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
or lettering that might have been incorporated in the design.
Hoping to devise some way of climbing closer, he tried to use the stone
niches as aids. With a great deal of effort, usin them as foot- and
hand-holds, he managed to lift himself out of the water. But the
distances between holds were too great and he fell back with a splash,
swallowing more water.
"Take it easy, my lad - you still have to swim out of here. No profit in
exhausting yourself. You will just have to come back another day to get
a closer look at whatever it is up there."
Only then did he realize how close he was to total exhaustion. This
water coming down from the Choke mountains was still cold with the
memories of the high snows. He was shivering until his teeth chattered.
"Not far from hypothermia. Have to get out of here now, while you still
have the strength."
Reluctantly he pushed himself away from the wall of rock and paddled
towards the narrow opening through which the Dandera river resumed the
headlong rush to join her mother Nile. He felt the current pick him up
and bear him forward, and he stopped swimming and let it take him.
"The Devil's roller-coaster!" he told himself. "Down and down she goes,
and where she stops nobody knows."
The first set of rapids battered him. They seemed endless, but at last
he was spewed out into the run of slower water below them. He floated on
his back, taking full advantage of this respite, and looked upwards.
There was very little light showing above him, for the rock almost met
overhead. The air was dank and dark and stank of bats. However, there
was little time to examine his surroundings, for once again the river
began to roar ahead of him. He braced himself rilentally for the assault
of turbulent waters, and went cascading down the next steep slide.
After a while he lost track of how far he had been carried, and how many
cataracts he had survived. It was a constant battle against the cold and
the pain of sodden lungs and strained muscle and overtaxed sinew. The
river mauled him.
Suddenly the light changed. After the gloom at the bottom of the high
cliffs it was as though a searchlight had been shone directly into his