Falcons and the Scorpions were at work.
These two teams were building the raft of treetrunks that they had
hacked from the forest. The timbers were lashed together to form a
grating. Over this was laid heavy PVC sheeting to make it waterproof,
then a second grating of treetrunks went over this to form a gigantic
sandwich. It was all lashed together with heavy baling wire. Finally,
one end of the grating was ballasted with boulders.
Sapper arranged the ballast of boulders to make the raft one-side heavy,
so that it would float almost vertically in the water, with one end of
it scraping the bottom of the river and the other sticking up above the
surface. The dimensions of the completed raft were carefully related to
the gap between the two buttresses of the dam. And while the work on the
raft and the wall continued Sapper built up a stockpile of filled
gabions, which he stacked on both banks below the dam.
Three other full work teams, the Elephants, the Buffaloes and the
Rhinos,,comprising the biggest and strongest men in the force, laboured.
at the head of the valley. They were digging out a deep canal into which
the river could be diverted.
'Your hot-shot engineer, Taita, never thought of that little
refinement,' Sapper gloated to Royan as they stood on the lip of the
trench. 'What it means is that we only have to raise the level of the
river another six feet before it will start flowing down the canal and
into the valley.
Without it we would have had to lift the water almost twenty feet to
divert it.'
'Perhaps the river levels were different four thousand years ago.' Royan
felt a strange loyalty to the long-dead Egyptian, and she defended him.
'Or perhaps he dug a canal but all traces of it have been obliterated.'
'Not bleeding likely,' Sapper grunted. 'The little perisher just plain
didn't think of it.' His expression was smug and self-satisfied, 'One up
on Mr Taita, I think.'
Royan smiled to herself. It was strange how even the practical and
down-to-earth Sapper felt that this was a direct personal challenge from
down the ages. He too had been caught up in Taita's game.
dint of neither threat nor heavenly reward could the monks be inveigled
into working on Sundays. Each Saturday evening they knocked off an hour
earlier and trooped away down the valley on the trail to the monastery,
so as to be in time for Holy Communion the next day. Although Nicholas
grumbled and scowled at their desertion, secretly he was as relieved as
any of them for the chance to rest. They were all exhausted, and for
once there would be no chanting of lock the next morning.
matins to wake them at four ' So on Saturday night they all swore to
each other that
they would sleep late the next morning, but from force of habit Nicholas
found himself awake and fully alert at that same iniquitous hour. He
could not stay in his camp bed, and when he came back from his ablutions
at the riverside he found that Royan was also awake and dressed.
'Coffee?' She lifted the pot off the fire and poured a mugful for him.
'I slept terribly badly last night,' she admitted. 'I had the most
