Every time it met any enticing obstruction and faltered, they fell upon
the blockage and tore it away.
the gradient fall At last the thin trickle of water felt away as the
valley opened before it. The trickle increased to a freshet, and then to
a torrent. With its new strength it gouged out the canal and burst
through with the full flow of the river behind it.
The men in the bottom of the cutting yelled with fright at the
suddenness and ferocity of it, and scrambled up the sides of the canal.
But some of them were not quick enough and were swept away, struggling
and screaming for help. The men on the banks ran alongside them,
throwing ropes and dragging them sodden and muddy from the flood.
Now the river roared through the canal and tore on down the valley,
rediscovering the ancient course that it had not followed for thousands
of years. For almost an hour they stood upon the bank watching it, for
it exercised over them the particular spell that turbulent waters always
have over men. They were forced to retreat step by step as the river cut
the banks out from under their feet.
At last Nicholas roused himself, and went back to where Sapper was still
shoring up the dam wall. By now he had erected a sloping revetment on
the downstream side of the dam wall, with four rows of gabions on the
bottom course gradually narrowing as it reached the top of the retaining
wall. For the time being the dam was secure, the vulnerable grating had
been shored up with the heavy, stone-filled mesh baskets, and the
overflow through the canal into the valley had relieved much of the
pressure upon it.
"Do you think it will hold?" Royan eyed the structure with suspicion.
"Until the rains come, we hope." Nicholas drew her away. "We don't want
to waste any more time here. Time to go on downstream to begin work at
Taita's pool."
hey followed the banks of the new river that they had created, down
the length of the long 6- valley. At places they were forced to detour
higher up the slope because the overflow from the dam had cut away and
submerged the old trail. Eventually they reached the confluence of the
stream that had as its source the butterfly fountain that they had
explored with Tamre.
They paused on the bank, and Nicholas and Royan looked at each other
wordlessly. The stream had dried up.
Turning aside, they followed the empty stream bed up the hills and at
last scrambled out on to the ledge from which the butterfly fountain had
poured. The cave was still surrounded by lush green ferris, but it was
like the eye socket in a skull, dark and empty.
"The spring has dried up!" Royan . "The dam -Iispere has shrivelled it.
That's the proof that the fountain was fed from Taita's pool, Now we
have diverted the river we have killed the fountain." Her eyes were
bright and sparkling with excitement. "Come on. Let's waste no more time
here.
Let's get on up to Taita's pool."
'Nicholas was the first one down into Taita's pool. This time, he had a
bosun's chair to sit in and a properly rigged block and tackle to lower
him over the cliff. As he swung down around the overhang of the cliff,
the chair swung awkwardly against the rock and the thumb of his right
hand was trapped between the wooden seat of the chair and the wall. He
exclaimed with the pain and, when he wrenched it free, he found that the
skin had been torn from the knuckle and that blood was oozing up and
dripping down his legs. It was painful -but not serious, and he sucked
the wound clean. It was still weeping drops of blood but he had, no time
to attend to the injury now.
He was around the overhang, and the abyss opened under him, sombre and
repellent. His eye was drawn irresistibly to the engraving on the wall,
etched between the vertical rows of niches. Now that he knew what to
look for, he could make out the outline of the maimed hawk. It cheered
and encouraged him. Since their flight from the gorge over a month
previously he had often been haunted by the feeling that they had
imagined it all, that the cartouche of Taita was a hallucination, and
that when they returned they would find the cliff wall smooth and
unblemished. But there it was, the signpost and the promise.
He peered down past his own feet to the bottom of the gorge, and saw at
once that the waterfall above the pool had been reduced to a trickle.
The water still coming down the smooth black chute of polished rock was
that which was filtering through the gaps and chinks in the dam wall
upstream and the last drainage from the sandbanks and the pools higher
up the gorge.
The level of the great Pool under him had fallen drastically. He could.
make out the highwater level by the wet markings on the rock cliff.
Fifty feet of the wall that had previously been submerged was now
exposed. Another eight pairs of chiselled niches were visible in the
face Where once he had been forced to swim down to them, they were now
high and dry.
However, the pool was not completely drained. It was dished below the
level of the downstream outlet, so that it was unable to empty itself by
gravitational flow. There was still a puddle of black water trapped in
the centre, with a narrow ledge surrounding it. Nicholas landed on this
ledge and stepped out of the bosun's chair. It was strange to stand on
firm rock down here where last he had struggled for his life and very
nearly been sucked under and drowned.
He looked up to where beams of sunlight penetrated the upper levels of
the chasm. It was like being in the bottom of a mineshaft, and he
shuddered at the feel of the clammy air on his bare arms and the eerie
sensation in the pit of his stomach. He tugged on the line to send the
rope chair back to the surface, and then edged his way along the
slippery rock ledge towards the cliff face where the rows of dark niches
stood out clearly against the lighter stone.
Now he could make out the shape of the opening in the wall that had so
nearly sucked him down into its dark and slimy throat. It was almost
completely submerged in a deeper corner where the pool flowed back
against the cliff.
All that was visible above the surface was the top arch of an irregular
entrance at the foot of the descending rows of niches. The rest of it
was still submerged.
The ledge narrowed as he worked his way along the foot of the cliff
until he had his back to the rock and was moving sideways with his toes
in the water. Eventually he could go no further without actually
stepping down into the water. He had no way of judging the depth of the
waters, which were turbid and uninviting.
Still trying to keep his feet dry, he squatted down on the narrow ledge
and leaned out so far that his balance as threatened. He steadied
himself with one hand against the wall, and with the other reached out
towards the partially submerged opening.
The lip of the hole was smooth, as he had remembered it, and once again
it seemed to him that it was too square and straight to be anything
other than man-made. As he rolled up his sleeve he noticed that his
injured thumb was still bleeding, but he ignored it and thrust his arm