Southtrap

It took twenty minutes for me to fight my way clear of the trap.

Twice more in the next two hours I went deep into unsuspected pits, once up to the armpits. Linn took four falls. Once she fell as she tried jumping from a slime-covered block of red lava projecting from the marsh.

It took two and a half hours for us to negotiate the hideous Slough of Despond.

Wegger remained well ahead. Eventually he waited for us to catch up where the nauseous herb-field ended and the onward route, barely 20 metres wide, led between a cliff-face and the sea.

I was half-supporting Linn. We were splashed with icy mud and soaking wet. Wegger himself looked little better.

'Wegger!' I gasped. 'Stop this nonsense! We can't go on! Linn's finished…'

He laughed threateningly. 'If you leave her she'll die. I endured this sort of thing for months. You're only getting a taste. Get on! The going's hard underfoot now.'

'How far is the cave?' asked Linn.

'Three, maybe three and a half kilometres.'

When, four hours later, we reached the two great yellow bastions named the Golden Gate which top the cliff below which the great cave lies, I was a man walking in my sleep, a sleep of utter exhaustion. I supported Linn round the shoulders. For hours we had edged along sea-cliffs, rousing birds by the thousand; we had ploughed waist-deep through disgusting wallows where elephant seals had mated; we had passed through an Alice-in-Wonderland world on the island's north-eastern side — a green, marshy flat on which perched hundreds of wandering albatrosses, each on its own small pillar of solid lava. This weird scene was the stuff of hallucinations.

During our march we had watched the sky grow progressively clearer and the cones of peak after peak of extinct volcanoes and blow-holes emerge until they seemed to fill the whole horizon. Finally it was the sight of a familiar one which made me realize where exactly we were. It was distinguished by a great bare welt down one side like a half-healed knife-thrust. I recognized it as McAll Kop, one of the landmarks above Cave Bay from the sea.

Wegger stood waiting for us again.

'Down here!' He indicated a slope running down to the sea.

We half-staggered, half-fell down the path.

Then the great cave opened in front of us.

I got out of Wegger's way behind a hummock of stones at the cave's entrance and eased Linn down on a clump of tussock grass. Her eyes were half-closed and her mud-splashed face a deathly white. My own knees felt as if they couldn't carry me one step further. I lowered myself down next to her.

The cave entrance was about four metres high and about the same across. Rough tussocky grass draped itself from niches and ledges. There were a couple of elephant seals on the rounded pebble beach near the water's edge. They paid no attention to us. A group of penguins started inquisitively towards us. There were heaps of driftwood everywhere.

I shut my eyes. I was jerked awake by Wegger's boot against my ribs.

'Matches! Where are those matches of yours?'

I'd stashed them away in my parka hood along with the strike, which had dried.

'Get up!' Wegger went on. There was about him that savage intensity I'd noticed when I first ran into him on Cape Town's docks. That, and something more.

He eyed me as I hauled myself to my feet.

'I'm going to show you what ten million dollars' worth of gold looks like,' he said. 'We need some light.'

Using dry grass and driftwood we started a fire. One of the elephant seals started roaring when it smelt smoke.

I went to Linn to help her to the blaze.

'Keep with me, John darling,' she whispered. I've got an awful premonition that something's about to happen to me.'

At the time, I put it down to her exhausted state.

Together we warmed ourselves at the fire. I wouldn't have exchanged those ten minutes of warmth for all Wegger's dream-gold.

Wegger was restless and impatient, as if his inner forces were racing at dynamo speed. He stayed at the fire only for about five minutes before going off to search around the beach. He came back with a length of driftwood about a metre long.

That's long enough for a torch,' he snapped. 'Shot-ton, bank up that fire. We're going into the cave.'

I tried to play for time, even at that final moment, hoping to find something to beat him.

'Wegger, the gold's been there for forty years. A few hours won't make any difference. Let's get ourselves fit first…'

The ugly frost-smoke expression leapt into his eyes. He rammed the piece of wood into the fire. 'Don't try and stop me, I warn you, Shotton. We'll load the gold right here on the beach when we've fixed the boat — it's the best landing-spot on the island. I know!'

He plucked his makeshift torch from the flames.

'In!' he ordered. 'Into the cave! Keep ahead of me!'

He had the Luger covering us; the grenade was at his belt.

We entered the great cave. Daylight and the torch combined were strong enough to illuminate the first few metres. After that came darkness. The floor soon became ankle-deep in water. There were a couple of big overturned red-rusted sealers' pots lying forlornly amongst a litter of elephant seal bones, oily stinking feathered messes, and a number of modern beer cans. The place smelt bad.

'The water comes from a spring on the other side,' said Wegger. 'It was my fresh water supply.'

I started to slow down, trying to think up further delaying tactics, but Wegger was alert.

'Get on — straight ahead.'

Linn and I sloshed onwards. It was bitterly cold, the coldness of a morgue.

The torch Wegger was holding threw dim shadows on the smooth basalt roof. The pool ended. It became impossible to see ahead.

I stopped. 'Wegger,' I said, 'it's no use having the torch behind us. If we don't have it here in the lead someone's going to trip and break a leg.'

I hoped he would come forward and hand me the torch. My nerves stretched while I waited. One swipe across his eyes with that blazing faggot and he wouldn't be able to see his Luger or anything else…

He did start forward, and then changed his mind.

'Here, you,' he spoke to Linn. 'Come and get it. And don't block my line of fire to your man.'

She did as he said and passed me the torch.

We went deeper.

Deeper.

Deeper and further, further and deeper. I lost track of distance.

Then the cave began to narrow like a huge funnel. There seemed to be cinders or lava ash underfoot but it was too dark to tell..Now the ceiling heightened and the tunnel curved and ended in a wall of rock.

I was in the lead with the torch held high.

A face — a woman's exquisite face — shone out of the murky shadows.

It was framed in a white shroud of ice.

There was no mistaking who it was. I had seen her before. In the photograph in Captain Prestrud's safe. In that split second of recognition I realized that the photograph had not been taken through glass but through ice. Here, in the great cave on Prince Edward.

Linn grabbed my arm. 'John! It's her! The woman in the photograph…!'

I thrust the torch higher still to see better. The smoky light showed the body propped up against the wall, coffined in a casing of ice. Cut into the rock over her head was a single word, 'Dina'.

'Dina!' I breathed. 'Dina! That's who it was! Dina's Island…!'

Wegger came level with us, stumbled, then snatched the burning wood out of my hand and went to the dead woman.

I scarcely recognized his voice. 'Dina!' he said brokenly. 'Dina! It's been a long, long time…'