The Seventh Scroll (60 page)

prevent it smashing out of control into the dam. It settled firmly across the gap, like a mammoth plug in the outlet of a giant's bathtub, and instantly the current was cut off.

While the men in the water struggled ashore, their bodies wet and gleaming in the sunlight, Sapper threw off the cables from his tow hitch and roared along the bank with the front-ender in its highest gear. As it passed him, Nicholas grabbed a handhold and swung himself up on to the footplate behind Sapper's seat.

"Got to shore up now, before the grating bursts," Sapper yelled. From his vantage point, clinging to the rear of the tall machine, Nicholas had a moment to assess the Position.

The dam was holding, but only just. Numerous jets of water spurted through every gap between the grating and the gabions. The pressure of water against the sheets of PVc in the grating was enormous. It was taking the full thrust of the river, flexing and bowing before it like a castle Portcullis attacked with a battering ram.

Sapper picked up one of the gabions that were standing ready on the bank and drove down into the river bed below the dam. The flow of the water had shrivelled to a mere knee-deep trickle. jets of water squirted through every chink in the wall, and the gabions were not impermeable; ay through the tightly packed stones.

water was finding its was the front-ender churned and lurched over the rough bed at the back of the wall, Nicholas and Sapper were drenched by the jets spurting over them. It was like working rove in close behind the under a cold shower. Sapper straining grating and placed the heavy gabion against it.

He threw the tractor into reverse and climbed up the bank to pick up another gabion, Slowly he built up a retaining the gabions in sloping wall behind the grating, placin s, until this revetment was as strong as the side piers.

rank Nicholas jumped down from the tractor and left Sapper to it while he ran back upstream to the canal that the teams had dug at the head of the valley. Most of the banks of this cutting workers had gathered along the Nicholas saw both Royan and Tessay in the already, an front row of the excited crowd.

is way -through to Royan's side, and Nicholas pushed she grabbed his hand. it's working, Nicky. The dam wall is holding."

Even as they watched they could see the level of the trapped waters rising up the wall of grating and gabions.

While the men chattered and laughed and urged it on, the river lapped at the entrance of the canal.

the Fifty men seized their tools and jumped down int bottom of the canal. Dust flew in clouds as they shovelled the broken earth aside to lead the first trickle of water into the mouth of the canal. The men on the banks above them and a thin snake whooped and chanted to encourage them, of river water found its way into the mouth of the canalTan ahead of it, The men with the mattocks and shovels it on down the cutting. Every time it met any enticing obstruction and faltered, they fell upon the blockage and tore it away.

the gradient fall At last the thin trickle of water felt away as the valley opened before it. The trickle increased to a freshet, and then to a torrent. With its new strength it gouged out the canal and burst through with the full flow of the river behind it.

The men in the bottom of the cutting yelled with fright at the suddenness and ferocity of it, and scrambled up the sides of the canal. But some of them were not quick enough and were swept away, struggling and screaming for help. The men on the banks ran alongside them, throwing ropes and dragging them sodden and muddy from the flood.

Now the river roared through the canal and tore on down the valley, rediscovering the ancient course that it had not followed for thousands of years. For almost an hour they stood upon the bank watching it, for it exercised over them the particular spell that turbulent waters always have over men. They were forced to retreat step by step as the river cut the banks out from under their feet.

At last Nicholas roused himself, and went back to where Sapper was still shoring up the dam wall. By now he had erected a sloping revetment on the downstream side of the dam wall, with four rows of gabions on the bottom course gradually narrowing as it reached the top of the retaining wall. For the time being the dam was secure, the vulnerable grating had been shored up with the heavy, stone-filled mesh baskets, and the overflow through the canal into the valley had relieved much of the pressure upon it.

"Do you think it will hold?" Royan eyed the structure with suspicion.

