by Wilbur Smith
‘No. There was one other room.’
‘Who was in it?’
She dropped her eyes, and her voice was small, ‘You were,’ she said.
‘Me? What did I say?’ He smiled.
‘You didn’t say anything,’ she whispered, and blushed so suddenly and fiercely that he was instantly intrigued.
‘What did I do then?’ He was still smiling.
‘Nothing. I mean, I can’t tell you.’ The dream returned to her, vivid and real as life, every detail of his naked body, even the smell and the feel of him. She forced herself to stop thinking about it. She felt vulnerable as she had been in the dream.
‘Tell me about it,’ he insisted.
‘No!’ She stood up quickly, confused and still blushing, trying to thrust the images from her.
Last night had been the first time in her life that she had ever dreamed of a man in that way, the first time she had ever experienced a full orgasm in her sleep. This morning, when she awoke, she found that she had soaked right through her pyjamas bottoms.
‘We have a full day ahead of us with no work to do,’ she blurted – the first thought that came into her mind.
‘On the contrary.’ He stood up with her. ‘We still have to make the arrangements for getting out of here. When the time comes, we will probably be in something of a hurry.’
‘Mind if I tag along?’ she asked.
Two teams, the Buffaloes and the Elephants, with only their foremen missing, were waiting for them at the quarry. They comprised sixty of the strongest men in the labour force. Nicholas unpacked the inflatable Avon rafts from one of the pallets. Each raft was deflated and folded into a neat pack, with the paddles strapped along the sides. These craft had been specifically designed for river-running in turbulent water, and each was capable of carrying sixteen crew and a ton of cargo.
Nicholas directed them to strap the heavy packs on to the carrying poles that they had cut for that purpose. Five men on each end of the long poles, with the bundle of the boat slung in the centre, made light of the load. They set off at a cracking pace down the trail, and as soon as one team tired the next was ready to take over. They made the exchange without even stopping, the new porters slipping their shoulders under the pole on the run while the exhausted team dropped out.
Nicholas carried the radio in its shockproof and waterproof fibreglass case. He would not trust such a precious instrument to one of the porters. He and Royan trotted along behind the caravan, joining in the chorus of the work chant that the porters sang as they carried their loads down to the monastery.
Mai Metemma was waiting on the terrace outside the church of St Frumentius to welcome them. He led them down the staircase hewn out of the rock of the cliff, two hundred feet to the very water’s edge. There was a narrow rocky ledge against which the Nile waters dashed, and the spray from the high waterfalls drifted over them like a perpetual drizzle of rain. After the heat and the bright sunlight above, it was cold and gloomy and dank down here in the depths of the gorge. The black cliffs ran with water, and the ledge on which they stood was wet and slippery underfoot.
Royan shivered as she watched the river racing by, forming a great spinning vortex as it swirled around the deep rock bowl and then raced out through the narrow throat of the gorge on its long hectic journey towards Egypt and the north.
‘If only I had known that this was the road you were planning on taking home—’ she eyed the river dubiously.
‘If you would prefer to walk, it’s okay by me,’ Nicholas told her. ‘With luck we will be carrying some extra baggage. The river is the logical escape route.’
‘I suppose it makes sense, but still it’s not terribly inviting.’ She broke off a piece of driftwood from a stranded tangle that lay trapped upon the ledge and tossed it into the river. It was whipped away, and raced over the standing wave where some submerged obstacle forced the surface to bulge up.
‘What speed is that current?’ she asked in a subdued voice as the splinter of driftwood was sucked below the surface.
‘Oh, not much more than eight or nine knots,’ he told her offhandedly, ‘but that’s nothing. The river is still very low. Just wait until it starts raining up in the mountains, then you will really see some water passing through here. It will be great fun. Lots of people would pay good money for the chance to run a river like this. You are going to love it.’
‘Thanks,’ she said drily. ‘I can’t wait.’
