by Andrew Garve
“Oh? It didn’t strike me that way.”
“Well, look at the contours—it’s quite a basin we’re standing in. The water would come rushing down here, with no obvious outlet, and in time it would find a way through the limestone. Carbonic acid, you know, and erosion, and there was probably some weak place to help it along.”
Quilter smiled at his technicalities. “You ought to bring your boys up here some time and give them a lesson on the spot.”
“Not likely,” said Anstey. “They’d be down that hole like rabbits!” He took a last look round. “Right, let’s get the gear out.”
Quilter turned to the station wagon. Now that the moment had come he was aware of a slight reluctance. Perhaps it was something to do with the weather—it seemed a pity to leave the surface on such a perfect day, especially as the fine spell couldn’t be expected to last much longer. Still, he certainly couldn’t let Anstey down now. The mood soon passed and he started to unload.
There seemed to be more stuff than ever when it was spread out on the turf, and Quilter inspected it with interest and some surprise. There were three lengths of steel-wire ladder done up in separate bundles; three coils of nylon rope; some iron pitons with circular heads for the rope to go through; a small sledgehammer; a couple of sacks, and two powerful waterproof torches with spare batteries.
Anstey smiled at Quilter’s expression. “Potholing isn’t like rock-climbing, you know, sir—no aids are barred. I’ve even known people use tubular scaffolding.” He stowed a host of smaller objecte into the capacious pockets of his boiler suit. Then he divided the bulkier stuff into two lots on what appeared to be some carefully thought out plan, and they took a sackful each. “Right, let’s go,” he said.
A moment later he had lowered himself into the hole, letting the sack drop as soon as he saw that there was a safe landing place. Quilter waited till he touched bottom and then followed him in. There was just room for the two of them to stand.
“So far, so good,” said Anstey. He peered down the sloping passage. “You know this bit, of course, but I think I’d better go first.” He pushed the sack ahead of him and wriggled his way head foremost into the tunnel as Quilter had done, his headlamp brilliantly illuminating the gradual descent. Quilter switched his own light on and found it most satisfactory. The going was very easy and he was close on Anstey’s heels when the first precipice brought them up sharp. “This is where I stopped,” he said, rather unnecessarily.
Anstey grunted and flashed his torch around, trying to find the opposite walls. “It’s a big place,” he said, “I can’t see a thing.” He took some old newspapers from one of his pockets and screwed them up into long spills. He was humming quietly—Oh for the wings of a dove! “Presently he was ready. “Can you squeeze a bit nearer,” he said, “just in case there’s anything worth seeing?” He lit the spills and dropped them one after another into the void. For a moment or two, as they flared, they lit up one side of the chasm, showing rough serrated edges of rock, horribly uninviting. For a while they wafted on air currents, burning brightly, and then they gradually flickered out.
“Not much help,” said Anstey.
Quilter was still staring down, the smell of burned paper in his nostrils. “Horrible place! If there were steam rising I’d expect to see tridents!”
“I’ll try for depth,” said Anstey, who was now intent on the job. He produced a coil of thin cord with a lead weight attached to one end, which he lowered carefully over the edge and slowly paid out.
“I threw a piece of rock over,” said Quilter.
Anstey nodded. “I’ve had to rely on that method sometimes when I’ve had no plumb-line, but it’s not very satisfactory. Somebody worked out quite a good formula—a Frenchman, I think it was—that gave pretty accurate results, but there’s always the human element. The trouble is that the rock may hit something on the way down and then it slows up on the rebound and puts the timing out. Also it may dislodge other stones and then you don’t know where you are. Of course, this doesn’t always work, either—it depends which way the wall slopes.” He was still paying out the cord, counting the knots at measured distances. Once the lead stopped as it caught on some projection but Anstey swung it free again with a jerk of the line.
“Sixty feet, so far,” he said.
“Perhaps it’s bottomless,” murmured Quilter. “We’d be in a fine hole then!”
