Holroyd crawled up alongside me, his breathing heavy in the still air of the tunnel. "We'll need a rope to get down there."
"Yes," I said, knowing that my father hadn't a rope. It wouldn't be difficult to get down the pipe, breaking your descent with your back against one wall, your feet braced against the other. But to climb back up again would be impossible. I was trying to reconstruct in my mind what had happened.
I heard the rattle of matches in a box and Holroyd struck one, a sudden, blinding flare, and then the flame burning steady without a flicker of movement. "No air current."
"It probably finishes below sea level." If Bert were right about that cave, then this was probably the vent for the air pressure caused by storm waves in the channel.
"He must have been desperate to go down there."
And Cartwright's voice behind us said, "He had no alternative."
That was true, if he had wanted to escape. But I knew that what had driven him to explore that blow hole was his obsession with the scratched drawings of early man, his hope of finding cave paintings. He would have gone down it whilst the light of his acetylene lamp was still bright. He would be in darkness now.
"Van der Voort!" Holroyd had inched himself forward, his hands cupped to his mouth. "Dr. Van der Voort!" The North Country accent boomed in the shaft. We listened intently for the faintest sound. But there was no answer, not the smallest whisper of a reply. "It sounds deep."
"We're still at least a hundred and fifty feet above sea level," I said.
"Aye. Just what I was thinking. And if it's water down there, then I'm afraid there's not much hope." He had moved back and was turning himself round. Facing Cartwright, he said, "I suppose that light nylon of ours is with the Land-Rover?"
"We've plenty of rope on board," I told him.
"Then the sooner we have it, the sooner we'll know what's down there." He was already moving back up the tunnel.
Daylight and the sight of sea and sky was a welcome relief after the claustrophobic confines of that cave. Sonia came with me back to the boat, her last hopes pinned to Bert's dive. He was waiting for us, pacing impatiently up and down the deck, "Have you found him?" And when I shook my head, he said, "Then what the hell have you been up to all this time? I warned you conditions might not stay like this."
"Well, they have," I snapped; no breath of air and the boat riding to her reflection, as still as if she were moored in a dock. "We want about fifty fathoms of rope, that's all. I'll take it to them and then I'll be right back." And I explained what it was for.
"So you think he's still alive?"
"I know he is," Sonia's voice was intensely determined.
"There's a chance," I said, and we looked out the rope. It was under the life jackets in a deck locker, 60 fathoms coiled on a light wooden drum, and I rowed across with it while Sonia stayed to help Bert get started on his dive. Hans had come down to the gut to collect the rope. I handed it to him and backed the dinghy out, and as soon as he saw me coming back Bert climbed over the side on to the ladder. He looked big and ungainly with his flippers and the cylinder on his back, his stomach bulging where the belt carrying the weights caused the flesh to sag. He wasn't wearing his wet suit for fear of snagging it on the rocks. I saw him slip his mask down over his eyes, settle the mouthpiece in place, and then Florrie passed him the spot, and with a wave in my direction, he flipped backwards to disappear under the oil-flat surface of the sea. Before I was halfway back to Coromandel the line of his bubbles passed me headed for the shore.
Sonia took the painter, and as I swung my leg over the low bulwarks Florrie came out of the wheelhouse. "Bert said to tell you the engine's all set to go if you need it."
I looked at her. "Why should I?"
"I don't know." Her face looked worried, lines of strain showing at the corners of the eyes. "He's been in a state about this dive all morning. It was the waiting, I think-when you didn't come back for so long. It made him nervous."
I looked up at the sky and south to the open sea, a weather check that was so automatic, so routine that I was barely conscious of it. I was thinking of the blow hole, the rock pipe twisting into the bowels of the earth with one of them slithering down it, the rope taut around his waist, and of Bert, deep underwater, following the beam of his spotlight into the cave's darkness. One of them should be able to produce the answer. An hour at most and we should know for certain.
I went into the wheelhouse and got the glasses. From our mooring the platform below the overhang was just visible. If they found him, they'd try to hail me from there. There was nobody visible at the moment. Sweat dripped into my eyes. The heat was heavier than ever. I wiped my face, envying Bert in the cool depths. "Would you like some coffee?" Florrie asked.
I shook my head.
"It's iced. I've had it in the fridge since breakfast."
Iced coffee! I nodded. "Please."
"I'll get it." Sonia left us quickly.
Florrie caught my eye. "She needs to keep herself occupied." And she added, quietly, "So do I. But there's nothing to be done, is there? Just wait."
"He's a bloody good diver," I said.
She nodded.
"Then what are you worrying about?"
She gave an exaggerated shrug. "It's the heat, I suppose. If we were in Malta I'd say it was sirocco weather."
The hot wind from the Sahara sucking up humidity as it crossed the sea. I nodded and raised the glasses. I had seen a movement on the platform. It was Kotiadis, pacing up and down, smoking a cigarette. Zavelas appeared and they talked together for a moment, standing with their faces turned towards me. Then Kotiadis nodded and they came on to the rock path, descending quickly towards the gut. A few minutes later Zavelas's boat shot out into the channel, the hornet noise of its outboard fading rapidly in the thick air as it headed north.
Sonia arrived with the coffee. It was ice-cold, black and sweet, and we drank it waiting in the sultry heat of the open deck. Florrie glanced at her watch as she put her glass down. "He's been gone a long time."
"How long?" She always kept a check on the time he was down. "Twelve and a quarter minutes."
"Stop fussing, you old hen," I said. It was extraordinary how possessive she was. She could call him a failure, spit in his face, cuckold him even, but she couldn't do without him — couldn't bear him out of her sight.
"I'm not an old hen." She was smiling, warmth in her eyes, a fondness. "A young one perhaps." She giggled. And then, suddenly serious again, "Bert's a cautious type. You can't have failed to notice that." An impish gleam in her eyes now. "Not like you. He likes to weigh things up, mull over every problem. Most things he thinks over so long somebody else has to make up his mind for him. But not when he's diving. He doesn't think under water; he just reacts. He's reckless as hell." There was a note of pride in her voice and I glanced at Sonia, wondering if she would behave with such extraordinary inconsistency if we were married.
"He's got just over an hour of diving time in that tank, and that's not allowing for the time he might be above water exploring inside the cave."
She nodded. "I know all that. But I still worry."
Time passed slowly, the three of us sitting around on the foredeck, no sun, the air thick, and its thickness plucking at our nerves. Nobody hailed us from the area of the overhang. There was nobody on the platform and no news. Bert had started his dive at 11:17. Before half an hour was up Florrie was looking uneasily at her watch. By midday she was voicing her anxiety. I was getting worried, too, wishing I had insisted on going down the blow hole myself, anything rather than sit here doing nothing.
"He's only three minutes' air left." Florrie's voice was taut.