plunged into the dark water.
Under the falls?' she shouted across. 'Is there a cutback in the rock?
Can you get across there?'
He pushed off from the cliff, and swam towards the thundering chute of
water. Halfway across, the current caught him and he had to swim with
all his strength to make any headway against it. Thrashing the water
with flailing arms and kicking out strongly, he managed to reach a spur
of polished, algae-stick rock at the nearest end of the falls.
The water crashed over his head, but he edged his way along under the
rock step into the heart of the cascade.
Halfway across, the water overwhelmed him. It tore him off his
precarious perch, hurled him back into the basin below and swirled him
end over end. He surfaced in the middle of the pool, and once again had
to Swim with all his strength to break free of the grip of the current
and to reach the slack water below the wall again. He clung to his
handhold in the stone niche, and panted like a bellows.
'Nothing?' she called.
He shook his head, unable to answer until he had finally regained his
breath. Finally he managed: 'Nothing.
It's a solid rock wall behind the falls.' He gasped another breath, and
then invited sarcastically, 'Next bright idea, madam?'
She was silent and he was glad of the respite. Then she called again,
'Nicky, how far do those niches go down?'
'You can see,' he told her, 'right to the one I am holding on to.'
'What about below the surface?'
'Don't be silly, woman.' He was getting cold and irritable. 'How the
hell could there be cuttings below the surface?'
'Try!' she yelled almost as iff itably. He shook his head pityingly, and
drew a deep breath. Still clinging to his handhold, he extended his
limbs and body to their full stretch. Then his head went under the dark
surface as he groped down as far as he could reach with his toes.
Suddenly he shot back, snorting for air with a startled look on his
face. 'By Jove!' he shouted. 'You are right!
There is another niche down there!'
'I hate to say I told you so.' Even at that range he could see the smug
expression on her face.
'What are you? Some kind of witch?' Then he broke off and rolled his
eyes heavenward in despair. 'I know what you are going to ask me to do
next.'
'How far do the niches go down?' she called in honeyed tones. 'Will you
dive down for me, dear Nicky?'
'That's it,' he said. 'I knew it. I am going to speak to my shop
steward. This is slave labour. From now onwards I am on strike.'
'Please, Nicky!'
He hung in the water'pumping air in and out of his lungs,
hyperventilating, flushing his . bloodstream with oxygen to increase his
underwater endurance to its limits.
In the end he expelled the contents of his lungs completely, squeezing
out the last breath until his chest ached with the effort, and then he