Anstey gave a little chuckle, but said nothing. A moment later the lead touched again and this time no shaking could dislodge it. “About sixty-eight feet,” he announced calmly. “How do you feel about it, Mr. Quilter?”
“I’ll tell you when we get to the bottom,” Quilter said. Anstey rolled up the lead line and carefully stowed it away. All his movements were precise and unhurried. “We’ll have to drive in some pitons to hold the ladder,” he said. “Two, if possible. Can you go back a yard or two?”
Quilter gave him room and Anstey began to examine the rock floor. Presently he found a crack that satisfied him and drove one of the short steel wedges deep into the cleft, wielding the sledgehammer with difficulty in the confined space. Quilter, watching him testing the piton for firmness and then repeating the whole process in another cleft a little farther back, began to understand why exploration below ground took such a long time. Even the unrolling of the wire ladder, the avoidance of tangling, required deliberation and care. At last, however, it was in position, its top end made fast to both pitons so that if one gave way the other would hold. Anstey weighted the other end with a stone and lowered it into the darkness until it touched bottom.
Then, for the first time, he hesitated. “There’s a bit of a snag at this point. If you went first, Mr. Quilter, I could lower you on a safety line—it’s a sound precaution whenever possible. On the other hand if I go first I can hold the ladder for you and prevent it swinging, and if there are any unexpected difficulties I can let you know. What do you say?”
“I’m in no hurry,” said Quilter. “Frankly, I think I’d sooner you did the reconnoitring. There’s no danger of these ladders breaking, is there?”
“I’ve never heard of it happening. I wasn’t thinking of that—it’s just that the rope’s a support if you happen to get a bit panicky. Still, I’m sure you’ll be all right. I’ll lead, then. Now here’s the drill. I’ll go down and take a look round. If everything’s straightforward I’ll give one blast on this whistle. When you hear it you’ll let down the gear on a rope—you’ve got a ninety foot length in your sack. Make sure it’s tied securely. I’ll detach the gear and we’ll leave the rope hanging. The second whistle will mean that you can came down yourself.”
Quilter nodded.
“Don’t hurry it. Oh, and be very careful how you move about near the edge—the biggest risk in this job is that who-ever’s below may get knocked out by something, falling on his head.”
“I’ll be careful,” said Quilter grimly. That was something he didn’t need telling—the incident on the Pinnacle was much too fresh in his mind.
“I’m off, then—see you in the depths!” Anstey wriggled round so that for a moment his headlamp dazzled Quilter, and then he had grasped one of the rungs, found a foothold on the ladder and dropped below the edge. He seemed to have no nerves. Soon his lamp was no more than a pinpoint in the blackness.
In what seemed to Quilter a remarkably short time—a matter of minutes only—the first whistle came up eerily out of the chasm. He had just finished knotting up the sacks. As he lowered them they swung once round the ladder and there was a check, but they soon came free again and reached the bottom in safety. The weight came off the rope and a second blast on the whistle gave him his signal.
He felt his pulse quicken a little and once again he almost wished he hadn’t come. He was accustomed enough to sheer drops on the mountains in daylight—he had hung over many a precipice of more than sixty feet with nothing but the skill of his hands and feet to rely on. But it was a bit different trusting yourself to three millimetres of
steel wire in a pit of darkness. He thought of what would happen if the ladder broke or the pitons became dislodged—he had to think of it. It was his way to suffer in imagination all the pangs of disasters that never happened. It was the same when he was driving a car or travelling by plane—he always had to live through the crash that might come as a way of insuring himself against fear. Once he had done that, he was all right. The thought that always troubled him was that he might be caught off guard, mentally unprepared, and fail in a crisis. That was what had happened on the Pinnacle.
It would never do, though, to let Anstey sense his hesitation, and in a moment or two he had braced himself. The pit could do its worst. He turned as Anstey had done till his legs overhung the edge, groped for a rung, and committed himself to the ladder.
