of it was stunning. It was transmitted up his spine into the back of his
skull, so that his teeth cracked against each other and bright lights
starred his vision. The river swallowed him under. He went down deep,
but he was still moving so fast when he hit the rocky bottom that his
legs were jarred to the hips. He felt his knees buckle under the strain,
and he thought that both his legs had been broken.
The impact drove the air out of his lungs, and it was only when he
kicked off the bottom, desperate for air, that -he realized with a rush
of relief that both his legs were still intact. He broke out through the
surface, wheezing an coughing, and realized that he must have missed the
island by only the length of his body. However, by now the current had
carried him well clear of it.
He trod water on the racing stream, shook the water from his eyes and
looked around him swiftly. The walls of the chasm were streaming past
him, and he estimated his speed at around ten knots - fast enough to
break bone if he hit a rock. As he thought it, another small island
flashed past him almost close enough to touch. He rolled on to his back
and thrust both feet out ahead of him, ready to fend off should he be
thrown on to another outcrop.
"You are in for the whole ride, he told himself grimly.
"There is only one way out, and that is to ride it to the bottom."
He was trying to calculate how far he was above the point where the
river debauched from the chasm through the pink stone archway, how far
he still had to swim.
"Three or four miles, at the least, and the river falls almost a
thousand feet. There are bound to be rapids and probably waterfalls
ahead," he decided. "From here it does not look good. I' say the betting
is three to one against getting through without leaving some skin and
meat on the rocks behind you."
He looked up. The walls canted in from each side, so that at places they
almost met directly over his head. There was only a narrow strip of blue
sky showing, and the depths were gloomy and dank. Over the ages the
river had scoured the rock as it cut its way through.
"Damned lucky this is the dry season. What is it like down in here in
the rainy season?" he wondered. He looked up at the high-water mark
etched on the rock fifteen or twenty feet above his head.
Shuddering at the image he looked down again, concentrating on the river
ahead. He had his breath back by now, and he checked his body for any
damage. With relief he decided that, apart from some bruising and what
felt like a sprained knee, he was unhurt. All his limbs were responding,
and when he swam a few strokes to one side to avoid another spur of
rock, even the sore knee worked well enough to get him out of trouble.
Gradually he became aware of a new sound in the canyon. It was a dull
roar, growing stronger as he sped onward down The walls of the chasm
converged upon each other, the gut of rock narrowed and the flood seemed
to accelerate as it was squeezed in and confined. The sound of water
built up rapidly into a thunder that reverberated in the canyon.
Nicholas rolled over and swam with all his strength across the current
until he reached the nearest rock wall.
He tried to find a handhold, a place where he could anchor himself, but
the rock was polished smooth by the river. It slipped past under his
desperately grasping hands, and the river bellowed in his head. He saw
the surface around him flatten out and smooth like solid glass. Like a
horse laying back its ears as it gathers itself for a jump, the river
had sensed what lay ahead.
Nicholas pushed himself away from the rock wall to try and give himself
room in which to manoeuvre, and pointed his feet once more down river.
Abruptly the air opened under him and he was launched out into space.
All around him white spurning water filled the air, and he was swirled
off balance and tossed like a leaf in the torrent The drop seemed to
last for ever, and his stomach swooped against his ribs. Then once more
he struck with all his weight and was driven far below the surface.
He fought his way up and abruptly burst out through the surface with his
breathing whistling up his throat.
Through streaming eyes he saw that he was caught up in the bowl of
swirling water below the falls. The waters revolved and eddied, turning
in a stately minuet upon themselves.
As he turned, he saw first the high sheet of white water of the falls
down which he had tumbled, and then still turning, the narrow exit from
the basin through which the river resumed its mad career downstream. But
for the moment he was safe and quiet here in the back-eddy below the
falls. The current pushed him against the side of the basin, close in
beneath the chute of the falls. He reached out and found a handhold on a
clump of mossy fern growing out of a crack in the wall.
Here, at last, he had a chance to rest and consider his position. It did
not take him long, however, to realize that his only way out of the
chasm was to follow the course of the river and to take his chances with
whatever lay downstream. He could expect rapids, if not another set of
falls like this one that thundered away close beside him.
If only there were some way up the wall! He looked up, but his spirits
quailed as he considered the overhang that formed a cathedral roof high
above him.
While he still stared upwards, something caught his eye. Something too
regular and regimented to be natural.
There was a double row of dark marks running vertically up the wall of
rock, beginning at the surface of the water and climbing up the wall to
the rim almost two hundred feet overhead. He relinquished his hold on
the clump of fern and dog-paddled slowly down to where these marks
reached the water.
As he reached them he realized that they were niches, cut about four
inches square into the wall. The two rows were twice the spread of his
arms apart, and the niche in one row lined up in the horizontal plane
exactly with its neighbour in the second row.
Thrusting his hand into the nearest opening, he found that it was deep
enough to accommodate his arm to the elbow. This opening, being below
the flood level of the waters, was smoothed and worn, but when he looked
to those higher up the wall, above the water mark, he saw that they had
retained their shape much more clearly. The edges were sharp and square.
"My word, how old are they to have been worn like that?" he marvelled.
"And how the hell did anybody get down here to cut them?"
He hung on to the niche nearest him and studied the pattern in the cliff
face. "Why would anybody go to all that amount of trouble?" He could
think of no reason nor purpose. "Who did this work? What would they want
down here?" It was an intriguing mystery.
Then suddenly something else caught his eye. It was a circular
indentation in the rock, precisely between the two rows of niches and
above the high-water mark. From so far below it looked to be perfectly
round - another shape that was not natural.
He paddled further around, trying to reach a position from which he
would have a clearer view of it. It seemed to be some sort of rock
engraving, a plaque that reminded him strongly of those marks in the
black boulders that flank the Nile below the first cataract at Aswan,
placed there in antiquity to measure the flood levels of the river
waters. But the light was too poor and the angle too acute for him to be
certain that it was man-made, let alone to recognize or read any script