"Upwards!" he thought groggily. "Got to go up!" and he kicked lazily, pushing weakly upwards.
Immediately there was a powerful heave on his waist belt and he saw Tungata's legs driving like the pistons of a steam locomotive in the lamplight. He watched them with the weighty concentration of a drunkard, but slowly they faded out into blackness. His last thought was, "If this is dying, then it's better than its publicity," and he let himself go into it with a weary fatalism.
He woke to pain, and he tried to force himself back into that comforting womb darkness of death, but there were hands bullying and pommelling him, and the rough barked timber rungs of the ladder cutting into his flesh.
Then he was aware that his lungs burned and his eyes felt as though they were swimming in concentrated acid. His nerve ends flared up, so that he could feel every aching muscle and the sting of every scratch and abrasion on his skin.
Then he heard the voice. He tried to shut it out.
"Craig! Craig darling, wake upP And the painful slap of a wet hand against his cheek. He rolled his head away from it.
"He's coming round!" hey were like drowning rats at the bottom of a well, clinging half-submerged to the rickety ladder work all of them shivering with the cold.
The two girls were perched on the lower rung, Craig was strapped to the main upright with a loop of canvas under his armpits, and Tungata, in the water beside him, was holding his head, preventing it from flopping forward.
With an effort Craig peered around at their anxious faces and then he grinned weakly at Tungata. "Sam, you said you couldn't swim well, you could have footed me!"
"We can't stay here." Sally' Anne teeth chattered in her head.
"There is only one way" they all looked up the gloomy shaft above them.
Craig's head still felt wobbly on his neck, but he pushed Tungata's hand away, and forced himself to begin examining the condition of the timberwork.
It had been built sixty years ago. The bark rope that had been used by the old witch, doctors to bind the joints together had rotted, and now hung in brittle strings like the shavings from the floor of a carpentry shop. The entire structure seemed to0 have sagged to one side, unless the original builder's eye had not been straight enough to erect a plumb-line.
"Do you think it will hold us all?" Sarah voiced the question.
Craig found it difficult to think, he saw it all through a fine mesh of nausea and bone, weariness
"One at a time," he mumbled, "lightest ones first. You Sally-Anne, then Sarah--2 he reached up and untied his leg from the rung. "Take the rope up with you. When you get to the top, pull up the bags and the lamps." Obediently Sally-Anne coiled the rope over her shoulder, and began to climb up the ladder.
She went swiftly, lightly, but the ladder work creaked and swayed under her. As she went upwards, her lamp chased the shadows ahead of her up the shaft. She drew away until only the lamp glow marked her position, then even that disappeared abruptly.
"Sally-Anne!"
"All right!" Her voice came echoing down the shaft.
"There is a platform here."
"How big?"
"Big enough I'm sending down the rope." It came snaking down to them, and Tungata secured the bags to the end.
"Haul away!" The bundle went jerkily up the shaft, swinging on the rope.
"Okay, send Sarah." Sarah climbed out of sight, and they heard the whisper of the girls" voices high above. Then, "Okay next!"
"Go, SamP "You are lighter than I am."
"Oh for Chrissake, just do it! Tungata climbed powerfully, but the timberwork shook under his weight. One of the rungs broke free, and fell away beneath his feet.
"Look out below!" Craig ducked under the surface, and the pole hit the water above him with a heavy splash.
Tungata clambered out of sight, and his voice came "Carefully, Pupho! The ladder is breaking up! back, Craig pulled himself out of the water, and sitting on the bottom rung strapped on his leg.
OW
God, that feels good." He patted it affectionately, and gave a few trial kicks.
"I'm coming up," he called.
He had not reached the halfway point when he felt the structure move under him and he flung himself upwards too violently.
One of the poles broke with a report likea musket shot, and the entire structure lurched sideways. Craig grabbed the side frame, just as three or four cross-rungs broke away under him and fell, hitting the water below with a resounding series of splashes. His legs were dangling in space, and every time he kicked for a foothold, he felt the timberwork sag dangerously.
"Pupho!" I'm stuck. I can't move or the whole bloody thing will come down."
"Wait!" A few seconds of silence and then Tungata's voice again. "Here's the rope. There is a loop in the end." it dropped six feet from him.
"Swing it left a little, Sam." The loop swung towards him.
"A little more! Lower, a little lower!" It dangled within reach.
"Hold hard! Craig made a lunge,4i it and got his arm through the loop.
"I'm coming on!" He released his hold on the side frame and swung free.
He was too weak to climb.
"Pull me up!" Slowly he was drawn upwards, and even in that dangerously exposed position, Craig appreciated the strength that it needed to lift a full-grown man this way- Without Tungata, he would never have made it.