It felt much safer than he’d expected, once he’d accustomed himself to the thinness of the wire and the very slight swaying motion, and for the first few yards he made good progress. Then he ran into a bit of trouble. For some distance the rock wall bulged outwards like a nose so that the ladder pressed close against it and made toe-holds difficult. He took his time, and presently cleared the hazard as the wall turned in again. The point of light that was Anstey was getting larger every moment and as his confidence increased his pace quickened. Four minutes after his take-off he stepped down on to the floor of the chasm, pleasantly conscious of a sense of achievement.
“Nice work,” said Anstey approvingly. “Now let’s see where we are.” Both men flashed their torches round the chamber, probing the rough rock surfaces with strong beams of light. They appeared to be at the bottom of a funnel-shaped hole which narrowed where they stood to no more than ten feet. The walls were jagged, with a dry yellowy-white hue. The silence was absolute. Quilter was surprised to find that the air, though fresh and cool, was not unpleasantly cold.
Anstey began at once to make a tour of the chamber, inspecting every crevice. “There’s always a chance we might find something that your great-grandfather missed,” he said hopefully. However, there seemed to be no exit except the one marked on the plan and presently they continued on their way.
There was a crawl ahead of them now, along a passage about three feet wide and hip-high. The sharp rock floor was hard on the knees, and the sacks that they rolled ahead of them tended to catch on jutting fragments, but otherwise the going was straightforward enough. For twenty yards the tunnel ran almost horizontally. Then it took a downward plunge, not precipitously but steeply enough to make caution advisable. Anstey, taking no risks, stopped to drive in another piton at the top of the dip and fix a rope to steady them as they descended. “We’ll be glad of it on the return journey, too,” he said.
As he ceased to hammer, and the echoes died, Quilter said sharply, “What’s that?”
They crouched motionless, listening. From somewhere far below came a hoarse murmur, a vibration rather than a sound, which they hadn’t noticed before.
“Water!” exclaimed Anstey in a tone of excitement. “A watered pothole in the Lakes! This is more than I’d dared to hope for.”
A few minutes’ slithering and scrambling down the slope brought them to a flattish ledge beyond which was darkness. Kneeling there, with their lights flashing ahead, they saw that they had come to the second of Joseph Quilter’s precipices.
This time, it took longer to prepare for the descent. The lead, it seemed, would never touch bottom, and when finally the cord went limp even Anstey looked a little awed. “I make it a hundred and twenty-five feet,” he said. “This is going to take us some time.”
The ledge, though wide enough to accommodate several people, offered no crevices suitable for the pitons and Anstey had to climb back up the slope for several yards before he found a place where he could anchor the ladder. Quilter watched his assured, deliberate movements with admiration, thinking how fortunate he had been in his choice of a companion.
At last the new ladder was securely in place and Anstey lowered himself over the edge. “Same drill as last time,” he said, “except that I’ll wave my torch when I’m ready for you instead of blowing the whistle. At that depth you might not hear it.”
Quilter lay on his belly, watching the first few yards of the descent, and then he waited as patiently as he could for the “All clear.” When at last it came, lowering the gear took an age and going down himself much longer than the first time. Forty yards of ladder was far too much for Anstey to hold taut from the bottom, and the swing was most disconcerting. Quilter tried to concentrate on the rungs and forget the vastness of the space in which he was dangling, but it was difficult with that vibrating sinister buzz in the air. It was with a sense of unalloyed relief that he finally touched bottom.
Once they began to shine their torches around he lost all trace of nervousness in the thrill of discovery. This was an infinitely more exciting place than the Funnel Chamber. A stream of water gushed from a great rift in the wall some twenty feet above their heads and broke in spray on the floor of the cavern, filling the air with a fine mist that clouded Quilter’s glasses. As, he turned, a cluster of stalagmite was caught in his head light. The upper chamber and passages had seemed dead, finished, abandoned, but this one was alive.
