Bannerman instigated a programme of wriggling his toes non-stop, for periods of thirty seconds, every few minutes. At the same time he would swing his arms across his chest and move his fingers in synchronous exercise. After an hour of this regime he permitted himself the luxury of the last of the coffee and a cigarette. After another hour he prepared to leave. He tied the wet socks he had taken off round his injured knee to provide some protection against accidental knocks and tried to psych himself up for the coming test.
Bannerman’s new problem was in deciding just when it would be dark enough for him to make a move. He desperately wanted there to be some light left so that he could make reasonable progress over the worst part of the journey, the stretch between the shore and the head of the glen, but, of course, this part came first and he would be hopelessly exposed if he just made a run for it. He looked anxiously at the sky. It was definitely getting dark but there was no cloud cover. It would be a clear and bitterly cold night.
Bannerman could feel his heart pounding as he tensed himself to move out of the gulley. He had decided on his first gambit. He vaguely remembered seeing another rock gulley about twenty metres to the left when he ran from the shore. When the moment came, he would pull himself out of his present hole and make a run for it.
With a last rub at his legs to make sure that they would support him, he placed his hands on the rim of the gulley and concentrated hard. He took three deep breaths to steady his nerves and then pulled himself strongly upwards to roll over the parapet. Fuelled by panic and adrenalin, he scrambled to his feet and made for the next gulley in a crouching zig zag run. He had almost started to think there was no need for this precaution when a crack rang out behind him and the whine of a ricocheting bullet sent him tumbling down into the safety of the new trench. ‘Bastard!’ he cursed, his nerves threatening to fray at the edges.
He had seen where his next run was to take him. Without waiting to consider, in case courage failed him or his adrenalin surge dropped, he crawled along to the end of his present cover and pulled himself up again. Another crouching fun and he was into cover again. This time there was no accompanying shot and twilight was beginning to give way to darkness. Yet another zig zag run, and this time Bannerman made it a priority to get a good view of the general direction he wanted to head in. Safe in his next cover he got out his compass from his jacket pocket and made a mental note of the bearing of the head of the glen and the path back to Inverladdie.
The temperature was falling; the ground felt like concrete beneath his feet and every scrape or fall brought new agonies. The air was so cold that it pained him to take the deep breaths that his level of effort dictated he must if he were to fight off hypothermia. More and more his feet began to lose grip as he gained height and frost coated everything. As he hit his injured knee once more on a sharp rock — the wet sock protection kept slipping — he cried out and sank to the ground in helpless frustration. He wanted to scream and curse but the intake of icy breath made his throat contract, denying him even that release.
Discipline and coordination were all but gone by the time he made it to the head of the glen and he was reduced to making progress on all fours. Even this was lop-sided because of a reluctance to put all of his weight on his damaged knee. His efforts over the first stage of the journey had brought him to the point of exhaustion and he had been forced to slow down, which was causing him to become even colder. It was a vicious circle which was getting the better of him. There was a plus side to it. The coldness was numbing the pain. He was actually beginning to feel better. The gnawing soreness was slipping away to be replaced by an almost pleasant sensation of nothingness, a feeling of lightness, a pleasant tiredness … He would stop for a while, have a cigarette and then think about going on … Bannerman reached into his pocket feeling distinctly light-headed and deliciously tired. There was a vague warning signal at the back of his mind but he was in no mood to heed it. He needed a rest. The small voice telling him that he mustn’t stop would have to wait.
He found his cigarettes and matches and managed to open the pack with his tongue and teeth. He extracted a cigarette with his lips and then removed one of his gloves to light a match. Trying to shield the match with cupped hands which also contained the match box proved to be a disaster. The match ignited but fell into the half open box and the whole thing flared up in front of his face. Bannerman shied back stupidly from the firework, thinking how pretty it was, but then darkness returned and he was tired again, oh so very tired …
Bannerman opened his eyes and saw the face of an old man smiling down at him. Was there a god after all?
‘How are you feeling?’ asked the old man.
‘Where?’ …
‘You’re in the Achnagelloch Hotel and you’re quite safe,’ said the voice.
The mention of the decidedly earthly sound of ‘Achnagelloch’ cleared Bannerman’s head of all ethereal thoughts. He even recognized the voice. It was Angus MacLeod.
‘How did I get here?’ he asked as consciousness and pain sought to re-inhabit his body at an alarming rate. He remembered everything at once, except how he came to be in bed at the Achnagelloch Hotel.
‘The search party found you,’ said MacLeod, ‘thanks to your brilliantly improvised flare.’
‘Flare?’
‘The matches,’ said MacLeod.
‘Oh the matches,’ repeated Bannerman, none the wiser.
‘Another few hours and it might have been a different story,’ said MacLeod. ‘You have the young lady to thank for insisting on a search party.’
‘Young lady,’ repeated Bannerman, feeling that he was a distinct outsider in what was going on.
‘Me,’ said a female voice.
Bannerman looked in the direction of the voice and saw Shona MacLean standing there. She was smiling the same smile he remembered when she had opened the door to him on North Uist. It was all too much for him; he allowed his head to fall back on to the pillow in bemusement. Shona came to the side of the bed and said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for everything. I had to go to Inverness to discuss some illustrations for the Highland craft fair so I thought I would look you up. Seeing as how there is only one hotel in Achnagelloch it wasn’t that difficult. The landlord told me that you had gone off into the hills this morning, so I decided to wait. When you weren’t back by nightfall I started to get worried. The landlord agreed that if you didn’t turn up by seven we would raise the alarm. That’s what happened.’
‘How did they know where to look?’ asked Bannerman.
‘I told them,’ said MacLeod. ‘The police called to warn me of a possible emergency on the hills. They said a man was missing and when they said it was you I was able to give them a fair idea of where you had gone. They found you at the head of Inverladdie Glen.’
Bannerman digested this information in silence for a moment then he suddenly began to think about his medical condition. Frostbite! He wriggled his toes and fingers in unison and found that they all moved. MacLeod saw what he was doing and said, ‘You’re fine. You’ll be right as rain in the morning apart from your knee, which I suspect caused all the trouble in the first place?’
Bannerman looked at him and suddenly saw the easy way out of all the explanations he feared he might have to make. ‘Yes, I fell and hurt it. It slowed me up so much that I got caught out by darkness and wandered around in circles I suppose.’
‘Easily done,’ said MacLeod. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be getting to my bed.’
Thanks Doctor,’ said Bannerman sincerely.
‘You’re welcome,’ replied MacLeod.