dirty great paws of yours on my rafts.'
'Suit yourself' Sapper spread his hands in resignation.
'It would be the easiest and quickest way of doing it.
Anchor a raft in the middle and build a catwalk over the top of it. I
need something that floats high-'
'Baobab.' Nicholas snapped his fingers. 'That should do the trick very
nicely. When it's dried out, baobab wood is as light as balsa. Floats
just as well as one of my inflatable rafts.'
'Plenty of baobabs growing along the hills,' Sapper agreed. 'Every
second tree in this valley seems to be a ruddy baobab.'
hree hundred yards from the top of the cliff grew a massive specimen of
Adansonia digitata.
Its smooth bark resembled the skin of one of the great reptiles from the
age of the dinosaurs. Its girth was tremendous - twenty men with
outstretched arms could not have encircled it. The upper branches were
bare and twisted, and it looked as though it had been dead for a hundred
years. Only the heavy velvet-covered pods proved that it still lived;
they hung thickly from the high branches, bursting open to spill the
black seeds which were coated thickly with white cream of tartar.
'The Zulus say that the Nkulu Kulu, the Great Spirit, planted the baobab
upside down with its roots in the air to punish it,' Nicholas told Royan
as they looked up at the enormous spread of its branches.
'Why would he want to do that?' she wanted to know.
'What did the poor old baobab do that was so bad?'
'It boasted that it was the.tallest and thickest tree of the forest, and
so the Nkulu Kulu decided to teach it a little lesson in humility.'
One of the gigantic branches had snapped off under its own weight, and
lay on the rocky ground beneath the trunk. The wood was white and
fibrous, light as cork.
Under Nicholas's direction the axemen cut it into manageable lengths.
Once they had been carried down the adit shaft to the sink-hole, Sapper
stapled the logs together and floated them across the pool to form a
causeway. He anchored this to the rock face at either end, and then over
it he laid a catwalk of bamboo poles. The bridge of baobab logs floated
high, and although it bobbed and swayed, it could easily support the
weight of a dozen men at a time.
Nicholas was the first one across the sink-hole. He placed a roughly
made ladder against the high vertical bank, and scrambled up into the
mouth of the adit on the far side of the pool. Royan was close behind
him.
The two of them stood in the entrance to this continuation of the shaft,
and as soon as Nicholas shone his torch into it they realized that the
nature of the construction had changed. This section had not been so
heavily scoured out and eroded by the rush of river water through it.
The main flow must have drained away through the sink-hole. The
dimensions were the same, three metres wide by two high, but the
rectangular shape was more precise and although the walls and roof were
rough, like IL
those of a mine, the marks of the tools that had shaped it were now
clearly visible. The footing of the tunnel was roughly paved with slabs
