The Vivero Letter

'Cheer up,' I said. 'We ought to make it in another three hours.'

He tried to smile and achieved a feeble grin. I'll be right behind you,' he said.

So we set off again, but our pace was much slower. My cuts with the machete didn't have the power behind them and it was a case of making two chops when only one had been necessary before. And I stopped sweating, which I knew was a bad sign.

Four hours later we were still not in sight of the cenote, and the bush was as thick as ever. Yet even though I was leading and doing the work I was still moving faster than Harry, who stopped often to rest. All the stuffing seemed to be knocked out of him, and I didn't know what was the matter. I stopped and waited to let him catch up, and he came into view almost dropping with exhaustion and sagged to the ground at my feet.

I knelt beside him. 'What's wrong, Harry?'

'I'm all right,' he said with an attempt at force in his voice. 'Don't worry about me.'

'I'm worried about both of us,' I said. 'We should have reached the cenote by now. Are you sure we're heading the right way?'

He pulled the compass from his pocket. 'Yes; we're all right.' He rubbed his face. 'Maybe we should veer a bit to the north.'

'How far, Harry?'

'Christ, I don't know! The cenote's not very big. We could quite easily miss it.'

It dawned upon me that perhaps we were lost. I had been relying on Harry's navigation, but perhaps he wasn't in a fit state to make decisions. We could even have overshot the cenote for all I knew. I could see that it would be up to me to make the decisions in the future.

I made one. I said, 'Well head due north for two hundred yards, then we'll take up a track parallel to this one.' I felt the edge of the machete; it was as dull as the edge of a poker and damned near useless for cutting anything. I exchanged it for the other, which wasn't much better, and said, 'Come on, Harry; we've got to find water.'

I carried the compass this time and changed direction sharply. After a hundred yards of hewing, much to my surprise I came to an open space, a sort of passage through the bush -- a trail. I looked at it in astonishment and noted that it had been cut fairly recently because the slash marks were fresh.

I was about to step on to the trail when I heard voices and drew back cautiously. Two men passed within feet of me; both were dressed in dirty whites and floppy hats, and both carried rifles. They were speaking in Spanish, and I listened to the murmur of their voices fade away until all was quiet again.

Harry caught up with me, and I put my finger to my lips. 'Chicleros,' I said. 'The cenote must be quite near.'

He leaned against a tree. 'Perhaps they'll help us,' he said.

'I wouldn't bet on it. No one I ever heard has a good opinion of chicleros.' I thought about it a bit. 'Look, Harry: you make yourself comfortable here, and I'll follow those two tads. I'd like to know a bit more about them before disclosing myself.'

He let himself slip to a sitting position at the bottom of the tree. 'That's okay with me,' he said tiredly. 'I could do with a rest.'

So I left him and entered the 'trail. By God, it was a relief to be able to move freely. I went fast until I saw a disappearing flick of white ahead which was the hinder most of the chicleros, then I slowed down and kept a cautious distance. After I'd gone about a quarter of a mile I smelted wood smoke and heard more voices, so I struck off the trail and found that the forest had thinned out and I could move quite easily and without using the machete.

Then, through the trees, I saw the dazzle of sun on water, and no Arab, coming across an oasis in the desert, could have been more cheered than I was. But I was still careful and didn't burst into the clearing by the cenote; instead I sneaked up and hid behind the trunk of a tree and took a good look at the situation.

It was just as well I did because there were about twenty men camped there around a blue and yellow tent which looked incongruously out of place and seemed more suited to an English meadow. In front of the tent and sitting on a camp stool was Jack Gatt, engaged in pouring himself a drink. He measured a careful amount of whisky and then topped it with soda-water from a siphon. My throat tightened agonizingly as I watched him do it.

Immediately around Gatt and standing in a group were eight men listening attentively to what he was saying as he gestured at the map on the camp table. Four of them were obviously American from the intonation of their voices and from their clothing; the others were probably Mexican, although they could have come from any Central American country. To one side, and not taking part in Gatt's conference, were about a dozen chicleros lounging by the edge of the cenote.