'If only there were something we could do,' Gordon was muttering. 'To be smoked out like a lot of rats....'
There came a sudden noise, reverberating, booming in the shadows behind them. A hundred pairs of eyes switched like one towards it, boring the impenetrable. A sudden cry from the Negro, Zickle—'Water!' Then other voices, on rising, panicky notes—'Water I ... Water! ...'
Long minutes of chaos, kaleidoscopic. Shouts. Men gasping, cursing, dropping from the wall. Beyond, shrill pygmy voices rising in alarm. A last, disregarded volley from the slingers. Screams from the passage mouths. Fighting to escape, trampling one another, jammed in the tunnels? A hand on Mark's arm, rigid as a clamp. Gordon's voice, calm and firm among the hubbub. What's he saying?
'Wait. You'll be trampled.'
Wait! With the water gushing in to drown them all?
A wrench which failed to shake the clamp loose. Smith's voice:
'Plenty of time—plenty of time. Wait.'
First panic ebbing. Fighting for control. Behind it all, the rush of the water. Tons of it, spewing into the cave, reaching out to swamp and choke. Partial victory. It's a big cave—take a lot of water to fill it. Screams and shouts from the passages. Fighting, tearing one another to bits like animals—mad with fright. Gordon talking calmly to Smith:
'Let 'em get clear; the tunnel's narrow, it can't pass much water. Plenty of time.'
What tunnel? Things began to get clearer. Their tunnel, of course. It was through. Must have come up under the New Sea. Never thought of that possibility. The tunnel which was to lead to freedom____Mark began to laugh with an odd giggle.
Gordon shook him violently.
'Stop it.'
Mark tried, but could not. It was irresistibly funny— the tunnel which was to lead to freedom....
Something hard and angular hit his jaw.
'Shut up—do you hear?'
The shaking went on. He stopped laughing. Queer, it hadn't been very funny after all. The shaking ceased.
'Sorry,' he said. Smith grunted, rubbing his knuckles.
Ed came ambling along the wall with several others trailing after him.
'Crazy bunch o' saps,' he observed, nodding in the direction of the passages. 'Can you beat it?' He spat disgustedly over the parapet. They listened for a moment to the sounds of strife mingling with the rush of the water.
'Gees, and I thought some of those guys got brains—if they have, they're on vacation right now.'
'Some of 'em'll get out,' said Smith.
'Sure they'll get out—an' for what? To be chased by the water. You know darned well there ain't no way for it to get outa this place. They'll go right up to the big first cave by the entrance—and then what? Jest wait right there until the water ups and catches 'em. Ain't that a hell of a fine way to die?'
They turned and looked over the ground behind the wall. The water was visible now; its edge had advanced to within a few feet of them and was crawling rapidly forward, stirring the loam to mud.
'Well, it'll soon put out those goddam fires,' Ed murmured philosophically.
'Look there.' Gordon pointed to the white circle of a puff-ball, just visible in the gloom. It was swaying and bobbing erratically on the flood.
'Well, what about it?'
'It's floating. These trunks will float, too. A couple of them lashed together would make a good raft for three or four men.'
'But we'd only go up there.' Mark looked up at the smoke curtain over the roof.
'No. We can float them out through the passages as the water rises. Float them right out to the first cave, and then-'
He stopped suddenly as Ed's huge hand smote him on the back.
'Atta boy! You've said it. Gimme some cord, somebody; I'm gonna get busy.'
The binding of several stone clubs was speedily untwisted. Within a few minutes all the men were lashing the thick, white trunks into pairs. The water rose and trickled through the wall as they worked. The five fires went out in bursts of steam and fierce sizzlings. The first completed raft was thrust over the parapet, and fell with a splash. Its two builders climbed after it. Another splash followed, and another, until all the rafts bobbed in the muddy water. Ed looked up at the last pair.
'C'm on, you guys. Time to go places. Snap into it.'
They swarmed down into knee-deep water, and waded forward, pushing their rafts towards the passages. Behind them still sounded the roar of gushing water; around the walls it lapped slowly higher____
PART III
CHAPTER I
Margaret woke, and her first sight was a rock roof. It was seven feet above her, but it seemed to press down. Those tons of stone could be suspended safely, she hoped, above her body, but there was no support to lift them clear of her spirit. All that weight rested full upon it, striving to crush her stubborn resistance. This was always the worst moment of her 'day'. All defences were at their weakest, reserves at their ebb. She liked to keep her eyes closed when she woke, gathering strength before opening them.
How many times had she lain awake, but voluntarily blind, hoping futilely that it was a dream? She did not know. At first she had tried to keep some count of time, but she had missed once—or was it twice? She made two strokes on the wall, and then changed her mind and rubbed one out. Later she missed again. The record became a muddle. Anyhow, what was the good of it? Even if her sleeping periods did roughly correspond to nights in the world above, there was little to be gained from knowing how days, weeks, months slipped away. It did not help. Indeed, it made things worse. Without dates one could imagine the world as one had last seen it. Dates meant change outside, and it was somehow bitter to think of a world which went on changing, of seasons coming and going, flowers blooming and dying while one lay here inmured, dead to it all.
Yes, dead to it—only death must be more peaceful. Why did she not kill herself? On every waking she asked the same question. Sometimes she had resolved to do it, but then, with the fuller return of consciousness, she had absolved herself. Time for that later, after all, there were still possibilities.... When she had grown older, when her skin had lost its softness, and her hair become grey— when, in fact, there would be nothing to return to in the outside world; then she would do it.
She put up a hand and dragged a lock of hair forward over her face. Holding it out at full length, she could, by squinting uncomfortably, focus upon it. Presently she smoothed it back into place. Careful inspection had failed to reveal a single strand of grey among the dark red. There were stories of people whose hair had gone grey in a night—in view of the condition of her own, she was inclined to consider them fables; if they were not, she ought, she felt, to be snow-white by this time. Perhaps at the sides ... ?
An awkward business, this, and not a mirror to be had.
She sat up. A bundle of muddy-yellow fur in another corner uncurled, yawned widely and stretched itself. It sat back on its haunches, blinking at her.
'Good morning, Bast.'