“We must see more of it,” said Anstey. He groped for a length of magnesium tape and Quilter heard the scratch of a match. Suddenly a dazzling white glare rent the darkness.
Quilter caught his breath in wonder at the spectacle that suddenly opened up before them. The cavern was so vast that a church would have been lost in it. The roof, even in that brilliant light, was too high to be visible. The walls, instead of rising sheer and plain, climbed fantastically in weird limestone formations, one behind the other, higher and higher, like the scenery in a fairy pantomime. There was a whole landscape here, marvellously sculpted and infinitely varied and glowing with an amber lustre.
The two men stood rooted beside their puny ladder, drinking in the scene while the light lasted. Right ahead of them there was a great bunch of stalactite that looked like a petrified waterfall, and beside it a rock cascade polished to smoothness by erosion and furrowed from top to bottom by gigantic, flutings. From a high cleft hung a mass of snow-white curtains, wrinkled fabrics that looked as though they had been checked in motion by a magic wand. There were pedestals and obelisks and organ pipes, carved and chased into exquisite reliefs, and tortured rocks in unlikely, unbelievable shapes. The whole scene gained added impressiveness from the sense of space and utter remoteness, and from the water which had built up its own clay and pebble dams so that it lay in wide motionless pools that reflected and doubled the beauty of the rocks.
Then the light went out.
“You know, I wouldn’t have missed that for anything in the world,” said Anstey in a hushed voice, as though he were talking in a cathedral. “What a find! What a terrific find!”
“I’d no idea-there were such places,” said Quilter soberly.
“It’s like being on an entirely new planet. It’s staggering …” He broke off and laughed, a shade unsteadily. “My head’s quite fuzzy with adjectives.”
“At least,” said Anstey with satisfaction, “you know now that there’s more to potholing than wriggling along tunnels on your belly. This is why it gets hold of people—this is the reward that makes all the effort and discomfort worth while. All the same, you don’t see a chamber like this very often, not in England.” He picked up his sack. “I can hardly wait to find out what happens next. Let’s follow the stream and see where it goes. Watch your step, now.”
They began to cross the floor of the chamber, walking beside the string of dammed-up pools. The ground was very uneven, with slabs of soft slippery clay lying treacherously between young growths of stalagmite that snapped and crackled under foot. Once they were held up by a grille of translucent rods and several times they had to make detours round major obstructions, but their general direction was indicated by the flowing stream and there was no danger that they might lose their way. Anstey plodded ahead, c
ool, observant, picking his steps. Presently they reached the opposite wall of the chamber and the stream narrowed and led them into a new passage, wide enough and high enough to permit them both to walk upright side by side. The water, for all the disturbance that it had made in falling, now lay shallow in its bed beside them, its current barely perceptible.
“This is what I call caving in comfort,” said Anstey as he shouldered his sack and plunged into the runnel. The conditions were indeed not only easier now but far more interesting, for in the confined space their torches and headlamps effectively illuminated the walls and roof and they could see all there was to be seen. There was one place where the rock was sheeted with crystalline enamel; another where Anstey’s torch revealed splash deposits of exquisite delicacy and loveliness. There were coral-coloured bowls gleaming with limpid water and opaline limestone flowers glistening, and sparkling in rock niches. At every step one or other of the men would brush away long vitreous threads that hung like hairs from the roof or snap the slender spikes of purest calcite that bristled from the walls. It was like walking in an enchanted kingdom.
They had lost track of the distance they had covered when the passage suddenly opened into a third cave, much smaller than the Cascade Chamber. Anstey lit another flare, but the place was comparatively dull, or else their sense of wonder had become blunted. They pressed on along the continuation of the tunnel, which now ran almost level and seemed interminable. They had been walking for at least a quarter of an hour, never leaving the stream, when round a bend the passage widened into yet another chamber and they were brought up sharp against a blind rock face.
They dumped their gear and Anstey bent over the plan, seeking guidance. Quilter glanced at his watch and saw to his amazement that the time was nearly half-past one.