Where Eagles Dare [antikvár]

iThe vibrating clangour from the four great piston engines set-,teeth on edge and made an intolerable assault on cringing eardrums. The decibel-level, Smith calculated, must have beenI about that found in a boiler factory, and one, moreover, that ! was working on overtime rates, while the shaking cold in that ^ij cramped, instrument-crowded flight-deck was positively Siberian. On balance, he reflected, he would have gone for ,i the Siberian boiler factory any time because, whatever its 'i, drawbacks, it wasn't liable to fall out of the sky or crash into a , mountain-side which, in his present circumstances, seemed a likely enough, if not imminent contingency for all that the pilot of their Lancaster bomber appeared to care to the con- j, , trary. Smith looked away from the darkly opaque world beyond the windscreens where the wipers fought a useless battle with the driving snow and looked again at the man in 'I. the left-hand captain's seat.Wing Commander Cecil Carpenter was as completely at home in his environment as the most contented oyster in his h shell in Whistable Bay. Any comparison with a Siberian boiler factory he would have regarded as the ravings of an unhinged mind. Quite clearly, he found the shuddering ij vibration as soothing as the ministrations of the gentlest of V. masseurs, the roar of the engines positively soporific and the ambient temperature just right for a man of his leisured .'! literary tastes. Before him, at a comfortable reading distance, a book rested on a hinged contraption which he had swung out from the cabin's side. From what little Smith could occa- I sionally see of the lurid cover, depicting a blood-stained knife 1. plimged into the back of a girl who didn't seem to have any clothes on, the Wing Commander held the more serious contemporary novelists in a fine contempt. He turned a page."Magnificent,' he said admiringly. He puffed deeply on an ; ancient briar that smelt like a fumigating plant. 'By heavens, this feller can write. Banned, of course, young Tremayne'5