His arm swung back, jerked convulsively forward, sent the spike spinning away into the darkness. One second passed, then another, he knew he had missed, the beam was only inches from Andrea's shoulders, and then the metallic clatter of the spike striking a boulder fell upon his ear like a benison. The beam wavered for a second, stabbed out aimlessly into the darkness and then whipped round, probing into the boulders to the left. And then the sentry was running towards them, slipping and stumbling in his haste, the barrel of the carbine gleaming in the light of the torch held clamped to it. He'd gone less than ten yards when Andrea was over the top of the cliff like a great, black cat, was padding noiselessly across the ground to the shelter of the nearest boulder. Wraith-like, he flitted in behind it and was gone, a shadow long among shadows.

The sentry was about twenty yards away now, the beam of his torch darting fearfully from boulder to boulder when Andrea stuck the haft of his knife against a rock twice. The sentry whirled round, torch shining along the line of the boulders, then started to run clumsily back again, the skirts of the greatcoat fluttering grotesquely in the wind. The torch was swinging wildly now, and Mallory caught a glimpse of a white, straining face, wide-eyed and fearful, incongruously at variance with the gladiatorial strength of the steel helmet above. God only knew, Mallory thought, what wild panic-stricken thoughts were passing through his confused mind: noises from the cliff-top, metallic sound from either side among the boulders, the long, eerie vigil, afraid and companionless, on a deserted cliff edge on a dark and tempest-filled night in a hostile land — suddenly Mallory felt a deep stab of compassion for this man, a man like himself, someone's well-beloved husband or brother or son who was only doing a dirty and dangerous job as best he could and because he was told to, compassion for his loneliness and his anxieties and his fears, for the sure knowledge that before he had drawn breath another three times he would be dead.… Slowly, gauging his time and distance, Mallory raised his head.

«Help!» he shouted. «Help me! I'm falling!»

The soldier checked in mid-stride and spun round, less than flve feet from the rock that hid Andrea. For a second the beam of his torch waved wildly around, then settled on Mallory's head. For another moment he stood stock still, then the carbine in his right hand swung up, the left hand reaching down for the barreL Then he grunted once, a violent and convulsive exhalation of breath, and the thud of the hilt of Andrea's knife striking home against the ribs carried clearly to Mallory's ears, even against the wind… .

Mallory stared down at the dead man, at Andrea's impassive face as he wiped the blade of his knife on the greatcoat, rose slowly 'to his feet, sighed and slid the knife back in its scabbard.

«So, my Keith!» Andrea reserved the punctilious «Captain» for company only. «This is why our young lieutenant eats his heart out down below.»

«That is why,» Mallory acknowledged. «I knew it-- or I almost knew it. So did you. Too many coincidences — the German caique investigating, the trouble at the watch-tower — and now this.» Mallory swore, softly and bitterly. «This is the end for our friend Captain Briggs of Castelrosso. He'll be cashiered within the month. Jensen wifi make certain of that.»

Andrea nodded.

«He let Nicolai go?»

«Who else could have known that we were to have landed here, tipped off everyone all along the line?» Mallory paused, dismissed the thought, caught Andrea by the arm. «The Germans are thorough. Even although they must know it's almost an impossibility to land on a night like this, they'li have a dozen sentries scattered along the cliffs.» Unconsciously Mallory had lowered his voice. «But they wouldn't depend on one man to cope with five. So—»

«Signals,» Andrea finished for him. «They must have some way of letting the others know. Perhaps flares—»

«No, not that,» Mallory disagreed. «Give their position away. Telephone. It has to be that. Remember how they were in Crete — miles of field telephone wire all over the shop?»

Andrea nodded, picked up the dead man's torch, hooded it in his huge hand and started searching. He returned in less than a minute.

«Telephone it is,» he announced softly. «Over there, under the rocks.»

«Nothing we can do about it,» Mallory said. «If it does ring, I'll have to answer or they'll come hot-footing along. I only hope to heaven they haven't got a bloody password. It would be just like them.»

He turned away, stopped suddenly.

«But someone's got to come sometime — a relief, ser geant of the guard, something like that. Probably he's supposed to make an hourly report. Someone's bound to come — and come soon. My God, Andrea, we'll have to make it fast!»

«And this poor devil?» Andrea gestured to the huddled shadow at his feet.

«Over the side with him.» Mallory grimaced in distaste. «Won't make any difference to the poor bastard now, and we can't leave any traces. The odds are they'll think he's gone over the edge — this top-soil's as crumbly and treacherous as hell.… You might see if he's any papers on him — never know how useful they might be.»

«Not half as useful as these boots on his feet.» Andrea waved a large hand towards the scree-strewn slopes. «You are not going to walk very far there in your stocking soles.»

Five minutes later Mallory tugged three times on the string that stretched down into the darkness below. Three answering tugs came from the ledge, and then the cord vanished rapidly down over the edge of the overhang, drawing with it the long steel-cored rope that Mallory paid out from the coil on the top of the cliff.

The box of explosives was the first of the gear to come up. The weighted rope plummetted straight down from the point of the overhang, and padded though the box was on every side with lashed rucksacks and sleeping-bags it still crashed terrifyingly against the cliff on the inner arc of every wind-driven swing of the pendulum. But there was no time for finesse, to wait for the diminishing swing of the pendulum after each tug. Securely anchored to a rope that stretched around the base of a great boulder, Andrea leaned far out over the edge of the precipice and reeled in the seventy-pound deadweight as another man would a trout. In less than three minutes the ammunition box lay beside him on the cliff-top: five minutes later the firing generator, guns and pistols, wrapped in a couple of other sleeping-bags and their lightweight, reversible tent — white on one side brown and green camouflage on the other — lay beside the explosives.

A third time the rope went down into the rain and the darkness, a third time the tireless Andrea hauled it in, hand over hand. Mallory was behind him, coiling in the slack of the rope, when he heard Andrea's sudden exclamation: two quick strides and he was at the edge of the cliff, his hand on the big Greek's arm.

«What's up, Andrea? Why have you stopped--?»

He broke off, peered through the gloom at the rope in Andrea's hand, saw that it was being held between only finger and thumb. Twice Andrea jerked the rope up a foot or two, let it fall again: the weightless rope swayed wildly in the wind.

«Gone?» Mallory asked quietly.

Andrea nodded without speaking.

«Broken?» Mallory was incredulous. «A wire-cored rope?»

«I don't think so.» Quickly Andrea reeled in the remaining forty feet. The twine was still attached to the same place, about a fathom from the end. The rope was intact.

«Somebody tied a knot.» Just for a moment the giant's voice sounded tired. «They didn't tie it too well.»

Mallory made to speak, then flung up an instinctive arm as a great, forked tongue of flame streaked between the cliff-top and unseen clouds above. Their cringing eyes were still screwed tight shut, their nostrils full of the acrid, sulphurous smell of burning, when the first volley of thunder crashed in Titan fury almost directly overhead, a deafening artillery to mock the pitiful efforts of embattled man, doubly terrifying in the total darkness that followed that searing flash. Gradually the echoes pealed and faded inland in diminishing reverberation, were lost among the valleys of the hills.