Fifty feet above the ledge, out of reach of the Nile’s highest water level, was a small cavern – the Epiphany shrine. Long ago the monks had cut this passage deeply into the rock face, and it ended in a spacious, candle-lit chamber that housed a life-sized statue of the Virgin, dressed in faded velvet robes, with the infant in her arms. Mai Metemma gave them his sanction to store the rafts in the shrine, and they stacked them against a side wall. When the porters had left, Nicholas showed Royan how to operate the quick-release handles on the packs, and the CO2 cylinders which would inflate the rafts within minutes. He wrapped the radio case and his small emergency pack in a sheet of plastic and stowed them in one of the boat packs, where he could lay his hands on them again in a hurry.
‘You do intend coming along on this joy ride?’ she asked anxiously. ‘You aren’t planning on sending me down on my ownsome?’
‘It is best that you know how it all works,’ he told her. ‘If things start to get a little hairy when the time comes to leave here, I may need your help in launching the rafts.’
When they climbed back up the staircase into the warmth and the sunlight, Royan’s uncertain mood had changed. ‘It’s not yet noon, and we have the rest of the day to ourselves. Let’s go back to Taita’s pool again,’ she suggested, and he shrugged indulgently.
The Buffaloes and the Elephants accompanied them as far as the branch in the trail. Here the teams headed back towards the dam, and shouted and hallooed their farewells after Nicholas and Royan.
Even in the short time since their last visit, the path through the undergrowth had become overgrown. Nicholas was forced to use his machete to hack a way through, and they ducked under the trailing thorn branches. It was mid-afternoon when they eventually crossed the high ridge and stood once again on the cliff directly above Taita’s pool.
‘It looks as though we were the last ones here.’ Nicholas’s tone was relieved. ‘No signs of any other visitors since us.’
‘Were you expecting any?’
‘You never know. Von Schiller is a formidable character, and he has some charming lads working for him. Helm is one that worries me, and I had a nasty feeling that he might have been snooping around here. I am going to take a closer look.’
He worked quickly around the entire area, casting widely for any sign of intruders. Then came back to where she sat on the lip of the abyss and dropped down beside her.
‘Nothing,’ he admitted. ‘We have still got the running to ourselves.’
‘Once Sapper stops the river upstream, this is going to be our main area of operations, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but even before Sapper closes the dam I want to open a fly camp here, and move all the gear and equipment we will need from the quarry to have it handy when we start the exploration of the pool.’
‘How are we going to get down into the pool? Down the river bed, once it is dry?’
‘I suppose we could use the dry river bed as a road, and come down it from below the dam or up from the monastery end, through the pink cliffs.’
‘But that is not the way you are planning to get in, is it?’ she guessed.
‘Even with no water in it, the river bed will be a long way round. It’s a three- or four-mile haul from either end of the abyss, added to which it will be a pretty rough road to travel.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘You are speaking to an expert on the subject. I went down it the hard way, and I wouldn’t want to do it again. There are at least five chutes and rock jams that I can remember being thrown over.’
‘What is your b
etter idea, then?’ she asked.
‘It’s not my idea,’ he contradicted her. ‘It’s Taita’s idea really.’
She peered over the edge. ‘You mean to build a scaffold down the cliff, just the way he did it?’
‘What’s good enough for Taita is good enough for me,’ he acknowledged. ‘The old boy probably had a good look at the alternative of using the river bed as an access road, and abandoned the idea.’
‘When will you start work on the scaffold, then?’
‘One of our teams is already cutting bamboo poles higher up the gorge. Tomorrow we will begin carrying them up here, and stacking them. We can’t waste a day. Once the dam is closed, we have to get into the dry pool as soon as possible.’
As if to add weight to his words there came a far-off mutter of thunder, and they both craned their heads to peer up with trepidation at the escarpment. Probably a hundred miles to the north, faintly washed as a sepia print superimposed upon the razor-edged blue silhouette of the escarpment wall, rose high tumbled towers of cumulonimbus clouds. Neither of them spoke about it, but both were aware of how ominously the storm clouds were settling on the distant mountains.
