The Nice and the Good

something touch his shoulder and grip him. The touch was painful, as if dazzling.

He realized he must be almost anaesthetized by cold. He crawled further and lay full length. He could feel pebbles under his hand.

'I am terribly sorry,' said Pierce's voice beside him.

The earnest serious boy's voice sounded strange in the blackness, with its ring of the ordinary world, apologizing.

'Could you just try to massage me or something,' said Ducane. 'I feel absolutely numb.' The brilliant pain returned and moved over his back. He began to twist and stretch his limbs. He now felt so tired he could not understand how a moment ago he could have been capable of swimming. 'What's that? V 'It's Mingo. He followed me in. I am so very sorry – '

'That's enough. Is there any way on here?'

'I don't know,' said Pierce's voice. 'I've just arrived. At any rate we're out of the water, for the moment. I tried one of the other channels and it just ended in a wall and the roof was pretty low so I thought I'd better get out quick. It wasn't too easy to get back against the tide. Then I came in here and reached this – place – and then I heard you call.'

'Are you all right?'

'yes, I'm fine. Are you warmer now?'

'Yes.' If I don't drown I shall die of exposure, Ducane thought. He sat up, chafing his arms and legs. His flesh felt alien to him, like ice-cold putty.

'We'd better move on,' said Pierce. 'This one may be a culde-sac too. Or shall I go ahead and look and then come back for you?'

'No, no. I'll come too.' For God's sake don't leave me, he thought. He got to his knees and then to his feet. Something touched his head lightly. It was the roof of the tunnel. 'What's that noise?'

'I think it's the tide running through holes in the rock.'

There was a slightly irregular moaning sound nearby, punctuated by soft hollow reports.

'That's the water hitting the roof of the next cave,' said Pierce. 'It seems to be getting more excited.'

The water, which had flowed so calmly on into the darkness, now seemed in these more confined inner spaces to be becoming violent. Ducane felt an impact at his feet. 'Get on, Pierce. The bloody sea's beginning to arrive.'

'Have you got shoes?'

'Get on.'

They began to shuffle forward in the blackness. The ground seemed to be rising a little but in such complete darkness it was hard to tell, and Ducane's feet, contracted into rounded hobbling balls of pain, could not discern whether he was still walking in the water. The low keening noise and the echoing slapping noise continued.

'It goes on anyway,' said Pierce. His voice sounded a little high and wavery. The noise behind them, which was increasing a little, was hard to bear. 'You'll have to stoop here.'

'It's so damn black. Keep on talking, I don't want to lose you., 'Oh God, it's coming right down. I think we'll have to crawl.'

'What's the point of this,' said Ducane, stopping. He had an image of crawling onward, onward, to end wedged in some narrow pocket of wet rock waiting for the tide. 'If this one's packing up we'd better try another one while there's still time, The water's just behind us.'

'It's here,' said Pierce in a cracked voice. 'Stay still, I'm coming back past you.'

Ducane stood rigid and felt Pierce's hands fumble him while the wet jersey slid past. There was barely room in the space for them to pass each other. There was a damp warmth on his legs as Mingo scrabbled by after Pierce.

In a moment Pierce's voice came out of the darkness. 'I'm afraid the water has practically filled the entrance. It seems to be coming up much faster now. We've had it in here one way or the other.'

Ducane gripped himself, almost physically, as one might grip and shake an alter ego, and then realized that he had hold of Pierce who had blundered up against him. 'Well, we must go on, then.' Ducane's voice was high too, raised as if to cross a vast auditorium. It seemed to echo away into the hidden spaces and honeycombs of the dark.

The water was making a new noise now, a grinding sucking sound of advance and retreat over pebbles in a narrow place.

Pierce, who had got past Ducane, moved away.

Ducane ran his knuckles along the slimy descending rock and began to stoop. Bent double he moved forward, reaching out to touch the limp tail of Pierce's jersey. Mingo passed him again, a long sliver of darkened warmth. The roof rose a little, then began to fall again. It was difficult to tell if they were going upward. Movement had become something different, a slow and painful pistoning of bones inside a mass of black matter.

'We are rising, aren't we, Pierce?'
'I think so.'
'Are we walking in water?'
'No, we're out of the water. Watch out, the roof's coming down again.'
Ducane was moving three-legged, one hand touching the pebbly floor of the cave. His head came into contact with Pierce's back. Pierce seemed to be on his knees.
'What is it?'
'It's come to an end.'
'Feel, feel, feel all round,' said Ducane. He moved his hands about him, stroking the smooth damp chunks of solid blackness which hemmed them in.
, No good,' said Pierce in a new calm voice. 'It's a dead end.'
The calmness was the final tone of despair.
Ducane said, 'Let's move back a bit. I can't stand this rock on the back of my neck.' He thought, I would rather die standing up. As he moved back and straightened up he could feel the pebbles shifting underneath his feet. The sea had followed them.
'It'll rise quite fast in here,' said Pierce. 'I'm afraid we've had it.' He uttered a low long-drawn-out moan.
Ducane began to take in, more from that dreadful sound than from the words, what was to be. He began to say something aloud to himself. But at that moment something extraordinary happened, something pierced through the sphere of darkness and black wet masses and noisy water. It seemed like light. But it was not light. It was the smell of the white daisies.
'Pierce, the air is fresher here, I can feel air coming down from above. There may be some cranny, some shaft we could climb up '
They blundered against each other, their arms above their heads, feeling the blunt rock. Ducane felt as if his hands had become lumps of blackness, lumps without fingers. He could not now stop from shuddering and there was a hissing sound which he realized he must be making himself.
'There's something here,' said Pierce beside him.
Ducane's groping encountered a hole. There was a faint movement of air. 'Is it big enough to get up?'
'I think so. Stay where you are a minute.'
Pierce disappeared from beside him. There were soft slippery sounds and grunts and then Pierce's voice triumphant from above, 'I'm up. At least there's a ledge. I don't know if it goes farther: 'Are there footholds? How did you – 'Wait, I'm coming down. Keep clear.'
There was a slithering noise and Pierce landed heavily beside him, seizing his shoulder.
'How did you get up?'
'It's a chimney. One can brace oneself. Shoulders on one side and feet on the other. It runs diagonally, so it's quite easy, sixty degrees I should think. You can get into the hole just by hitching yourself up and sitting on the edge of it. It's awfully slippery, that's the only thing. I'll take Mingo up now.'
I can't do it, thought Ducane. Even as a boy he had not been able to do that particular trick. And now, out of condition, ex. hausted, paralysed with cold – He said, 'You can't climb up and carry Mingo. You'll fall and break a