Craig seized one of these and struggled to dislodge it.
His hands had been softened by the water, and a tiny puff of blood clouded the water as his skin split on the sharp file edge of the stone, but there was no pain for the cold had numbed him.
Almost immediately the bloodstain in the water was obscured by a darker shadow as the dirt and debris that had lain so long undisturbed swirled into suspension at his efforts. Within seconds he was totally blinded as the water was filthied, and he switched off the lamp to conserve the battery. Small particles of dirt irritated his eyes, and he closed them tightly, working only by sense of touch.
There are degrees Of darkness, but this was total. It was a darkness that seemed to have physical weight and it crushed down upon him, emphasizing the hundreds of feet of solid rock and water above him. The oxygen he drew into his mouth had a flat chemical taste, and every few breaths a spurt of water would find its way around the ill fitting seal of his mask and he choked upon it, forcing himself not to cough, for a coughing fit might dislodge the mask entirely.
The cold was likea terminal disease, sapping and destroying him, affecting his judgement and reactions, making it more and more difficult to guard against the onset of oxygen poisoning, and each signal on the rope from the surface seemed to be an eternity after the last.
But he worked at the wall with a grim determination, beginning to hate the long, dead ancestors of Vusamanzi for their thoroughness in inlding it.
By the time his half-hour shift finally ended, he had pulled down a pile of rock from the head of the wall and had tunnelled a hole three or four feet mito the masonry just wide enough to accommodate his upper body with its bulky oxygen equipment strapped to it, but there was still no indication as to just how much thicker the wall was.
He cleared the rock he had dislodged, kicking it down the incline of the chute and letting it fall away into the depths of the grand gallery. Then, with soaring relief, he untied the anchor rope and slid down after it and began the long ascent to the surface of the pool.
Tungata helped him clamber out of the water onto the slab, for he was weak as a child and the equipment on his back weighed him down. Tungata pulled the set off over his head, while Sarah poured a mug of black tea and ladled sticky brown sugar into it.
"Sally-Anne?"he asked.
Tendula is standing guard in the upper cavern,"Tungata answered.
Craig cupped his hands around the mug, and edged closer to the smoky little fire, shaking with the cold.
"I have started a small hole in the top of the wall and gone into it about three feet, but there is no way of guessing how thick it is or how many more dives it will need to get through it." He sipped the tea.
"One thing we have overlooked: I will need something to carry the goodies, if we find them." Craig crossed his fingers and Sarah made her own sign to ward off misfortune. "The beer-pots are obviously brittle old Insutsha broke one and they will be awkward to carry. We will have to use the bags I made from the canvas seat covers. When Sarah goes up to relieve Pendula, she must send them down." As the numbness of cold was dispelled by the fire and hot tea, so the pain in his head began. Craig knew that it was the effect of breathing high-pressure oxygen, the first symptom of poisoning. It was likea high-grade migraine, crushing in on his brain so that he wanted to moan aloud.
He fumbled three painkillers from the first-aid kit and washed them down with hot tea.
Then he sat in a dejected huddle and waited for them to take effect. He was dreading his return to the wall so strongly that it sickened his stomach and corroded his will.
He found that he was looking for an excuse to postpone the next dive, anything to avoid that terrible cold and die suffocating press of dark waters upon him.
Tungata was watching him silently across the fire, and Craig slipped the frir cape off his shoulders and handed the empty mug back to Sarah. He stood up. The headache had degraded to a dull throb behind his eyes.
"Let's go," he said, and Tungata laid a hand on his upper arm and squeezed it before he stooped to lift the oxygen set over Craig's head.
Craig quailed at this new contact with the icy water, but he forced himself into it, and the stone he held weighted him swiftly into the depths. In his imagination the entrance to the tomb no longer resembled an eyeless socket, but rather the toothless maw of some horrible creature from African mythology, gaping open to ingest him.
He entered it and swam up the inclined shaft, and anchored himself before the untidy hole he had burrowed into the wall. The sediment had settled, and in the glow of his lamp the shadows and shapes of rock crowded in upon him, and he wrestled with another attack of claustrophobia, anticipating the clouds of filth which would soon render him blind. He reached out and the rock was brutally rough on his torn hands. He prised a lump of limestone free, and a small slide of the surrounding stones sent sediment billowing around his head. He switched off his lamp and began the cold blind work again.
The rope signals at his waist were his only contact with reality and finite time A somehow they helped him to control his mount in terror of the cold and darkness.
Twenty minutes, and his headache was breaking through the drugs with which he had subdued it. It felt as though a blunt nail was being driven with hammer blows into his temple, and as though the iron point was cutting in behind his eyes.
"I can't last another ten minutes," he thought. "I'm going up now." He began to turn away from the wall and then just managed to prevent himself.