He couldn't go on much longer. He had to rest. He found himself pulling in against the wall, pressing himself to it, touching the cold limestone with his forehead likea worshipper. To lie against die wail is to die, that is the first law of the rock climber. It is the attitude of defeat and despair. Craig knew it, and yet he could do nothing to prevent it.
He found he was sobbing. He took one fist out of the, I crack, and flapped it with loose fingers, forcing blood back into it, and then he held it to his mouth and licked die broken skin. He changed hands, whimpering as fresh blood flowed back into the cramped hand.
"Pupho, why have you stopped?" The rope was no longer paying out. They were anxious.
"Craig, don't give up, darling. Don't give up." Sally, Anne had sensed his despair. There was that something in her voice that gave him new strength.
Gradually he pushed himself outwards, hanging back from the wall, coming into balance again, his weight on the leg, and he reached up, one hand at a time, left and right, hold hard, pull up the leg, step up and again, and then the whole hellish torturous thing again, and yet again.
Another ten feet, twenty feet he was counting in the darkness.
Reach up with the right hand and and nothing.
Open space.
Frantically he groped for the crack nothing. Then his hand struck rock out to one side, the crack had opened wide into a deep V-shaped niche, wide enough for a man to force his whole body into it.
"Thank you, God, oh thank you, thank you-" Craig dragged himself up into it, wedging his hips and shoulders, and hugging his damaged hands to his chest.
"Craig!"Tungata's shout rang up the shaft.
"I'm all right," Craig called back. "I've found a niche. I'm resting. Give me five." He knew he couldn't wait too long, or his hands would stiffen and become useless. He kept flexing them as he rested.
"Okay!"he called down. "Going up again." He pushed himself upwards with the palms of his hands on each side of the cleft, facing outwards into the total darkness of the shaft.
Swiftly the cleft opened, and became a wide, deep chimney so that he could no longer reach across it with his arms. He had to turn sideways, wedge his shoulders on one side of it, and walk up the other side with his feet, wriggling his shoulders and pushing up with his palms on the stone under him a few inches at a time. It went quickly, until abruptly the chimney ended. It closed to a crack so narrow that reaching upwards he could not even fit his finger into it.
He reached around the top of the chimney out onto the wall of the shaft. He groped as high as he could reach and there was no hold or irregularity in the smooth limestone above him.
"End of the road!" hi whispered and suddenly every muscle in his body began to shriek in silent spasms of pain, and he felt crushed under a load of weariness. He did not have the energy for that long dangerous retreat back down the chimney, and he did not have the strength to keep himself wedged awkwardly in the rocky cleft.
Then abruptly a bat squeaked shrilly above him. It was so close and clear that he almost relaxed his grip with shock. He caught himself, and though his legs juddered under the strain, he worked his way sideways to the outermost edge of the chimney. The bat squeaked again, and was answered by a hundred others. It must be dawn already, the bats were returning to their roosts somewhere up there.
Craig balanced himself, so that he had his outside hand free. He groped for the lantern on its strip of canvas around his neck, and held it out into the open shaft. Then he twisted his head, and wriggled even further outwards until he was holding with only the point of one shoulder, and his head was protruding around the sharp corner of the chimney into the open shaft.
He switched on the lantern. Instantly there was i hubbub of alarmed bats their terrified shrills and the flutter of their wings and three feet above Craig's head, impossibly out of reach, there was a window in the rock wall, from which the sounds reverberated as though from the brass throat of a trumpet. He reached for it, but his fingers were twelve inches short of the sill.
As he yearned upwards, so the yellow glow of the lantern faded away. For some seconds the filaments still burned redly in their tiny glass ampoule and then they too died, and the darkness rushed back to engulf Craig, and he retreated into the chimney.
In frustration he hurled the useless lantern from him, and it clattered against the rock as it fell, each rattle becoming fainter until seconds later there was a distant splash as it hit the water far below.
"Craig!" E "Okay, I dropped the light." He heard the bitterness and despondency in his own voice, but in darkness he tried once more to reach the window above him. His fingernails scratched futilely on the stone, and he gave up and began slipping back down the chimney. In the V-shaped niche where the crack and chimney met, he wedged himself again.
"What is happening, Craig?"
"It doesn't go," he called down. "There is no way out.
We are finished, unless--'he broke off.
"What is it? Unless what?"
"Unless one of the girls will come up and help me." There was silence in the darkness below him.
"I'll come,"Tungata broke the silence.
"No good. You are too heavy. I couldn't hold you." Silence again, and then Sally' Anne said, "Tell me what to do."
"Tie on to the end of the rope. Use a bowline knot."
"Okay."
"All right, come out across the pole. I'll be holding you." Peering down he could see her silhouetted against the glow of the fire, as she worked her way across.
He took up the slack in the rope carefully, ready to jam it if she fell.
"I'm across."
"Can you find the crack?"
"Yes.
"I'm going to pull you up. You must help me by pushing with your toes in the crck." Okay.
"Go!" He felt her full weight come on the rope, and it bit into his shoulder.
"Push up!" he ordered, and as he felt the load lighten, he grabbed the slack.
"Push!" She came up another four inches.
"Push!" It seemed to go on and on, and then she screamed and the rope burned out in a hard, heavy run across his shoulder. He was almost jerked out of his niche.
He fought it, jamming hard, feeling the skin smear off his palms on the harsh nylon until he stopped it. Sally Anne was still screaming, and the rope pendulumed back and forth as she swung sideways along the wall.
"Shut up!" he roared at her. "Get a hold of yourself." She stopped screaming, and gradually her swings became shorter.
"I lost my footing." Her voice was almost a sob.
"Can you find the crack again?"
"Yes."
"All right, tell me when you are ready."