backwards. with an effort he regained and lugged her back up the steps,
her feet sliding and bumping loosely over the treads. He wanted to shout
to his lungs Hansith for help, but he did not have me air in to utter a
sound.
, she's dead,' he told himself, and if you drop her no ps, his lungs
hunting for he struggled up another five ste precious air and finding
none. His strength oozed out of wobbled and as his vision slid and him a
drop at a time A
11 distorted.
'Please God, let me
'Let me breathe,' he pleaded.
breathe.'
Miraculously, like a direct answer to his prayer, he felt slide down his
panting throat and the precious oxygen ngth began flooding back swell
his lungs. At once his stre Royan's chest and lifted and he tightened
his grip around her bodily. He staggered up the remaining steps with her
sprawled out Of the mouth of the body in his arms and shaft on to the
slabs of the tunnel at Hansith's feet.
'What is is, effendi? What has happened to you and the lady?'
Nicholas had no breath to answer him. He laid Royan in the position for
mouth-tolmouth resuscitation, and slapped her cheeks.
'Come on!' he pleaded with her. 'Speak! Talk to me!' There was no
response, so he knelt over her, covered her open mouth with his own and
blew down her throat, until from the corner of his eye he saw her chest
swelling and inflating.
He sat back for a count of three. 'Please, my darling, please
breathe!'There was no colour in her yellow, corpselike face.
He bent over her and covered her mouth again, and as he filled her lungs
with his own breath he felt her stir under him.
'That's it, my darling,' he told her. 'Breathe! Breathe for me.'
At the next breath she pushed him away and sat up groggily, staring
round at the circle of faces that hovered over her anxiously. She picked
out Nicholas's pale face amongst the black faces of the men.
'Nicky! What happened?'
'I am not sure - but whatever it was, it almost got both of us. How are
you feeling now?'
'It was as though an invisible hand had me by the throat, and was
strangling me. I couldn't breathe, and then I passed out.'
'It must be some kind of gas filling the lower levels of the passage.
You were only out for less than two minutes,' he reassured her. 'It
takes four minutes of oxygen starvation to kill the brain.'
'I have a terrible headache.' She pressed her fingers to her temples. 'I
heard your voice calling me back. You called me 'my darling'.' She
dropped her eyes.
'Just a little slip of the tongue.' He lifted her to her feet and for a
moment she swayed against him, her breasts soft and warm against his
chest.
'Thank you once again, Nicky. I am so deeply in your debt already, I
will never be able to repay you.'
