stopped his breath. In the confines of the chasm the detonations were
thunderous, but his ears were protected and the deep water of the pool
absorbed much of the blast. A twin fountain of water shot high into the
air and splashed against the cliff above his head. It poured down in a
sheet over him, soaking his clothing.
As the echoes died away, he stood up, His hearing had not been adversely
affected, and he had suffered no injury other than the shower of cold
water. Back at the edge of the pool the water shimmered with movement.
Scores of the great eels flopped and writhed on the surface, flashing
their white bellies as they twisted. Many of them were dead, their
bellies burst open, floating inert, while others were merely stunned by
the blast. Knowing how tenaciously they clung to life he suspected that
they would soon recover, but for the time being they were no longer a
danger.
He bellowed up toward the top of the cliff. 'All clear, Sapper. Send
them down.'
The men came swarming down the scaffolding, amazed by the carnage that
the grenades had wreaked in the pool.
They lined the bank and began to fish out the bodies of the dead eels.
'You eat them?' Nicholas demanded of one of the monks.
'Very good!' The monk rubbed his belly in anticipation.
'Enough of that, you greedy perishers.' SappeT drove them back to work.
'Let's get those gabions in place before they wake up and start eating
you.'
With a bamboo pole Nicholas sounded the depth of the water that covered
the entrance to the shaft, and found that it was well over the height of
a man's head. They were forced to roll the gabions down into it, and
complete the filling once they were in position. It was difficult and
taxing work, and took almost two days to complete, but at last they had
built a half-moon-shaped weir around the under, water entrance, walling
it off from the main body of water in the pool.
Using leather buckets and clay tej pots the Buffaloes began to bale out
the coffer and scoop the water over the wall into the main pool.
Nicholas and Royan watched with silent trepidation as the level in the
coffer fell and the opening in the cliff was gradually revealed.
Very soon they were able to see that it was almost rectangular, about
three metres wide by two metres high, The sides and the roof had been
eroded by the rush of water through the opening, but as the level fell
lower they could see the remains of shaped stone blocks that had
probably once sealed the opening. Four courses of them I still stood
where the ancient masons had placed them across the threshold of the
opening, but the others had been torn out by thousands of years of flood
seasons and thrown into the tunnel behind, partially blocking it.
Ea erly Nicholas climbed down into the coffer. It was not yet empty but
he could not control his impatience.
The water was knee-deep as he crawled forward into the opening, and with
his bare hands tried to shift some of the rock debris that choked it.
'It's definitely some sort of shaft,' he shouted back, and Royan could
not restrain herself either. She came slithering and sloshing down into