Nicholas glanced at his wrist-watch and stood up. ‘Time to start back if we are to get into camp before dark.’
He gave her his hand and lifted her to her feet. She dusted off her clothes and then stepped right to the very lip of the canyon.
‘Wake up, Taita. We are hot on your tracks,’ she called down into the shadows.
‘Don’t challenge him.’ Nicholas took her arm and drew her back. ‘The old ruffian has given us enough trouble already.’
The axemen had left the stumps of several great trees standing on the banks of the Dandera upstream from the dam. Sapper used these as anchor points for the heavy cables that he strung across the river. Through the cables he had rigged a cunning series of pulley blocks. The main cable was run back and connected to the tow hitch on the front-ender. Two other cables were laid out, one to each bank, where the Buffaloes and the Elephants stood ready to handle them. One team was under the direction of Nicholas, and the other under Mek Nimmur. For this crucial part of the construction, Mek had come down from the hills to lend a hand.
The grating of massive treetrunks lay on the river verge, already half in the water. Heavily weighted with boulders, it was an unwieldy structure that would require all their combined efforts to manoeuvre into position. Sapper slitted his eyes as he studied the layout, and then looked downstream to the partially completed dam. The two walls of gabions stretched out from either bank, but the gap in the middle of the river was twenty feet across and the whole volume of the river roared through it.
‘The one thing we don’t want is to let the bleeding plug run away from us and slam into the ruddy wall,’ he warned Nicholas and Mek. ‘Otherwise we are going to lose a big chunk of what we have done so far. I want to cuddle her in there, nice and softly, and let her sit snug in the gap. Any questions? This is your last chance to ask. You all know the signals.’
Sapper took one last drag on his cigarette, and flicked the stub into the river. Then, looking lugubrious, he said, ‘Okay, gents. The last one in the water is a sissy.’
Compared to their men, Nicholas and Mek were overdressed in their khaki shorts. The others were all stark naked. When the order was given they trooped waist-deep into the river and took up their stations along the cables.
Before he followed them into the river, Nicholas took one last look round. At breakfast that morning Royan had innocently asked to borrow his binoculars. Now he knew why. She and Tessay were perched up on top of the slope high above the gorge. Even as Nicholas watched, he saw Royan pass the binoculars to Tessay. They were not missing a moment of this fateful operation.
Nicholas looked back from the ridge to the rows of big naked men, pulled a face and muttered, ‘My oath, there are some prize specimens around here. I just hope that Royan isn’t making comparisons.’
Sapper climbed up on to the yellow tractor, and with a roar and a cloud of diesel smoke the engine burst into life. He raised one hand above his head with the fist clenched, and Nicholas relayed the order to his team: ‘Take the strain.’
The foremen repeated it in Amharic, and the men leaned back against the cables. Sapper threw the tractor into extra low, and eased her forward. The belly straightened in the lines, the sheave wheels squealed, and the timber grating slid ponderously down the bank into the river. The weighted end of the grating sank immediately and bumped along the bottom, while the lighter end floated high. Slowly they hauled it out into midstream, until it was hanging vertically in the water.
The current seized it and began to bear it away, straight at the wall of gabions. It picked up speed alarmingly. The tractor bellowed and blew out clouds of black smoke as Sapper threw her into reverse and backed up on the cables. The teams of naked black men heaved and chanted – some of them had already been dragged in neck-deep as they hauled on the lines.
The grating steadied across the current, and they let it fall away at a more sedate pace, down towards the open gap in the wall. As it began to slew towards one bank, Sapper lifted his right arm and windmilled it. Obediently, Mek’s team on the far bank paid out rope and Nicholas’s team on the near bank picked it up. Once again the grating was lined up on the gap.
‘Rock and roll. Close the hole,’ bellowed Sapper, and now the full current was too powerful to resist. It dragged both teams into the river until some of them were in over their heads, losing their hold on the lines and floundering and swimming. However, those men who still had their footing managed to slow the rush of the grating just enough to prevent it smashing out of control into the dam. It settled firmly across the gap, like a mammoth plug in the outlet of a giant’s bathtub, and instantly the current was cut off.
