Down Under (28 page)

“I can't!”

Oliver said, “Nonsense!” And then, in his most practical voice, “You'll have to go first. I'll give you the torch. You see, if you stick I can pull you back, but if I got stuck you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.”

Rose Anne achieved a terror-stricken obedience. She would really much rather have died, but you can't just die quietly when you want to—you have to go on. She took the torch and crawled into the crack. Then it wasn't possible to crawl any more. She lay flat and wriggled forward an inch at a time. Oliver's hand was on her ankle, and the torch showed her the darkness.

It showed her something else. She felt a new agony of despair, and slowly, inch by inch, she began to worm her way back again.

“What is it?” said Oliver when she was clear of the crack.

She kneeled up and faced him. There was a smear of green slime on her cheek and another on her chin. She said in a forced, exhausted voice,

“There's a grating—we can't get through.”

“What!”

“We can't get through. There's a grating.”

“Give me the torch.”

She saw the light disappear into the crack. She saw Oliver disappear. She waited.

She waited. Oliver came back. The light came back. Oliver said,

“It's all right.”

She stared at him.

“I saw it—”

“Yes, it's there, but it's been cut through.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone's cut it through. I wonder if it was Spenlow. Look!”

He dragged the grating clear of the crack. The mark of a file showed bright against the rust with which it was encrusted.

Rose Anne crawled into the dark again.

CHAPTER XXXIII

They were through—bruised and breathless, coated with slime, their clothes half torn off them, but through. And then Oliver went back, because if Philip followed he would find the grating. He took off what remained of his clothes, and managed to reach it, drag it into the crack, and leave it more or less in its old position.

He put on his torn garments, and they sat for a while and rested. The torch showed them a long, low cave winding away into unknown darkness. There was a small sound of water flowing. The roar of the fall was gone. It was pleasant to hear the little sound again.

They were silent for a time. Then Oliver said,

“I thought they had drugged you. Spenlow said they had.”

Rose Anne said, “No.” And then, “Philip came and talked to me. It was rather dreadful, and it was very stupid of me, but after he had gone away I fainted. Marie and Louise came back and found me. They had been making me try on the dress—I was to wear—to marry Philip—and when they were getting it off me I began to come round and I heard them talking, and Marie said it was a shame, and Louise said no, I was lucky, and I ought to be only too pleased to have such a handsome man as Philip for a lover. She said he was as beautiful as an angel—
‘beau comme un ange.'
But I can't think why Philip should remind anyone of an angel—can you?”

Oliver said things about Philip.

“Yes,” said Rose Anne. “But I think he must have been badly brought up. He's been so frightfully spoilt. If we have children, we won't spoil them—will we?”

Oliver said “No.” The word choked him a little. Life with Rose Anne—a home—children—they were things hoped for but not yet seen.… He held her close and thought bitter thoughts.

But Rose Anne was happy. She had hated the water, and she had hated climbing up a horrible dripping cleft, with that roar in her ears, and a death trap of a pool just waiting for her to slip and go down and be pounded to a jelly on the stones. But that was all over now. When horrid things were actually happening she could be as frightened as anyone, but when they were over she found it very easy to be hopeful, and to feel sure that everything was going to come right. It was lovely to be with Oliver again, to feel his arm round her, and to put her head down on his shoulder.

She went on telling him about how she had got away.

“Where was I?… I know—I was telling you about Louise saying how lucky I was. It made me so angry that I very nearly sat up and told her what I thought about it, only fortunately I didn't. I went on swooning, and Marie said, ‘It is such a pity she must have the drug. She would be—oh, much more beautiful without it.' Marie admires me very much, you know. And then Louise said it was much better that I should be drugged than that I should spoil my face with weeping. And Marie said, “That is true. I will put it in the coffee—she drinks two cups always—and then she will sleep, and forget that she is unhappy, my poor m'amselle.”

“They put the stuff in my coffee too, but I didn't drink it.”

