Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

a mile after he’d forded the river the sound of rushing water grew
thunderous, the river curved abruptly, and he met with a waterfall. Deprived of
any means of crossing the river again he trained his light on the fall, judged
it to be about thirty feet high, and stoically began climbing up the hill
beside it, clinging to the roots of trees and to rocks and bushes. Once on the
top he admitted—not without resistance—that a brief rest might be a good
investment, a catnap would be even better, and he set his wristwatch’s tiny
alarm for thirty minutes. Finding a mossy patch among the rocks he sank down,
leaned back, and promptly fell over. His assumptions had been wrong: the rock
against which he thought he leaned did not exist; there were rocks to the right
and to the left of him but he’d fallen into what appeared to be a cavity in the
hillside.
    Turning on his flashlight he parted the underbrush to examine what lay
behind it, and his light picked out a hollow roughly twelve feet by eight, its
ceiling a little over five feet, laced tightly with roots from the forest. In
astonishment he stood up and trained his light on the ground above to see what
had caused such a miracle. Roots, he decided: years ago a massive tree
must have been struck down, leaving a space over which the surrounding root
systems had slowly woven a carpet as they groped toward the support of the
rocks on either side. On top of this network Nature had gradually deposited
soil and moss, leaving the hollow untouched, and had then charmingly screened
its entrance with underbrush.
    There was suddenly no need for sleep. Excited, Peter checked his
compass, crawled inside the cave, and sat looking around him in amazement. It
was dry and warm inside. Bringing out his map he spent a few minutes computing
his location, marked it in pencil and grinned: if his estimate was correct this
cave was only a mile from the labor camp, and a perfect place to hide two
people next week while the security police searched for X. It was better than
perfect, it existed only ten feet from a rushing stream of water, and water was
the most precious commodity of all.
    Already in his mind he was making the commitment; now he backed it by
groping in his pocket for the dried apricots and apples he’d brought with him
for a snack tonight. These he deposited in the center of the cave, like a
promise, and then he remembered the slab of chocolate from his previous nights’
explorations, and added this to the fruit. With a glance at his watch he parted
the underbrush and left, exhilarated by his discovery.
    Continuing to follow the river upstream he arrived in a few minutes at a
point where a second river joined with the first one to rush down toward the
waterfall. From the pattern of it —the headwaters arranged like the crossbar of
a T with the second stream dropping to waterfall and highway—he thought this
had to be the river that led to the labor camp. Moments later he confirmed this
when he shone his flashlight across the rushing water for a minute and its beam
picked out piles of neatly stacked logs and cut trees waiting to be denuded of
their branches. He had reached a logging area.
    It was time now to find a way to cross the river and find the camp.
    Peter began to reconnoiter, as yet paying no attention to the water
racing past him but examining the trees on each bank, his flashlight twinkling
on-off, on-off, like a firefly. Presently he found what he was looking for: a
stout tree on his side of the river opposite several strong trees on the
farther bank. Unwinding the rope from his waist he knotted it around the base
of the tree next to him and knelt beside the river to study its currents. Vicious, he thought, nasty and vicious, exactly the sort of current that would
sweep a man under before he had a chance to catch his breath. He sat down and
removed his shoes and socks and hid them with his flashlight, compass, and
papers under the tree. Then he tied the end of the rope around his waist and
lowered himself into the water.
    At once the rapids swept him away, the icy water knocking him as
breathless as if he’d been given a blow to the solar plexus. The current
tumbled him over and over, extracting what breath was left him while jagged
rocks pummeled and bruised him. Only the rope saved him: considerably
downstream it snapped him to a halt, threatening to cut him in half from the
current bearing down on him, but it held and he was able to surface and breathe
again.