"Until the rains come, we hope." Nicholas drew her away. "We don't want to waste any more time here. Time to go on downstream to begin work at Taita's pool."

hey followed the banks of the new river that they had created, down the length of the long 6-valley. At places they were forced to detour higher up the slope because the overflow from the dam had cut away and

submerged the old trail. Eventually they reached the confluence of the stream that had as its source the butterfly fountain that they had explored with Tamre.

They paused on the bank, and Nicholas and Royan looked at each other wordlessly. The stream had dried up.

Turning aside, they followed the empty stream bed up the hills and at last scrambled out on to the ledge from which the butterfly fountain had poured. The cave was still surrounded by lush green ferris, but it was like the eye socket in a skull, dark and empty.

"The spring has dried up!" Royan . "The dam -Iispere has shrivelled it. That's the proof that the fountain was fed from Taita's pool, Now we have diverted the river we have killed the fountain." Her eyes were bright and sparkling with excitement. "Come on. Let's waste no more time here.

Let's get on up to Taita's pool."

'Nicholas was the first one down into Taita's pool. This time, he had a bosun's chair to sit in and a properly rigged block and tackle to lower him over the cliff. As he swung down around the overhang of the cliff, the chair swung awkwardly against the rock and the thumb of his right hand was trapped between the wooden seat of the chair and the wall. He exclaimed with the pain and, when he wrenched it free, he found that the skin had been torn from the knuckle and that blood was oozing up and dripping down his legs. It was painful -but not serious, and he sucked the wound clean. It was still weeping drops of blood but he had, no time to attend to the injury now.

He was around the overhang, and the abyss opened under him, sombre and repellent. His eye was drawn irresistibly to the engraving on the wall, etched between the vertical rows of niches. Now that he knew what to look for, he could make out the outline of the maimed hawk. It cheered and encouraged him. Since their flight from the gorge over a month previously he had often been haunted by the feeling that they had imagined it all, that the cartouche of Taita was a hallucination, and that when they returned they would find the cliff wall smooth and unblemished. But there it was, the signpost and the promise.

He peered down past his own feet to the bottom of the gorge, and saw at once that the waterfall above the pool had been reduced to a trickle. The water still coming down the smooth black chute of polished rock was that which was filtering through the gaps and chinks in the dam wall upstream and the last drainage from the sandbanks and the pools higher up the gorge.

The level of the great Pool under him had fallen drastically. He could. make out the highwater level by the wet markings on the rock cliff. Fifty feet of the wall that had previously been submerged was now exposed. Another eight pairs of chiselled niches were visible in the face Where once he had been forced to swim down to them, they were now high and dry. However, the pool was not completely drained. It was dished below the level of the downstream outlet, so that it was unable to empty itself by gravitational flow. There was still a puddle of black water trapped in the centre, with a narrow ledge surrounding it. Nicholas landed on this ledge and stepped out of the bosun's chair. It was strange to stand on firm rock down here where last he had struggled for his life and very nearly been sucked under and drowned.

He looked up to where beams of sunlight penetrated the upper levels of the chasm. It was like being in the bottom of a mineshaft, and he shuddered at the feel of the clammy air on his bare arms and the eerie sensation in the pit of his stomach. He tugged on the line to send the rope chair back to the surface, and then edged his way along the slippery rock ledge towards the cliff face where the rows of dark niches stood out clearly against the lighter stone.

Now he could make out the shape of the opening in the wall that had so nearly sucked him down into its dark and slimy throat. It was almost completely submerged in a deeper corner where the pool flowed back against the cliff.

All that was visible above the surface was the top arch of an irregular entrance at the foot of the descending rows of niches. The rest of it was still submerged.

The ledge narrowed as he worked his way along the foot of the cliff until he had his back to the rock and was moving sideways with his toes in the water. Eventually he could go no further without actually stepping down into the water. He had no way of judging the depth of the waters, which were turbid and uninviting.

Still trying to keep his feet dry, he squatted down on the narrow ledge and leaned out so far that his balance as threatened. He steadied himself with one hand against the wall, and with the other reached out towards the partially submerged opening.

