Thirty-Nine Steps_ed Oxford by John Buchan
Author:John Buchan [Buchan, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192839312
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 1993-09-14T21:00:00+00:00
CHAPTER 6
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST
I SPENT the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat. These were in Mr Turnbullâs keeping, as was Scudderâs little book, my watch andâworst of allâmy pipe and tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in my belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket.
I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep into the heather got some kind of warmth. My spirits had risen, and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game of hide-and-seek. So far I had been miraculously lucky. The milkman, the literary innkeeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idiotic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved good fortune. Somehow the first success gave me a feeling that I was going to pull the thing through.
My chief trouble was that I was desperately hungry. When a Jew shoots himself in the City and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually report that the deceased was âwell-nourishedâ. I remember thinking that they would not call me well nourished if I broke my neck in a bog-hole. I lay and tortured myselfâfor the ginger biscuits merely emphasized the aching voidâwith the memory of all the good food I had thought so little of in London. There were Paddockâs crisp sausages and fragrant shavings of bacon, and shapely poached eggsâhow often I had turned up my nose at them! There were the cutlets they did at the club, and a particular ham that stood on the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My thoughts hovered over all varieties of mortal edible, and finally settled on a porterhouse steak and a quart of bitter with a welsh rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for these dainties I fell asleep.
I woke very cold and stiff about an hour after dawn. It took me a while to remember where I was, for I had been very weary and had slept heavily. I saw first the pale blue sky through a net of heather, then a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots placed neatly in a blaeberry bush. I raised myself on my arms and looked down into the valley, and that one look set me lacing up my boots in mad haste.
For there were men below, not more than a quarter of a mile off, spaced out on the hillside like a fan, and beating the heather. Marmie had not been slow in looking for his revenge.
I crawled out of my shelf into the cover of a boulder, and from it gained a shallow trench which slanted up the mountain face. This led me presently into the narrow gully of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to the top of the ridge. From there I looked back, and saw that I was still undiscovered. My pursuers were patiently quartering the hillside and moving upwards.
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