completely blocked the flow of water through it. If it had done so,
Nicholas would never have been sucked in by the current, as he had been
on his first dive into the pool. There were still gaps in the blockage
where the larger boulders had lodged or where a treetrunk en sucked in.
and jammed sideways across the width of the tunnel. Through these
sections the water had found the weak spots and kept them open.
Nevertheless, the debris had taken centuries to wedge itself in, and it
required back-breaking effort to prise it apart. The clearing operation
was further hampered by the lack of working space in the shaft. Only
three or four of the big men from the Buffaloes were able to work in the
shaft at -any one time. The rest of the team were employed in passing
back the rubble as it was levered out.
Nicholas changed the shifts every hour. They had more labour than they
needed, and changing them often meant that the men at the face were
always rested and strong, and eager to earn the bonus of silver dollars
that Nicholas promised them for their progress along the shaft.
At each change of shift, Nicholas disappeared into the mouth of the
tunnel with Sapper's steel tape and measured the advance.
"One hundred and twenty feet! Well done, the Buffaloes," he told Hansith
Sherif, the foreman monk, and then watched the water tric ing past is
feet. The floor of the tunnel was still sloping downwards at a constant
angle. He looked back along it towards the pool, and now in the
floodlights the rectangular shape of the walls was very clear to see. It
was obvious that the tunnel had been designed and surveyed by an
engineer.
He transferred his attention back to the floor of the tunnel and watched
the run of water, trying to judge how deep they were below the original
river level.
"Eighty or ninety feet," he estimated. "No wonder the pressure in the
mouth of the tunnel almost crushed me-' he broke off as an unusually
shaped fragment in the muck at his feet caught his eye. He stooped and
picked it up.
Then took it to one of the floodlamps and by its light examined it
closely. As he rubbed it clean between finger and thumb, he began to
grin.
Sloshing back along the tunnel, he yelled, "Royan!" Triumphantly
brandishing the fragment, he demanded, "What do you make of that, then?"
She was sitting on the wall.of the coffer, and reached down and snatched
the object out of his grasp.
I "Oh, sweet Mary! Where did you find this, Nicky?"
"Lying in the mud. Right there in the adit, where it's been for the last
four thousand years. Where one of Taita's workmen dropped and broke it,
probably while he was sneaking a sup of wine behind the slave driver's
back."
Eagerly Royan held the broken shard of pottery up to the lamplight. "You
are right, Nicky," she exclaimed. "It's part of a wine vessel. Look at
the flared neck and belled lip. But if there was any doubt, which there
isn't, the black firing around the rim dates it perfectly in our period.
No older than 2000 BC."
Still clutching the fragment of broken pottery, she jumped down into the
mud and slush of the coffer and flung both arms around his neck.
"Further proof, Nicky. We are on Taita's tracks. Can't you get them to
clear any faster? We are breathing down the back of the old rogue's
neck."
Halfway through the next shift an excited yelling echoed out of the
mouth of the tunnel, and Nicholas hurried back down to the face.
"What is it, Hansith?" he demanded in Arabic of the foreman monk. "What
are you shouting about?
"We have broken through, effendi." Hansith Sherif grinned at him, his
teeth gleaming in his black and mudsmeared face. Nicholas eagerly pushed
his way through the workmen. They had levered a huge round boulder out
of the pack, and beyond it lay an opening. He shone his electric torch
through this window in the wall, but could make out very little
except-empty black space.
Stepping back, he slapped the monk on the back.
"Well done, Hansith. A dollar bonus for every man in the team. But keep
them working! Clear away all this rubbish." But it was not as easily
done as he had ordered. The shifts changed twice more before the shaft
was cleared completely of the last of the extraneous rubble and broken
rock. Only then could Nicholas and Royan stand in the threshold of the
cavern beyond the tunnel.
"What has happened here? What has caused this?" Royan's voice was
puzzled as Nicholas played his torch out into the void.
"I think this is a cave-in area. There was probably a fault in the rock
strata running through here and here." He picked out the cracks in the
roof of the cavern.
"You think the flow of the water through the shaft has scoured it out?"
she asked.
"I would say so, yes."Nicholas turned the beam of light downwards. "The
floor has fallen out of the shaft also."
The rock had subsided in front of them, leaving a deep hole. Ten feet
below where they stood the hole was filled with water, forming a large
circular pool with vertical rock sides. Overhead the roof had fallen in
and was now a high dome of irregular rock, and the far side of the pool
was shrouded in shadows a hundred feet or more in front of them.
There was no apparent way around this obstacle without entering the
water. Nicholas shouted to Hansith to bring one of the long bamboo poles
that they had used for the scaffolding. The pole was thirty feet long
and they had to manoeuvre its length down the tunnel. Nicholas sounded
the pool with the bamboo, probing it down into the turbid water as
deeply as he could reach.
"No bottom." He shook his head. "Do you know what I think?" He retrieved
the pole and passed it back to Hansith.
"Tell me," Royan invited.
"I think that this is the natural fault that leads the water away to the
other side of the hills, and comes to the surface again at the butterfly
fountain. The river has carved its own path., "Why hasn't it drained,
then?" Royan looked down dubiously in the pool below them.
"A -bend in the shaft, probably. Water still trapped in the top of the
shaft like the bowl of a lavatory."
He probed the waters of the pool with the beam of his torch, and Royan
exclaimed with horror and disgust as on of the giant eels came racing to
the surface, attracted by the light.
"The filthy creatures!" She stepped back involuntarily.
"The whole river must be infested with them."
The long dark shape circled the pool swiftly and then disappeared back
into the depths as suddenly as it had appeared.
"If you are right, and a section of Taita's adit has collapsed, then the
continuation of his tunnel should be on the far side of this." She
pointed across the pool, and Nicholas lifted the beam of the torch and
shone it in the direction she indicated.
"Look, icky!" she cried. "There it is."
The dark rectangular opening yawned at them from across the pool.
"How do we get across there?" Royan asked, disconsolate.
"The answer to that is, not very easily. Dammit to hell!" Nicholas swore
heartily. "This is going to cost us another couple of days that we, can