooth soles of his shoes slipped on the dry grass, and Simon’s hobnailed boots threw dust into his face.
“If we kick it in,” said Simon presently, “we can get up to the place where I reckon I saw the signalling on Thursday night.”