"Five minutes," he promised himself "Just five minutes more." He forced his upper body into the opening, and the steel oxygen cylinder struck a rock and rang likea bell. He groped around the edges of a triangular-shaped rock that had been frustrating his efforts for the past few minutes.
Once again he wished for a short jeremy bar to -get into that crack and break it open. His fingers ached as he used them instead, getting them in under the rock, and then he wedged himself against the sides of the hole and began to jerk at it, slowly exerting more strength with each heave, until his back was bunched with muscle and his belly ached with the effort.
Something moved and he heard rock grate on rock. He heaved again and the crack closed on his fingers and he screamed with pain into his mask. But the pain of his crushed fingertips unlocked reserves of strength he had not yet tapped. He flung all of this against the rock and it rolled, his fingers came free and there was a rumbling, clanking roar of falling sliding stone blocks.
He lay in the hole and hugged his injured fingers to his chest, whimpering into his mask, half drowning in the water that flooded in when he screamed.
"I'm going up now," he decided. "That's it. I've had enough." He began to wriggle out of the aperture, gingerly putting out one hand to push himself backwards. He felt nothing. In front of him, his hand was waving around in the open. He lay still, the water sloshing in his mask, trying to make a decision. Somehow he knew that if he pulled out now and surfaced, he would not be able to force himself to enter the pool again.
Once again he groped ahead, and when he touched nothing, he inched forward and reached out again. His anchor-line held him and he slipped the knot, crept forward a little further and the pack on his back jammed u p under the stone roof He rolled half onto his side, and was able to free it. Still he could touch nothing ahead of him. He was through the wall, and a sudden superstitious dread seized him.
He pulled back and the pack hit the roof again, and this time it jammed solidly. He was stuck fast, and immediately he began to fight to be free. His breathing hunted, beating the mechanical efficiency of the valves in his mask so that he could get no more oxygen and as he starved, his heart began to race and the pulse in his ears deafened him.
He could not go backwards, and he kicked with his one good leg, and with his stump got a purchase against smooth rock. He pushed forward with both legs and, in a sudden rush similar to the moment of childbirth, he slid forward through the hole in the wall of the tomb into the space beyond.
He groped wildly about him and one hand hit the smooth wall of the shaft at his side, but now he was free of his anchor and the buoyancy of the bag on his chest bore him helplessly upwards. He threw up both hands to prevent his head striking the roof of the shaft, and to grab a handhold. Under his numb fingertips the rock was slippery as soaped glass, and as he ascended, so the oxygen in the bag expanded with the release of pressure and he went up more swiftly, only the signal rope at his waist slowing his headlong upward rush. As he struggled to stabilize himself, the excess oxygen poured. out of the sides of the mask, and panic a t last rode him 66mpletely. He was swirled aloft in total terrifying darknAs.
rfac Suddenly he burst out through the s,u e and lay on his back bobbing around likea cork. He tore the mask off his face and took a lungful of air. It was clean, but faintly tainted with the smell of bat guano. He lay on the surface and sucked it down gratefully.
The rope tugged rapidly at his waist. Six tugs repeated.
It was the code question from Tungata. "Are you all right?" His uncontrolled ascent must have ripped rope off the coil Emma-_
that lay between Tungata's feet and thoroughly alarmed him. Craig signalled back to reassure him and fumbled with the switch of his lamp.
The dim glow of light was dazzling to his eyes that had been blinded so long and they smarted from the irritation of the muddied waters. He blinked around him.
The passage had come up at a sharply increased angle from the masonry wall, until it was now a vertical shaft.
The old witch-doctors had been forced to chip niches in the walls and build in a ladder of rough-hewn timber to enable them to make the ascent. The poles of the ladder were secured with bark rope and were latticed up the open shaft above Craig's head, but the light of his lantern was too feeble to illuminate the top of the steep shaft. The ladder disappeared into the gloom.
Craig paddled to the side and steadied himself with a iandhold on the primitive wooden ladder while he ass em led his thoughts and figured out the lay of the shaft and its probable shape. He realized that by returning to water level, he must have ascended forty feet after his access through the wall. He must have travelled an approximately U-shaped journey the first leg was down the grand gallery, the bottom of the U was along the shaft to the wall, and the last leg was up the steeper branch of the shaft to return to water level again.
He tested the timber ladder work and though it creaked and sagged a little, it bore his weight. He would have to jettison the diving-gear and leave it floating in the shaft while he climbed up the rickety ladder, but first he must rest and regain full control of himself. He put both hands to his head and squeezed his temples, the pain was scarcely bearable.
At that moment, the rope at his waist jerked taut three tugs, repeated. The urgent recall the signal for mortal danger something was desperately wrong, and Tungata was sending a warning and a plea for help.
Craig crammed the mask back onto his face and signalled, "Pull me up!" The rope came taut and he was drawn swiftly below the surface.
he young Matabele mother was allowed to keep her infant strapped to her back, but she was manacled by her wrist to the wrist of the Third Brigade sergeant.