The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 121

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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

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