The lip of the hole was smooth, as he had remembered it, and once again it seemed to him that it was too square and straight to be anything other than man-made. As he rolled up his sleeve he noticed that his injured thumb was still bleeding, but he ignored it and thrust his arm down below the surface of the pool. He groped downwards, trying to trace the sill of the opening, He felt what seemed to be blocks of roughly dressed masonry, and reached down further until the water reached halfway up his biceps.

Suddenly some living creature, swift and weighty, swirled in the dark waters right in front of his face, and as an immediate reflex he jerked his arm out of the water.

The thing followed his arm up to the surface, slashing at his bare flesh with long, needle'sharp fangs, and he had a glimpse of a head as evil and villainous as that of a barracuda' He realized instinctively that it must have been attracted by the smell of the blood from his injured thumb. He leaped to his feet and teetered on the narrow ledge, clutching his arm. Only one of the creature's frontal fangs had touched him, but it had opened the skin like a razor cut, a long shallow wound across the back of his right hand from which fresh blood dribbled and splattered into the pool at his feet.

Instantly the black waters seemed to come alive, roiling and seething with frenzied writhing aquatic shapes.

Nicholas, his back flattened against the rock wall, stared down at them with loathing and horror. He could vaguely make out the shape of them, sinuous and ribbonlike, some of them as thick as his calf, black and gleaming.

One of them thrust its head out on to the ledge and snapped its jaws. Its eyes were huge and glistening and its snout was elongated, the long jaws lined with fangs that overlapped its thin lips. The body behind the head was six feet long, and lashed like a whip as it drove itself high up on to the ledge, reaching out for Nicholas's bare legs. He shouted with revulsion and leaped back, stumbling and splashing on to safer footing. Clutching his bleeding hand, stare aC Ae evi . aead had disappeared, but the surface of the pool was still agitated by the lithe ophidian shapes.

"Eels!the realized. "Giant tropical eels."

Of course the blood had excited them. The fall in the water-level had trapped them in the pool, congregated them in such numbers that they had probably already devoured the fish that they depended upon for food. Now they were ravenous. Probably all the pools of water that remained in the abyss were infested with these fearsome creatures. He was thankful that during his last swim in this pool he had not bled into the water.

He unwound the cotton kerchief from his neck and wrapped it round his wounded hand. The eels were a deadly threat to any attempt to explore the opening in the cliff.

A, il " the pool of 1V But already he was considering ways of ridding them and of gaining access to the underwater opening.

Slowly the frenzy in the pool quietened and its surface grew still again, Nicholas looked up to see the bosun's chair descending, with Royan's slim, shapely legs dangling below the wooden seat.

"What have you found?" she called down to him excitedly. "Is there a tunnel-' then she broke off suddenly as she saw the blood on his clothing, and the bandage wathing his hand.

"Oh dear God," she exclaimed. "What have you done?

You are hurt. How badly?" Her feet touched the ledge beside him and she slid from the chair and took his injured hand gently. "What have you done to yourself?"

"It's not as bad as it looks, he assured her. "Lots of blood but not deep."

"How did you do it?" she insisted.

For an answer he tore a corner off the bloodstained kerchief. "Watch!" he instructed her, wadding it into a ball and tossing it out into the pool. Royan screamed with horror as the waters boiled with the long fleeting shapes. One of them wriggled half its monstrous length out on to the ledge, before flopping back.

It left a shining trail of silver slime across the black stones.

"Taita has left his guard dogs to see us A' Nicholas remarked. "We are going to have to take care of those beauties before we can explore the entrance below the surface."

/4P--I he bamboo scaffolding that Sapper and Nicholas had built down the cliff was L*, - anchored in the niches that had been cut into the rock nearly four thousand years before. Taita had probably lashed his framework together with bark rope, but Sapper had used heavy-gauge galvanized wire, and the structure was strong enough to bear the weight of many men. The Buffaloes formed a living chain and passed all the material and equipment down the scaffolding from hand to hand.

The very first piece of equipment to reach the floor Of the cavern was the portable Honda EM500 generator.