“Nor did I. But I made them think I had. I sent Marie for a handkerchief, and whilst she was out of the room I tipped the coffee back into the jug, so when she came in, there was her full cup and my empty one. She always has a cup with me, and I thought, “There won't be any drug in her cup, so I poured out my second one, and I managed to change it for hers. She was going to and fro, you know, putting that horrid silver dress away and talking about Philip. She didn't notice, so I drank hers and she drank mine, and then I said I was tired and I went to bed. Marie soon got sleepy. The stuff must have been very strong. She got out the key and locked us in—we're always locked in at night—but she was too sleepy to get to her own room. She sat down on the couch and went to sleep there with the key in her hand, and I dressed myself again and waited till I thought it was as safe as it was ever going to be, and then I took the key and locked her in, and came to find you. Oh, darling, isn't it lovely to think we've got away?”

Oliver said, “We've got to go on. We're not away yet, Rose Anne.”

She sighed.

“I suppose we must. I do hope there aren't any more waterfalls.”

The cave was low. Their voices echoed. It narrowed, widened out, and then narrowed again. A stream ran through it, and they followed the water. Presently the roof came down and met the floor. The water went on under an arch which stood a bare handsbreadth above the flow. Rose Anne looked at it, and looked at Oliver.

Oliver got on to his knees and sounded the stream. His arm went down into it to an inch or two over the elbow. He shone the torch into the gap, lying on the bank and getting his head level with the water. Then he scrambled up again.

“Look here, darling, I'm going to see if I can get through. It's a tight squeeze, but I don't think there's more than about a yard of it. I think there's another cave.”

Rose Anne said, “You
think
—”

“Well, I'm practically sure.”

She looked at the low arch and sickened. Six inches above the surface—eight inches—and the rock to keep your head down so that you couldn't reach the little air there was. She said in a muffled voice,

“Oliver—
don't!
Let's try and find—some other way.”

“Darling, there isn't any other way—I've been looking all along. And we must stick to the water—water's bound to come out somewhere. But if we lose it we might just wander round in circles and never get anywhere at all. You'll see it'll be quite all right. I'll go first and prospect.” He spoke in an assured and cheerful tone.

Rose Anne tried to keep her mind on that, but when she saw him go down into the water and disappear, terror came on her again. Suppose there wasn't a cave beyond the arch at all. Suppose the stream went on, and on, and on, with just its own channel to run in and no more. Suppose it fell sharply into some dreadful chasm in the darkness. Suppose—Her mind stopped.

She had the torch in her hand. Oliver had put it there, and what she had to do was to hold it low down over the water so that the beam might follow him and show him the way back. She watched the arch and the water, but she did not think. Her mind had stopped.

And then something round and dark came into the beam, and it was the back of Oliver's head. He put up a hand to feel whether he had head-room and lifted his face clear of the water, blinking, and gasping, and drawing long, deep breaths. Then he pulled himself up beside her and sat there dripping.

“It's all right—about six feet of passage and a fairly tight fit—plenty of head-room on the other side—the feel of a biggish place. Come along, we'd better get on before you get cold feet.”

“They can't be any colder than they are.”

Oliver said, “Nonsense!” And then, “I'm afraid you'll just have to get wet. Fortunately it's warm down here. Now look here, darling—it's quite easy, but you'll have to do exactly what I say. You see, we've got to make it in the dark. We can't afford to let the torch get wet. It will be all right done up in the oiled silk, and I think I'd better have it and go first. I want you to get down into the stream behind me, follow me right up to the arch, and then wait there until you can see the light shining through from the other side—you'll be able to see it all right. And as soon as you see it you can take a long breath and start pushing yourself through the arch. I'll be there to pull you out at the other side. Now come along.”

The torch changed hands, the torch went out. They were both in the water. Rose Anne was about six or seven feet from the arch, because she had to leave room for Oliver to get down on his hands and knees and then straighten out before he began to worm his way along the channel. She moved up behind him, the stream knee-high and running fast. It was very cold. Her teeth chattered.

