down at him.
"Haul it up!" he shouted, and gave three yanks on the rope as the agreed
signal. The trackers were hidden from his view, but the slack in the
rope was taken up and then the dik-dik lifted clear of the island and
rose jerkily up the wall of the chasm. Nicholas watched it anxiously.
There was a moment when the rope seemed to snag when the carcass was
two-thirds of the way to the top, but then it freed itself and snaked on
up the cliff.
Eventually the dik-dik disappeared from his sight, and there was a long
delay until the rope end dropped back over the tip. Boris had been
sensible enough to weight it with a round stone the size of a man's
head, and he was hanging over the top of the cliff, watching its
progress and signalling to his men to control the descent.
When the end of the weighted line touched the surface of the water it
was just out of Nicholas's reach. From the top of the cliff Boris began
to swing the line until the end of it pendulumed close enough for
Nicholas to grab it.
With a bowline knot Nicholas tied a loop in the end of the line and
slipped it under his armpits. Then he looked up at Boris.
"Heave away!" he yelled, and tugged the dangling rope three times. The
slack tightened and then he was lifted off his feet. He began to ascend
in a series of spiralling jerks and heaves. As he rose, the belled wall
of the chasm arched in to meet him, until he could fend off from the
rock with his bare feet and stop himself spiralling at the end of the
rope. He was fifty feet from the top of the cliff when suddenly he
stopped abruptly, dangling helplessly against the rock face.
"What's going on?" he shouted up at Boris.
"Bloody rope has jammed," Boris yelled back. "Can you see where it is
stuck?"
Nicholas peered up and realized that the rope had rolled into a vertical
crack in the face, probably the same one that had almost stopped the
dik-dik reaching the top.
However, his own weight was almost five times that of the little
antelope, and had forced the rope much more deeply into the crack.
He was suspended high in the air, with a drop of almost a hundred feet
under him.
"Try and swing yourself loose! Boris shouted down at him. Obediently,
Nicholas kicked himself back and twisted on the rope to try and roll it
clear. He worked until the sweat streamed down into his eyes and the
rope had rubbed him raw under the arms.
"No use," he shouted back at Boris. "Try to haul it out with brute
force!
There was a pause, and then he saw the rope above the crack tighten like
a bar of iron as five strong men hauled on the top end with all their
strength. He could hear the trackers chanting their working chorus as
they threw all their combined weight on the line.
His end of the line did not budge. It was a solid jam, and he knew then
that they were not going to clear it. He looked down. The surface of the
water seemed much further than a hundred feet below.
"The terminal velocity of the human body is one hundred and fifty miles
an hour," he reminded himself. At that speed the water would be like
concrete. "I won't be going that fast when I hit, will I? he tried to
reassure himself.
He looked up again. The men on the top of the cliff were still hauling
with all their weight and strength. At that moment one of the strands of
the nylon rope sheared against the cutting edge of the rock crack, and
began to uncurl like a long green worm.
"Stop pulling!" Nicholas screamed. "Vast heaving!" But Boris was no
longer in sight. He was helping his trackers, adding his weight to the
pull.
The second strand of the rope parted and unravelled.
There was only a single strand holding him now.
It was going to go at any moment, he realized. "Boris, you ham-fisted
bastard, stop pulling!" But his voice never reached the Russian, and
with a pop like a champagne cork the third and final strand of the rope
parted.
He plunged downwards, with the loose end of the severed rope fluttering
above his head. Flinging both arms straight upwards over his head to
stabilize his flight, he straightened his legs, arrowing his body to hit
feet first.
He thought about the island under him. Would he miss its red rock fangs
or would he smash into it and shatter every bone in his lower body? He
dared not look down to judge it in case he destabilized - his fall and
tumbled in midair. If he hit the water flat it would crush his ribs or
snap his spine.
His guts seemed to be forced into his throat by the speed of his fall,
and he drew one last breath as he hit the surface feet first. The force
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