almost directly above the falls and could go no further. Then he slid
down to where Royan and Tamre waited.
"Nothing?" she anticipated, and he shook his head.
"No, but you can't really expect that there would be anything left after
nearly four thousand years. These cliffs have been exposed to wind and
weather for all that time. I think our best bet will be to look for any
surviving blocks from the dam wall that might have been carried away
when Taita. breached it to flood the chasm again."
They started down the valley, where Royan came upon a chunk of stone
that seemed to be of a different type from the surrounding country rock.
It was the size of an oldfashioned cabin trunk. Although it was
halfcovered by undergrowth, the uppermost end - the one that was exposed
- had a definite right-angled corner to it. She called Nicholas across
to her.
"Look at that." Royan patted it proudly. "What do you think of that?"
He climbed down beside herand ran his hands over the exposed surface of
the stab. "Possible," he repeated. "But to be certain we would have to
find the chisel marks where the "old masons started the fracture. As you
know, they chiselled a hole into the stone, and then wedged it open
until it split."
Both of them went over the exposed surface carefully, and although Royan
found an indentation that she declared was a weathered chisel mark,
Nicholas gave her only four out of ten on the scale of probability.
"We are running out of time," he said, enticing her away from her find,
'and we still have a lot of ground to cover."
They searched the valley floor for half a kilometer further, and then
Nicholas called it off. "Even in the heaviest flood it is unlikely that
any blocks would have been carried down this far. Let's go back and -see
if anything was washed over the falls into the mouth of the chasm."
They returned to the bank of the Dandera and worked their way down as
far as the falls. Nicholas peered over.
"It's not as deep here as it is further down," he estimated. "I would
guess that it is less than a hundred feet."
"Do you think you could get down there?" she asked dubiously. Spray blew
back out of the depths into their faces, and they had to shout at each
other to make themselves heard over the thunder of the waters.
"Not without a rope, and some muscle men to haul me back out of there."
He perched himself on the brink and focused the binoculars down into the
bowl. There was a jumble of loose rock down the - small, rounded
boulders, and one or two very much larger. Some of them were angular,
and some with a little imagination could be called rectangular. However,
their surfaces had been smoothed by the rushing waters, and were
gleaming wet. All of them seemed partially submerged or obscured by
spray.
"I don't think we can decide anything from up here, and to tell the
truth I don't fancy going down there - not this evening anyway."
Royan sat down beside him and hugged her knees to her chest. She was
dispirited. "So there is nothing we can be certain about. Did Taita dam
the river, or didn't he?" Quite naturally he placed his arm around her
shoulders to console her, and after a moment she relaxed and leaned
against him. They stared down into the chasm in silence.
At last she drew back from him gently, and stood up.
"I suppose we should start back to camp. How long will it take us?"
"At least three hours." He stood up beside her. "You are right. It will
be dark before we get back, and there is no moon tonight."
"Funny how tired you feel after a disappointment," she said, and
stretched. "I could lie down and sleep right here on one of Taita's
stone blocks." She broke off and stared at him. "Nicky, where did he get
them?"
"Where did he get what?" He looked puzzled.
"Don't you see! We are going at it from the wrong end.
We have been trying to find out what happened to the blocks. This
morning you mentioned the quarries at Aswan. Shouldn't we consider where
Taita found the blocks for his dam, rather than what happened to them
afterwards?"
"The quarry!" Nicholas exclaimed. "My word, you are right. The
beginning, not the end. We should be looking for the quarry, not the
remnants of the dam wall."
"Where do we start?"
"I hoped you were going to tell me." He laughed out loud, and
immediately Tamre bubbled with sympathetic laughter. They both looked at
the boy.
"I think we should start with Tamre, our faithful guide," she said, and
took his hand. "Listen to me, Tamre. Listen very carefully!" Obediently
he cocked his head and stared at her face, summoning all his errant
concentration.
"We are looking for a place where the square stones come from." He
looked mystified, so she tried again. "Long ago there were men who cut
the rock from the mountains.
Somewhere near here, they left a big hole. Perhaps there are still
square blocks of stone lying in the hole?"
Suddenly the boy's face cleared and split into a beatific smile. "The
Jesus stone!the cried happily.
He sprang to his feet without relinquishing his grip on her hand. "I
show you my Jesus stone." He dragged her after him as he bounded away
down the valley.
"Wait, Tamre! she pleaded. "Not so fast." But in vain.
Tamre kept up the pace and burst into an Amharic hymn as he ran.
Nicholas followed at a more sedate pace, and caught up with them a
quarter of a mile down the valley.
There he found Tamre on his knees, pressing his forehead against the
rock wall of the valley, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. He had
dragged Royan down beside him.
"What on earth are you doing?"Nicholas demanded, as he came up.
"We are praying," she told him primly. "Tamre's instructions. We have to
pray before we can go to the Jesus stone." She turned away from
Nicholas, closed her eyes and clasped her hands in front of her eyes,
then began to pray softly.
Nicholas found a seat on a boulder a little way from them. "I don't
suppose it can do any harm," he consoled himself, as he settled down to
wait.
Abruptly Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance,
flapping his arms and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he
stopped and chanted. "It is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone."
Once again he seized Royan's hand and led her to the rock wall. In front
of Nicholas's eyes the two of them seemed to vanish, and he stood up in
mild alarm.
"Royan!" he called. "Where are you? What's going on?"
"This way, Nicky. Come this way!'
He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, "My oath! We would
never have found this in a year of searching."
The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed
entrance. He walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides,
and within thirty paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at
least a hundred yards across and open to the sky. The walls were of
solid rock, and he could see at a glance that it was the same micaceous
schist as the block which Royan had found lying on the floor of the
valley.
It was apparent that the bowl had been quarried out of the living rock,
leaving tiers rising up to the top of the walls. The recesses from which
the blocks had been hacked were still plain to see and had left deep
steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and undergrowth had found a
precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry was not choked
with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of finished
granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation. He