cooking lard.
It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his
preparations. Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with
the coils of rope and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the
pathway to the spot where he had abseiled down into the ravine to
retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From there they worked their way
downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was heavy going for Thorn
scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they were forced to
use their-machetes to hack their way through.
The sound of the waterfall guided him. As they moved down river it grew
louder, until the rock seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of
falling waters. Finally, by leaning out over the edge and peering
downwards, Nicholas could make out the flash of spray in the depths
below.
This is the spot.' He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in
Arabic what he wanted done.
In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry,
Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat and had them lower him
twenty feet down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the
overhang. Up to that point he was able to keep the nylon rope from
abrading on the rock, but he was also able to see around the bulge of
the face.
Hanging backwards over the falls and the rocky bowl of the river one
hundred and fifty feet below him, he was able at last to see the double
row of niches in the rock face.
However, the has-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the
tumblehome of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.
'We must set up the gantry a little further down,' he told him, and
directed them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the
rim. Then suddenly he exclaimed, 'I'll be damned!' He went down on one
knee to examine the rim rock that the thorns had concealed.
'There are more excavations here.'
Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been
protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just
vague traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these
indentations were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffoldin
9They set up their own gantry on the same levelled area, and extended
the long pole out over the drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a
crude cantilever system of ropes and lighter poles.
When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the
structure and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had
prepared for it. The whole structure seemed solid and firm.
Nevertheless, it was with relief that he crawled back to solid ground.
He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the
lowering sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.
'Enough for one day,' he decided. 'The rest can wait for-tomorrow.'
The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at
the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at
their own fire near by, talking quietly and coughing over the first
cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their
