"Don't touch it," Indy exclaimed. "Never touch it."
Sallah drew his hand away. They turned toward the wooden crate and removed the four poles that were attached to the corners. They inserted the poles into the rings of the Ark and raised it, grunting at the weight of the thing, then levering it from the stone chest into the crate. The fires were beginning to die now and the snakes, their hissing beginning to sound more and more like a solitary upraised voice, were slipping toward the altar.
"Hurry," Indy said. "Hurry."
They attached the ropes to the crate. Indy tugged on one of the ropes, and the crate was pulled up out of the chamber. Sallah took the next rope and quickly made his ascent. Indy reached for his exit rope, pulling on it to be certain of its support-and it fell, itself snakelike, from the opening at the top into the cham-
"What the hell-"
From above, the Frenchman's voice was unmistakable: "Why, Dr. Jones, whatever are you doing in such a nasty place?"
There was laughter.
"You're making a habit of this, Belloq," Indy said.
The snakes hissed closer. He could hear their bodies slide across the floor.
"A bad habit, I agree," Belloq said, peering down. "Unhappily, I have no further use for you, my old friend. And I find it suitably ironic that you're about to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find."
"I'm dying of laughter," Indy shouted up.
He continued to squint upward, wondering if there were any exit from this . . . and he was still wondering when he saw Marion being pushed from the edge of the hole, falling, dropping. He moved quickly and broke her fall with his body, sliding to the ground as she struck him. The snakes edged closer. She clung frantically to Indy, who could hear Belloq arguing from above.
"She was mine!"
"She is of no use to us now, Belloq. Only the mission for the Fuhrer matters."
"I had plans for her!"
"The only plans are those that concern Berlin," Dietrich said back to Belloq.
There was a silence from above. And then Belloq was looking down into the chamber at Marion.
His voice was low. "It was not to be," he said to her. Then he nodded at Indy. "Indiana Jones, adieu!"
Suddenly the stone door to the chamber was slammed shut by a group of German soldiers. Air was sucked out of the Well, torches went out, and the snakes were moving into the areas of darkness.
Marion clutched Indy tightly. He disentangled himself, picking up two torches that were still lit, passing one to her.
"Just wave the torch at anything that moves," he said.
"Everything is moving," she said. "The whole place is slithering."
"Don't remind me."
He began to fumble around in the dark, found one of the oil canisters, splashed the oil toward the wall and lit it. He stared at one of the statues above, feeling the snakes encroach ever closer to him.
"What are you doing?" Marion asked.
He poured what remained of the oil in a circle around them and set it ablaze.
"Stay here."
"Why? Where are you going?"
"I'll be back. Keep your eyes open and get ready to run."
"Run where?"
He didn't answer. He moved backward through the flames to the center of the room. Snakes flicked around his heels, and he swung his torch desperately to keep them away. He stared up at the statue, which reached close to the ceiling. From under his robes he took his bullwhip and lashed it through the half-light, watching it curl around the base of the statue. He tugged on it to test its strength, then he began to climb one-handed, the torch in his other hand.
He hauled himself up and twisted once to look down at Marion, who stood behind the dwindling wall of flame. She looked lost and forlorn and helpless. He made it to the top of the statue when a snake appeared around the face of the statue-hissing directly into Indy's eyes. Indy shoved his torch into its head, smelled the burning of reptile flesh, watched the snake slip from the smooth stone and fall away.
He jammed himself in place, his feet stuck between wall and statue. Let it work, he thought. Snakes were climbing up around the statue, and his torch-failing badly-wouldn't keep them away forever. He flailed with it, striking this way and that hearing snakes drop and fall into the chamber. Then the torch slipped from his grasp and flickered out as it dropped. Just when you need a light, you don't have one, he thought. And something crawled over his hand. He yelled in surprise.
As he did so, the statue gave way, came loose from its foundation and swayed, shivered, tilting at a terrifying angle to the roof of the chamber. Here we go, Indy thought, holding onto this statue as if it were a wild mule. But it was more like a log being clutched in a stormy sea-and it fell, it fell while he struggled to hold on, gathering speed, toppling past the startled Marion, who stood in the dying fires, whizzing past her in the manner of a tree felled by a lumberjack, breaking through the floor of the Well and crashing into darkness beyond. Then the voyage astride the statue stopped abruptly when the broken figure hit bottom, and he slid off, stunned, rubbing the side of his head. He fumbled around in the dark for a moment, aware of faint light filtering through the ragged hole from the Well. Marion was calling to him.
"Indy! Where are you?"
He reached through the hole as she peered into it.
"Never ride by statue," he said. "Take my advice."
"I'll make a point of it."
He caught her hand and helped her in. She held the torch over her head. It was a poor light now-but enough for them to see they were inside a maze of interconnected chambers running at angles beneath the Well, catacombs that tunneled the earth.
"So where are we now?"
"Your guess would be as good as mine. Maybe they built the Weil above these catacombs for some reason. I don't know. It's hard to say. But it's better than snakes."
A swarm of distressed bats flew out of the dark, winging around them, beating the air like lunatics. They ducked and passed into another chamber. Marion flapped her hands over her head and screamed.
"Don't do that," he said. "It scares me."
"How do you think it makes me feel?"
They went from chamber to chamber.
"There has to be some way out," he said. "The bats are a good sign. They have to find the sky outside for feeding purposes."
Another chamber, and here the stench was sickening. Marion raised her torch.
There were moldering mummies in their half-wrapped bandages, rotting flesh hanging from yellowed bindings, mounds of skulls, bones, some of them with half-preserved flesh clinging to their surfaces. A wall in front of them was covered with glistening beetles.
"I can't believe this smell," Marion said.
"You're complaining?"
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Great," Indy told her. "That'd cap this experience nicely."
Marion sighed. "This is the worst place I've ever been."
"No, back there was the worst place you've ever been."
"But you know what, Indy?" she said. "If I had to be here with anybody ..."
"Got you," he cut her off. "Got you."
"That's right. You do."
Marion kissed him gently on the lips. The softness of her touch surprised him. He drew his face back, wanted to kiss her again-but she was pointing excitedly at something, and when he turned his face he saw, some distance away, the merciful sight of the desert sun, a dawn sun, white and wonderful and promising.
"Thank God," she said.
"Thank who you like. But we've still got work to do."
10: The Tanis Digs, Egypt
They moved among the abandoned excavations, closer to the airstrip that had been hacked out of the desert by the Germans. There were two fuel trucks on the strip, a tent supply depot, and someone-clearly a mechanic to judge from his coveralls-standing at the edge of the runway with his hands on his hips, his face turned toward the sky. And then someone else was moving across the strip toward the mechanic, a figure Marion recognized as Dietrich's aide, Gobler.