under cover goose on the Titanic

Part 23 - Jingle Bells

We were wedged into a tiny canyon looking out across a desolate valley at a rock face mottled with patches of snow. I listened for any sound as rubbed my shin and I scanned the scene. The gloomy grey silence was total.

I took a few careful steps to the end of the crevice where my foot dislodged a small stone. It went spinning into a narrow, steep-walled valley and it was a long time before I heard it hit anything. I looked down into the crevasse and Miguel grabbed the back of my parka as my legs sagged with fear. Far below me the bottom faded into fog. I looked up hoping to see a path but the grey crags rose almost vertically into a low ceiling of dark cloud. Mist eddied around us like a waterfall of wraiths. I gradually became aware of a soft ghostly noise like the moans of dying men. I shivered and pulled my parka's hood over my head trying to convince myself it was only the wind sighing though the rocks.

I was out of breath and my heart was pounding against my ribs as my lungs sucked in the thin, frigid air. It seemed almost without oxygen.

I fought the urge to go back and inched nervously around a sharp rock looking for Murga. Nothing but more rocks and a nearly vertical drop on the left, a steep, dangerous-looking, loose scree in front and a smooth rock slope to the right. There was nothing to indicate which way Murga had gone.

We edged onto the scree as the mist poured around me like a thin cold porridge. I stood frozen with fright. I couldn't see my feet. One false move and I would be sliding to my death on the rocks below. 'Ziff!' Miguel's hand appeared and I grabbed it gratefully.

'What's that noise?' he asked. An eerie babbling, muffled by the mist, echoed off the cliffs. We waited and the mist cleared as suddenly as it had arrived.

The noise was coming from a flat outcrop jutting out of the escarpment about a hundred metres below. We edged toward the sound. My muscles felt weak and I was gasping for air. A snow squall blasted out of nowhere and we were engulfed in a total white-out, the snow particles pinging off my face like sand. Disorientated, I fell. Luckily, into a patch of snow.

Miguel slithered down to me on his butt and I took no more chances. We huddled together until the snow and the wind abruptly disappeared. In the growing gloom, a jumble of coloured lights jigged about, glowing incongruously like Christmas decorations. We picked our way down the rock incline toward the outcrop. Suddenly, the babble made sense. 'Guluk oik.' The lights decorated a moon-walking Canada goose wearing an oversized Santa Clause hat.

'Well, it's aboot time yeh showed up,' Dunc grumbled. 'Ah've been waiting here freezing ma tail feathers off and without a bite tae eat for hours. There's nary a blade o' grass here aboots.'

'Okay, okay, Dunc,' I panted. 'Keep it down. Murga will hear you.' For some reason, chatting to an illuminated, break-dancing goose on a mountain crag didn't seem totally bizarre. 'What are you doing here?'