The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 123

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Sapper connected it up to the lights that he had rigged along the foot

of the cliff. The small petrol engine ran smoothly and quietly, but the

amount of power it put out was impressive. The floodlights chased the

shadows from the furthest corners of the cavern, and lit the deep rock

bowl like a stage.

Immediately the mood changed. Everybody became more cheerful and

confident. There was laughter and excited chatter from the chain of men

on the scaffolding as Royan climbed down to join Sapper and Nicholas at

the side of the pool.

"Now that we know that they are working, switch off those lights,'

Nicholas ordered.

"It's so dark and gloomy without them," Royan protested.

"Saving fuel," Nicholas explained. "No filling station on the corner. We

only have two hundred litres in reserve, and although the little Honda

is pretty economical we have to be careful We don't know how long we are

going to need it in the tunnel."

Royan shrugged with resignation, and when Sapper cut the generator the

cavern was plunged once more into gloom and shadow. She looked at the

dark pool and pulled a face.

"What are you going to do about those horrid pets of yours?" she

demanded, glancing at Nicholas's bandaged right hand.

"Sapper and I have worked out a plan. We thought of trying to empty the

pool completely, using a bucket chain.

But the amount of water still coming down the river bed makes that a

poor choice."

"We would be lucky to hold our own against that flow, even working

around the clock with buckets," Sapper grunted. "If only the major had

thought to bring along a high-speed water pump-'

"Even I can't think of everything, Sapper. What we are going to do is to

build a small coffer dam around the riderwater opening, and bale that

out with buckets."

Royan stood back and watched the preparations. Half a dozen of the empty

mesh gabions were carried down the scaffolding and placed at the edge of

the pool. Here they were partially filled with boulders that the men

gathered up from the river bed. However the gabions were not filled so

full that they became too heavy to handle. There was no front-ender down

here to move them around, and they would be forced to rely on

old-fashioned manpower. There was just sufficient of the yellow PVC

sheeting left over to wrap around each gabion and render it waterproof.

"What about your eels?" Royan was fascinated by these loathsome

creatures, and she hung well back from the edge of the pool. "You can't

send any of your men in there!

"Watch and learn." Nicholas grinned at her. "I have a little treat in

store for your favourite fish."

Once all the preparations for the construction of the coffer were

complete, Nicholas cleared the cavern, sending Royan and Sapper and all

of the men up the scaffolding.

He alone remained at the edge of the pool, with the bag of fragmentation

grenades that he had begged from Mek Nimmur slung over his shoulder.

With a grenade in each hand, he hesitated. "Seven second delay," he

reminded himself "Quenton-Harper dry flies. More effective than the

Royal Coachman!'

He pulled the pins from each of the grenades and then lobbed them out

into the middle of the pool. Quickly he turned away and hurried to the

furthest corner of the cavern. He knelt with his face to the rock wall

and covered his ears with both hands.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he braced himself. The rock floor jumped under

him and the double shock waves from the explosions swept over him in

quick succession, with a savage power that drove in his chest and

stopped his breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were

thunderous, but his ears were protected and the deep water of the pool

absorbed much of the blast. A twin fountain of water shot high into the

air and splashed against the cliff above his head. It poured down in a

sheet over him, soaking his clothing.

As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely

affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold

water. Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement.

Scores of the great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing

their white bellies as they twisted. Many of them were dead, their

bellies burst open, floating inert, while others were merely stunned by

the blast. Knowing how tenaciously they clung to life he suspected that

they would soon recover, but for the time being they were no longer a

danger.

He bellowed up toward the top of the cliff. "All clear, Sapper. Send

them down."

The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that

the grenades had wreaked in the pool.

They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.

"You eat them?" Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.

"Very good!" The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.

"Enough of that, you greedy perishers." SappeT drove them back to work.

"Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating

you."

With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered

the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of

a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and

complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and

taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had

built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling

it off from the main body of water in the pool.

Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out

the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool.

Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the

coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.

Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about

three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been

eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell

lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had

probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood

where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the

opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood

seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.

 Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but

he could not control his impatience.

The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with

his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.

"It's definitely some sort of shaft," he shouted back, and Royan could

not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into

the offer, and pushed into the opening beside him.

"There's an obstruction," she cried in disappointment.

"Did Taita do that deliberately?"

might have," Nicholas gave his opinion. "Hard to tell.

A lot of this rubble and flotsam has been sucked in from the main flow

of the river, but he might have filled the tunnel behind him as he

pulled out."

"It's going to take a tremendous amount of work just to clear it enough

to find out where this passage leads to." Royan's voice had lost its

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