'You think the flow of the water through the shaft has scoured it out?'
she asked.
'I would say so, yes.'Nicholas turned the beam of light downwards. 'The
floor has fallen out of the shaft also.'
The rock had subsided in front of them, leaving a deep hole. Ten feet
below where they stood the hole was filled with water, forming a large
circular pool with vertical rock sides. Overhead the roof had fallen in
and was now a high dome of irregular rock, and the far side of the pool
was shrouded in shadows a hundred feet or more in front of them.
There was no apparent way around this obstacle without entering the
water. Nicholas shouted to Hansith to bring one of the long bamboo poles
that they had used for the scaffolding. The pole was thirty feet long
and they had to manoeuvre its length down the tunnel. Nicholas sounded
the pool with the bamboo, probing it down into the turbid water as
deeply as he could reach.
'No bottom.' He shook his head. 'Do you know what I think?' He retrieved
the pole and passed it back to Hansith.
'Tell me,' Royan invited.
'I think that this is the natural fault that leads the water away to the
other side of the hills, and comes to the surface again at the butterfly
fountain. The river has carved its own path., 'Why hasn't it drained,
then?' Royan looked down dubiously in the pool below them.
'A -bend in the shaft, probably. Water still trapped in the top of the
shaft like the bowl of a lavatory.'
He probed the waters of the pool with the beam of his torch, and Royan
exclaimed with horror and disgust as on of the giant eels came racing to
the surface, attracted by the light.
'The filthy creatures!' She stepped back involuntarily.
'The whole river must be infested with them.'
The long dark shape circled the pool swiftly and then disappeared back
into the depths as suddenly as it had appeared.
'If you are right, and a section of Taita's adit has collapsed, then the
continuation of his tunnel should be on the far side of this.' She
pointed across the pool, and Nicholas lifted the beam of the torch and
shone it in the direction she indicated.
'Look, icky!' she cried. 'There it is.'
The dark rectangular opening yawned at them from across the pool.
'How do we get across there?' Royan asked, disconsolate.
'The answer to that is, not very easily. Dammit to hell!' Nicholas swore
heartily. 'This is going to cost us another couple of days that we, can
ill afford. We are going to have to build some sort of bridge across
it.'
'What kind of bridge?'
'Get Sapper down here. This is his department.'
Sapper stood at the brink of the sink-hole and glared across at the far
bank.
Pontoons,' he grunted. 'How many of those inflatable rafts have you got
squirrelled away?'
'Forget it, Sapper!' Nicholas shook his head. 'You are not getting those
