I very soon discovered that to attain my objective was as difficult as Alice had found making progress in the Looking-Glass garden. Normally, if you have a high vantage point, you can more easily pinpoint your goal than if you are on a level with it, but in the case of Round Island things were different. As I have said, the island is like a stone crinoline dropped on the seas surface, and whichever pleat you happen to be standing on, it is almost impossible to see the rest of the garment. After I had lost the boat twice, and had had to turn back or aside three times because I had reached such sheer sheets of rock that it seemed imprudent to go on, unless I was seeking a broken leg, I suddenly spotted, far below me a flash of scarlet. This, I knew, was a towel I had brought and had draped over the spare film and various foods under the picnic tree to provide some sort of shade.
This, then, was going to act as my marker.
I clattered and slid on my way, keeping the little red splash firmly in sight. I rested for a second time under a small group of pandanus, whose tattered leaves drummed against each other nervously and whispered sibilantly in a sudden puff of hot wind from the sea. Carefully, I felt my geckos in their bags to make sure they were not being affected by their journey. The sharp nip which one of them administered led me to believe that they were faring a good deal better than I was. I had sweated so profusely that I felt that if I lost another cupful of moisture, I would turn into a ginger-bread crumble and blow away. It was only the thought of the iced drinks that awaited me under the picnic tree that kept me going.
Grimly, I shouldered my load and plodded on. I came presently to a great, almost sheer precipice of rock, the top half of which was decorated by a tiny mat of convolvulus-like weed, starred with pale pink flowers. To reach a ravine that led down towards a lower level, I had to cross this dangerous bit of rock, and so decided, in case the exposed portion was slippery, that I would walk on the carpet of weed. Slowly, I edged my way across, making sure of one step before I took another. I was just congratulating myself on my climbing skill, when I inserted one foot into a natural noose formed by the creeper, tripped, and fell heavily on to my back My camera went skittering off joyfully, and I held my bag of lizards aloft, so that at least I wouldn’t fall on them.
I’d landed on my spine with such force that I heard what appeared to be my whole vertebral column play a rapid tune, producing the sort of noise that is usually only obtained by the use of maracas. I had landed on the bare rock and as there was nothing I could grab hold of to prevent my sliding, I proceeded down the rock face on my back with ever-increasing speed, gathering around me an avalanche of loose tuff and bits of extremely sharp lava. As my momentum increased, my body started to turn so that presently I knew I should be on my stomach. I was terrified lest I should twist and inadvertently roll on to my bag of lizards, which I still held in a tenacious grip. I didn’t dare let go of them, for if they had lodged on that inhospitable sheet of rock it was probable that I would not be able to climb up to retrieve them.
There was only one thing to be done, and that was to use my elbows as a brake. This I did, and was gratified to discover that the pain I suffered was not in vain. Not only did I remain on my back and my shredded elbows but I slowed down my pace of descent, and eventually actually stopped. I lay still for a moment to savour my wounds to the full, and then moved bits of my body experimentally to see if anything was broken. To my surprise, nothing was, and the amount of gore my right arm was producing was out of all proportion to the wounds it had sustained. Painfully, I shuffled sideways across the rock face, retrieved my camera, which was intact, and gained the ravine where the going was easier. At the first group of palms I came to, I sat down, made sure my geckos and my camera had sustained no injuries, and mopped up the blood from my elbows. Then after a brief pause, I got to my feet and gazed down towards my red landmark, by the sea.
It had completely disappeared.
Not only had it disappeared, but the Dorade had disappeared as well, and the view now lying below me bore no resemblance to any terrain I had seen or walked through that day. To say that I was irritated by these circumstances, is putting it mildly; I was hot, exhausted, thirsty and aching all over, and I had a severe headache. For all the indications to the contrary, I might have been in the middle of Australia, fifty miles north of Lhasa, or on one of the more inimical craters of the moon. Making a blasphemous commentary on my own stupidity in falling I set off down the ravine in what I hoped was the right direction. It seemed to be an area singularly lacking in palms, and eventually I was forced to crouch and rest in a tiny patch of shade caused by a hummock in the sides of the ravine. Grimly, I plodded on and soon, to my delight, could hear voices and various nautical noises that told me I was near the landing stage. How close, I did not realise until I rounded I dump of rock and found myself practically on the shore. High above me was the picnic tree and my red towel. I had somehow misjudged my descent, with the result that some two hundred and fifty feet above me lay shade, cool drinks and salve for my various contusions.
The last climb was the worst. The blood pounded in my ears my head ached, and I was forced to rest frequently.Finally I staggered up the last slope and collapsed in the fretted shade of the picnic tree. A few minutes after, Dave arrived, looking, I was delighted to see, as fragile as I felt. When I could speak, I asked him how he had fared, and he confessed that he had passed out a couple of times with the heat. He certainly looked white and ill-kempt. Soon he was regaling me with an account of his adventures. The worst moment had been when John Hartley, coming upon the recumbent Dave, had made an effort to rally him but had got sidetracked when he spied a large telfairii and various geckos sitting close together. Having captured these and finding nothing more suitable to put them in, he promptly and callously commandeered Dave’s tee shirt and handkerchief and continued on his way triumphant, leaving Dave to make out as best he could. This made John one of the people least likely to succeed in a Good Samaritan contest, according to Dave.
‘Just left me there,’ Dave confided to me, croakingly. ‘Just high-tailed off and left me useless as the tits on a boar hog and twice as undecorative. That John’s inhuman, I’m telling you. Can you understand a guy who’d let a fella human die for the sake of a gecko, for God’s sake?’
He was still busy embroidering his experience, complete with death-rattle, bird calls, and the jeering cries of callous lizards, when the others straggled back to the picnic tree. They were all in various stages of exhaustion, with the exception of Tony who looked, if anything, slightly cooler and more immaculate than when he had set out. The others dived for the shade and the cool drinks, whereas Tony squatted in the full glare of the sun and, with a few magic passes, conjured out of thin air a cup of steaming tea and some glutinous, but doubtless nourishing, chutney sandwiches.
After we had revived somewhat, we set about the last task; to catch some of the Telfair skinks which surrounded us in such profusion that one had to be careful where one sat, and where one placed one’s cup or food. A peanut-butter sandwich that Dave misguidedly placed on the rock by his side while he drank, was seized and disputed by two large Telfair skinks before he could rescue it, and disappeared down the hill in a sort of whirling rugger-scrum. Another large Telfair seized on a banana skin and, with his head held high, rushed off over the rocks like a standard bearer, with a host of eager skinks tearing after him. He reached a group of palmettos some distance away without having to relinquish his trophy, but the ownership of it was still being disputed vigorously when we left the island half an hour later.