Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные полные книги .txt) 📗

"What do you think?"

"There is something there, I think."

"If I could get across to it!" Craig switched off again.

"How?"

"I don't know, let me think." They sat with their backs against the wall, their shoulders just touching.

After a while Tungata murmured, "Craig, if we ever get out of here the diamonds. You will be entitled to a share "Do shut up, Sam. I'm thinking." Then, after many minutes, "Sam, the poles, the longest pole in the ladder do you think it would reach across to the other side?" They built a second fire on the ledge, and it lit the shaft with an uncertain wavering light. Once again Craig went down the rope, onto the remains of the timber ladder, and this time he examined each pole in the structure. Most of them had been axed to shorter lengths, probably to make it easier to carry them down through the tunnels and passages from the surface, but the side frames were in longer pieces. The longest of these was not much thicker than Craig's wrist, but the bark was the peculiar pale colour that gave it the African name of "the elephant tusk tree'.

Its common English name was lead wood one of the toughest, most re silent woods of the veld.

Moving along it, measuring it with the span of his arms, Craig reckoned this pole was almost sixteen feet long. He secured the end of the rope to the upper end of the pole, shouting up to the platform to explain what he was doing, and then he used his clasp-knife from the kit to cut the bark rope holding the pole into the ladder work There was the terrifying moment when the pole finally broke free and hung on the rope, swinging likea pendulum, and the entire structure, deprived of its kingpins began to break up and slide down the shaft.

Craig hauled himself up the rope and flung himself thankfully onto the platform, and when he had recovered his breath, the pole was still dangling down the shaft on the end of the rope, although the rest of the ladder work had collapsed into the water at the bottom.

"That was the easy part," Craig warned them grimly.

With Tungata and himself providing the brute strength, and the two girls coiling and guiding the rope, they worked the pole up an inch at a time until the tip of it appeared above the level of the platform. They anchored it, and Craig lay on his belly and used the free end of the rope to lasso the bottom end of the pole. Now they had it secured at both ends and could begin working it up and across.

After an hour of grunting and heaving, and coaxing, they had one end of the pole resting against the wall of the shaft opposite them, and the other end thrust back into the tunnel behind them.

"We have got to lift the far end," Craig explained while they rested, "and try and get it into that crack on the far wall if it is a crack." Twice they nearly lost the pole as it rolled out of their grip and almost fell into the well below, but each time they just held it on the rope and then began the heart-breaking task all over again.

It was after midnight by Craig's Rolex before they at last had the tip of the pole worked up the far wall to the height of the dark mark only just visible in the beam of the lamp.

"Just an inch to the right," Craig grunted, and they rolled it gently, felt the pole slide in their hands, and then with a small bump the tip of it lodged in the crack in the wall opposite them and both Craig and Tungata sagged onto their knees and hugged each other in weary congratulations.

Sarah fed the fire with fresh wood and in the flare of light they reviewed their work. They now had a bridge across the shaft, rising from the platform on which they stood at a fairly steep angle, the rear end jammed solidly against the wall behind them, and the far end wedged in the narrow crack in the opposite wall.

"Somebody has to cross that." Sally' Anne voice was small and unsteady.

"And what happens on the other side?" Sarah asked.

"We'll find out when we get there," Craig promised them.

"Let me go,"Tungata said quietly to Craig.

"Have you ever done Ony rock climbing?" Tungata shook his head. "Well, thato answers that," Craig told him with finality. "Now we'll take two hours" rest try to sleep." However, none of them could sleep, and Craig roused them before the two hours were up. He explained to Tungata how to set himself up firmly as anchorman, sitting flat with both feet braced, the rope around his waist and up over his back and shoulder.

"Don't give me too much slack, but don't cramp me," Craig explained. "If I fall I'll shout "I'm off!", then jam the rope like this and hold with everything you've got, okay?" He hung one of the lanterns over his shoulder with a strip of canvas as a sling and then, with both the girls sitting on the end of the pole to hold it firmly, Craig straddled it and began working out along it with both feet dangling into the void. The loop of rope hung behind him as Tungata fed it out.

Within a few feet Craig found that the upward angle was too steep, and he had to lie flat along the pole with his ankles hooked over it, and push himself upwards with his legs. He moved quickly out of the firelight, and the black emptiness below him was mesmeric and compelling. He did not look down. The pole flexed under the weight of each of his movements and he heard the far tip of it grating against the rock above him, but at last his fingertips touched the cold limestone of the shaft wall.

He groped anxiously for the crack, and felt a little lift of his spirits as his fingers made out the shape of it. It ran vertically up the shaft, the outside lips about three inches apart, just enough to accommodate the end of the pole, then it narrowed quickly as it went deeper.

"It's a crack all right! he called back. "And I'm going to have a shot at it."

"Be careful, Craig."