the run of water, trying to judge how deep they were below the original
river level.
'Eighty or ninety feet,' he estimated. 'No wonder the pressure in the
mouth of the tunnel almost crushed me-' he broke off as an unusually
shaped fragment in the muck at his feet caught his eye. He stooped and
picked it up.
Then took it to one of the floodlamps and by its light examined it
closely. As he rubbed it clean between finger and thumb, he began to
grin.
Sloshing back along the tunnel, he yelled, 'Royan!' Triumphantly
brandishing the fragment, he demanded, 'What do you make of that, then?'
She was sitting on the wall.of the coffer, and reached down and snatched
the object out of his grasp.
I 'Oh, sweet Mary! Where did you find this, Nicky?'
'Lying in the mud. Right there in the adit, where it's been for the last
four thousand years. Where one of Taita's workmen dropped and broke it,
probably while he was sneaking a sup of wine behind the slave driver's
back.'
Eagerly Royan held the broken shard of pottery up to the lamplight. 'You
are right, Nicky,' she exclaimed. 'It's part of a wine vessel. Look at
the flared neck and belled lip. But if there was any doubt, which there
isn't, the black firing around the rim dates it perfectly in our period.
No older than 2000 BC.'
Still clutching the fragment of broken pottery, she jumped down into the
mud and slush of the coffer and flung both arms around his neck.
'Further proof, Nicky. We are on Taita's tracks. Can't you get them to
clear any faster? We are breathing down the back of the old rogue's
neck.'
Halfway through the next shift an excited yelling echoed out of the
mouth of the tunnel, and Nicholas hurried back down to the face.
'What is it, Hansith?' he demanded in Arabic of the foreman monk. 'What
are you shouting about?
'We have broken through, effendi.' Hansith Sherif grinned at him, his
teeth gleaming in his black and mudsmeared face. Nicholas eagerly pushed
his way through the workmen. They had levered a huge round boulder out
of the pack, and beyond it lay an opening. He shone his electric torch
through this window in the wall, but could make out very little
except-empty black space.
Stepping back, he slapped the monk on the back.
'Well done, Hansith. A dollar bonus for every man in the team. But keep
them working! Clear away all this rubbish.' But it was not as easily
done as he had ordered. The shifts changed twice more before the shaft
was cleared completely of the last of the extraneous rubble and broken
rock. Only then could Nicholas and Royan stand in the threshold of the
cavern beyond the tunnel.
'What has happened here? What has caused this?' Royan's voice was
puzzled as Nicholas played his torch out into the void.
'I think this is a cave-in area. There was probably a fault in the rock
strata running through here and here.' He picked out the cracks in the
roof of the cavern.