Oliver was down under the water now. She took a few more steps and touched the rock with her outstretched hands. Then she knelt down in the water and stared at the arch which she could not see. If Oliver got through, there would be a light. She couldn't see anything now, but if Oliver got through, there would be a light and she would see the arch.

She began to count to herself, “One, two, three, four, five …” She got up to fifty, and there was no light, so she made herself go on counting. There was no light at a hundred, or at a hundred and fifty, or at two hundred. It was very difficult to go on counting. It was like rolling heavy stones up a very steep hill. She had the feeling that she mustn't stop, that something dreadful would happen if she were to stop.

She got to three hundred, and then all in a moment there was the arch—a bright arch painted on the darkness, and the stream flickering with little points of light. She thought Oliver called to her, but she couldn't be sure, the water made such a noise in its narrow bed. She filled her lungs with air, ducked down where the arch spanned the stream, and pushed herself forward, thrusting with her feet against the rock, reaching out with her hands to feel for any projection which would help her.

It was not as bad as the waiting had been, but it was bad enough. She was a good swimmer, but she did not like diving and had never learned to swim under water. She just shut her eyes and fought her way through. Oliver's hand touched hers and she was clear.

He pulled her up, and when she had got the water out of her eyes she saw the torch jammed in a crevice, and its ray very faint and small in the great dark cave to which they had come. They sat and dripped, and turned the torch here and there.

The cave was very large. The stream ran down into a lake. On this side there was a wide rocky shore, but on the farther side the water lay against the wall, and both were as black as ink. It came to Oliver that this was the place which Harold Spenlow had reached, and as soon as he thought of it he wished he hadn't. Marks on a bare arm—marks that looked as if they had been made by the teeth of a rake.… Much better not think about Spenlow and what he had heard in the dark. He said, suddenly and aloud,

“If Spenlow got as far as this, how did they get him back? By his own account he was more dead than alive.”

“I expect there's another way,” said Rose Anne comfortably. She didn't care in the least how they had got Dr Spenlow back. As long as she wasn't expected to crawl through any more tunnels, she didn't really care much about anything. Her teeth still chattered, but only from cold, and that hardly seemed to matter.

They wrung the worst of the wet out of their clothes and went on. Very bad going, as Harold Spenlow had said. Close down by the edge of the lake was easiest, because there the rock was smooth with the endless lapping of the water. The cave receded before them—black walls, black roof, black water, black rock beneath their feet. If they stood still they could hear the stream flowing in from under the arch. There was no other sound. When they spoke their voices made strange echoes.

The cave went on, and on, and on. And then, just when it seemed as if it would go on for ever, it came to an end. The black rock barred their way.

Oliver sent the beam of his torch to and fro, but this time there was no arch, no movement of the water to show whether it flowed on through some channel which they could not see. He thought, “If there were no outlet, the cave would fill. There must be an outlet.” He thought again, “There must be an outlet, but if it were of any size, we should see the current setting that way.”

He had a box of matches in his pocket. He went back fifty yards, tossed half a dozen of them out into the lake, and kept the beam on them. They clustered together and moved slowly away from the shore. They moved very slowly indeed. Sometimes they hardly seemed to move at all. Yet in the end it was clear that they were setting for the opposite side, where the rock rose sheer from the water's edge. He thought, “There's a current, but there's no strength in it. That means that there is an outlet, but not a big one. Anything big enough for us to get through would set up a much stronger current than that.”

He turned from the lake with an overwhelming sense of relief. If this were indeed Spenlow's cave, there must certainly be another and an easier way out of it. Spenlow, bitten to the bone and in the last stages of exhaustion, could never have been brought back by the way that he and Rose Anne had come. Besides, who would have taken such a way to find him? No, they must look for an exit somewhere above water level, amongst these piled and tumbled rocks. If they had more light—The ray seemed only to make the darkness visible. They slipped and scrambled, climbed, and fell back again, and all the time were hampered by the drag of their wet clothes.