While the men in the water struggled ashore, their bodies wet and gleaming in the sunlight, Sapper threw off the cables from his tow hitch and roared along the bank with the front-ender in its highest gear. As it passed him, Nicholas grabbed a handhold and swung himself up on to the footplate behind Sapper’s seat.
‘Got to shore up now, before the grating bursts,’ Sapper yelled.
From his vantage point, clinging to the rear of the tall machine, Nicholas had a moment to assess the position. The dam was holding, but only just. Numerous jets of water spurted through every gap between the grating and the gabions. The pressure of water against the sheets of PVC in the grating was enormous. It was taking the full thrust of the river, flexing and bowing before it like a castle portcullis attacked with a battering ram.
Sapper picked up one of the gabions that were standing ready on the bank and drove down into the river bed below the dam. The flow of the water had shrivelled to a mere knee-deep trickle. Jets of water squirted through every chink in the wall, and the gabions were not impermeable; water was finding its way through the tightly packed stones.
As the front-ender churned and lurched over the rough bed at the back of the wall, Nicholas and Sapper were drenched by the jets spurting over them. It was like working under a cold shower. Sapper drove in close behind the straining grating and placed the heavy gabion against it. He threw the tractor into reverse and climbed up the bank to pick up another gabion. Slowly he built up a retaining wall behind the grating, placing the gabions in sloping ranks, until this revetment was as strong as the side piers.
Nicholas jumped down from the tractor and left Sapper to it while he ran back upstream to the canal that the teams had dug at the head of the valley. Most of the workers had gathered along the banks of this cutting already, and Nicholas saw both Royan and Tessay in the front row of the excited crowd.
Nicholas pushed his way through to Royan’s side, and she grabbed his hand. ‘It’s working, Nicky. The dam wall is holding.’
Even as they watched they could see the level of the trapped waters rising up the wall of grating and gabions. While the men chattered and laughed and urged it on, the river lapped at the entrance o
f the canal.
Fifty men seized their tools and jumped down into the bottom of the canal. Dust flew in clouds as they shovelled the broken earth aside to lead the first trickle of water into the mouth of the canal. The men on the banks above them whooped and chanted to encourage them, and a thin snake of river water found its way into the mouth of the canal. The men with the mattocks and shovels ran ahead of it, enticing it on down the cutting. Every time it met any obstruction and faltered, they fell upon the blockage and tore it away.
At last the thin trickle of water felt the gradient fall away as the valley opened before it. The trickle increased to a freshet, and then to a torrent. With its new strength it gouged out the canal and burst through with the full flow of the river behind it.
The men in the bottom of the cutting yelled with fright at the suddenness and ferocity of it, and scrambled up the sides of the canal. But some of them were not quick enough and were swept away, struggling and screaming for help. The men on the banks ran alongside them, throwing ropes and dragging them sodden and muddy from the flood.
Now the river roared through the canal and tore on down the valley, rediscovering the ancient course that it had not followed for thousands of years. For almost an hour they stood upon the bank watching it, for it exercised over them the particular spell that turbulent waters always have over men. They were forced to retreat step by step as the river cut the banks out from under their feet.
At last Nicholas roused himself, and went back to where Sapper was still shoring up the dam wall. By now he had erected a sloping revetment on the downstream side of the dam wall, with four rows of gabions on the bottom course gradually narrowing as it reached the top of the retaining wall. For the time being the dam was secure, the vulnerable grating had been shored up with the heavy, stone-filled mesh baskets, and the overflow through the canal into the valley had relieved much of the pressure upon it.
‘Do you think it will hold?’ Royan eyed the structure with suspicion.
‘Until the rains come, we hope.’ Nicholas drew her away. ‘We don’t want to waste any more time here. Time to go on downstream to begin work at Taita’s pool.’