The pipe was far more slippery with mud and slime than Mullion expected and it took him several attempts even to get up into it, and then only with Bracken pushing, while Boswell in turn hung on to Bracken as the water steadily rose about them.
‘Come on!’ urged Bracken, giving Mullion a final heave from behind to help him stretch blindly into the darkness and fight his way up to the first hold. He got to it just as his back paws began to slide away from under him and hung there gasping for a few moments before bringing his other paw forward and getting a secure grip. The gap between the two sections of pipe was quite wide and the hold was good enough to let him rest for a little as his back paws found a better grip and he distributed his weight evenly. There was a thin trickle of muddy water running down the bottom of the pipe, getting into his snout and fur. The smell in the pipe went to his snout so powerfully that it disorientated him and made him feel nauseous. But he hung on—he wasn’t going to let a Duncton mole think Pasture moles were always quite so nervous as he had been before. Behind him he felt Boswell pulling tentatively at his back paw and then somehow levering himself along him with gasps and pants.
‘Just in time,’ said Boswell, joining him at the first hold. ‘The water was getting so dangerous that Bracken virtually threw me up.’
Behind them they heard Bracken working his way up and then calling out: ‘On you go, Mullion, so I can come on up.’
And on Mullion went, inch by slippery inch, paws constantly seeming about to slip out of control. Then up struggled Boswell again, even finding time to comment: ‘Not a nice place to live, this!’ The round tunnel was cold, wet and dark about them. Behind them they could hear Bracken talking himself on: ‘Now, if I put this one there, and this one here, then I’ll get a better grip and…’, a habit he had acquired from so many months alone in the Ancient System and one that, in moments of crisis, he was never to lose.
The higher they went the steeper the pipe seemed to get and the more nervous each became as the consequences of a slip became increasingly serious. A mole slipping from this height would probably be so stunned in the fall that he would drown in the swirling water at the foot of the pipe.
Here and there the gap between the pipes was quite wide and gave them points at which they could rest—for lying outstretched in the steep tunnel, hanging on only by talons, was very tiring.
It was when they reached about the fifteenth stretch of pipe that Mullion suddenly, and without warning, slipped. He fell back on to Boswell without even getting a chance to cry out, and Boswell slipped back on to Bracken under his weight. For a moment Bracken felt his own grip going, the slimy, odorous tunnel suddenly witness to a desperate struggle to maintain a hold on life—but above him, Mullion managed to get a grip again and Boswell, his back paws bouncing all over Bracken’s snout, recovered himself as well.
‘Thank you,’ said Bracken acidly.
‘Sorry,’ shouted Mullion down the pipe. He was feeling very weak, but really his performance so far was extraordinary for a mole who had been so weakened by starvation.
A short while later, the pipe levelled off to a less steep slope and they were all able to have a rest. The water flow down it, however, was cold and dank and Boswell was beginning to shiver.
‘Well! Well!’ said Bracken, trying to keep up morale. ‘I wonder where we go from here!’ From the darkness far below them they could hear a splashing and rushing of water as if the channel where they had been was now as flooded as the ones at its end had been. It sounded a long way away, and nearer at hand they could hear the occasional drip of water, hollow and ringing through the pipe.
‘I don’t think this tunnel goes anywhere, but we can try,’ said Bracken. The next few sections were easy, though Bracken stayed carefully behind, watching over their progress—he knew how weak they both were. But then there was a hopeless shout from Mullion: ‘I can’t go on—it’s almost vertical now.’ And it was. The pipes twisted upwards and offered no further holds.
‘We’ll just have to burrow out from here, then,’ said Boswell, picking with his good paw at the earth and grit that lay between two sections of the pipe near which they were crouched. But it was Bracken who had to do it and it proved a long, slow job, partly because the embankment was made of hard-packed soil with all sorts of obstacles like pieces of square rock which he had to burrow round, but also because he was so very tired. He seemed barely to have stopped moving since his escape from the Ancient System back in Duncton four days before. But he tried to put that out of his mind, for he knew his chances of ever returning to Duncton were now slim, even supposing he wanted to.
It took him over two hours before a pawthrust broke through the surface of the embankment. He emerged tentatively; Boswell had warned him of the steepness of the slope, and there were the roaring owls to beware of.
Night had fallen and the first thing he saw—and it made him retreat into the tunnel—was the glare of a roaring owl’s eyes racing towards him out of the darkness, and the growing crescendo of its rumbling flight. The noise was so loud that it stunned him and the stench was many times more nauseating than that in the tunnel. It made his eyes water and his snout ache. And below there was the roar of running water.
He retreated down into the tunnel.
‘Well, we can get out, but it’s so dangerous there that we had better work out what to do before we start,’ he said.
‘There is little you can do except move as fast as possible,’ said Boswell. ‘From what I’ve seen, we’ll have to cross the owl paths and head off along their edge to the west. We’ll be very exposed—not only to the roaring owls but to crows and other predators that may be about.’
‘At night, up here?’ queried Mullion.
‘Death hangs in the air at any time,’ said Boswell. ‘With luck we’ll be able to get off the path by the way I originally came and there’ll be food to find when we get there. But whatever you do, do not look directly into the eyes of a roaring owl, as it will instantly hypnotise you.’
The climb up the burrowed tunnel was no problem, since it was small enough for them to flex their limbs against the sides, but once out on to the wet slope they were in continual danger. The passing owls were snout-shatteringly loud, and each one left its wave of noisome smells which so disorientated them that they nearly lost their grip more than once. Indeed, Bracken, used as he was to the clear air of Duncton Hill, started to faint and had not Boswell, at risk to himself, put his paw hard against Bracken’s back, he might easily have slipped back down into the wet running darkness from which they were trying to escape.
Thus, slowly and dangerously, they climbed a mountain whose top they were afraid of reaching. When they got there it was far worse than either Bracken or Mullion could ever have imagined. The noise, the stench, the flashing owl gazes! They all kept their snouts down and their eyes averted for fear of being transfixed by the owls’ gaze—but even so, they could see the light of the owl eyes flashing and shooting on the grubby wet grass that grew on top of the embankment, and the ground continually trembled with their passing.
‘Whatever you do, and whatever happens, do not look round at the roaring owls,’ repeated Boswell. ‘Once they have transfixed you with their gaze, they will crush you with their talons. ’
The owls passed intermittently from both directions—the ones on the nearer path going one way and on the further path the other. The three moles waited for a lull before looking up and across—but it was too murky to see much and their snouts were so upset by the fumes and vibrations that they could not snout out much either. Bracken felt a lassitude growing over him. His will to move was fading. He wanted to crouch down and sleep. He wanted… until Boswell nudged him. ‘Come on, we must move. They are so powerful they can confuse you and put you to sleep without even touching you. Come on!’