“Any sign of a Mountain Rescue team, Casimir?” he asked as they dropped towards the valley below.
“You’re homed in on it,” was Casimir’s reply.
And sure enough, the bent, plodding figures of the Mountain Rescue Team, battling against the force of the blizzard, soon loomed up through the snow.
The leader of the team threw out an arm to signal a halt as, out of the whirling flakes, a strange, black-caped figure swooped to land beside them. Lewis grinned slightly at their astounded faces and knew that before long his sudden appearance would be the talk of the Highlands and Islands. “Is one of you a doctor?” he asked, heaving Charles off his shoulders. Two men immediately moved forward while others, seeing the slumped figure of the climber, opened their packs and started assembling a stretcher.
“You’ll need two stretchers,” he told them. “If you just hang on, I’ll bring the other one.”
“He’s falling!” Casimir interrupted him abruptly and at the same time whirled Lewis into the air and up the sheer side of the mountain to where a hooded, bulky figure tumbled head over heels through the whirling snowflakes; James, who had tried to shift to a more comfortable position when Lewis had taken Charles from his grasp, had moved awkwardly, lost his balance and toppled from the ledge. He could hardly believe his luck when two arms, as strong as steel, grasped him firmly in mid-air. “Relax,” a boyish voice said, “you’re safe now!”
“I … don’t know who, or what, you are,” James whispered. “But thanks all the same. I’d be a goner without you!”
Lewis grinned and Casimir, who, in the past, had rarely gone out of his way to help anyone, was again visited by that strange feeling of elation that he couldn’t quite put a name to — but one thing he did know was that this Shadow business was just what he needed to add a bit of spice to Lewis’s totally uninteresting life. Nevertheless, the boy’s knowledge of geography — and history, for that matter, was quite deplorable. Lewis, Casimir decided, was going to have to develop the urge to read and learn; for he, himself, was anxious to know what had gone on in the world during the hundreds of years that he’d spent cooped up in the well at Al Antara and the Robinson’s library, he decided, was the ideal place to find out.
15. Lost in the Underground City
Clara shivered as she looked around. This part of the Underground City was definitely scary. It was nothing like Mary King’s Close which, she now realized, must have been extensively renovated to make it fit for tourists to visit. Its neat, white-washed walls certainly bore no resemblance to the filthy jumble of dark, narrow alleys under the Assembly Hall. The houses here were derelict and their black, empty windows seemed to watch them as they crept fearfully past.
“We’ll have to be careful not to get lost,” she said worriedly, as Neil’s torch lit up the old, dusty streets.
Neil, however, hardly heard her. He was fascinated. “What a place,” he breathed. “Just think, Clara, no one’s probably walked down this street for hundreds of years!” He shone his torch through the windows of some of the houses and peered in, but the rooms were empty.
“Let’s have a look inside this one!” he said excitedly, climbing the few steps to its gaping doorway. “You never know, we might find something really old and interesting inside.” Clara didn’t think so but followed him in nervously, picking her way over broken floors and nudging scattered heaps of crumbling debris with the toes of her trainers. The old house was a rabbit-warren of small rooms and passages and to this day Clara reckons that they left it by a different door from the one they went in by. The narrow streets all looked much the same and it was only when they turned to go back to the cellars of the Assembly Hall that they found that they couldn’t find their way. They wandered up and down until, with sinking hearts, realized that they were well and truly lost.
“I don’t believe this!” Neil said. “We can’t be lost! I’m sure we came along this street! The stair that leads up to the cellars should be about here!”
“Well, it isn’t,” Clara said in a small voice. “I think we got lost in that house. We must have left by the back door and ended up in another alley.”
“Let’s go back along and see if we can find it again, then,” Neil said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Couldn’t we call our carpets?” Clara asked hopefully.
Neil shook his head. “They wouldn’t be able to get in,” he pointed out. “Mary King’s Close is locked for the night and we shut the basement door behind us when we came down here, remember?”