The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 84

He gasped for air and immediately pain shot down his throat into his chest and his eyes burned and smarted so that he could barely see.

"Tear gas," he realized. The Shana were ga.s.sing the cavern.

Craig saw Tungata was in the water, crouched waistdeep behind the slab of rock. He had torn a strip from his s.h.i.+rt, wet it and bound it over his mouth and nose, but his eyes were red and running with tears.

"The whole cavern is swarming with troopers," he told Craig, his voice m.u.f.fled by the wet cloth, and he stopped as a stentorian disembodied voice echoed down the gallery, its English distorted by an electronic megaphone.

"If you surrender immediately, you will not be harmed." As if to punctuate this announcement, there was the "Pock" of a grenade-launcher and another tear-gas canister came flying down the gallery, bouncing off the limestone floor likea football, belching out white clouds of the irritant gas.

"They are down the staircase already, I couldn't stop them." Tungata bobbed up from behind the edge of the slab and fired a short burst up the gallery. His bullets cracked and whined from the rock, and then the AK went silent and he ducked down.

"The last magazine," he grunted and dropped the empty rifle into the water. He groped for the pistol on his belt.

"Come on, Sam," Craig gasped. "There is a way through beyond this pool."

"I can't swim." Tungata was checking the pistol, slapping the magazine into the b.u.t.t and jerking back the slide to load.

"I got Sarah through." Craig was trying to breathe through the searing clouds of gas. "I'll get you through." Tungata looked up at him.

"Trust me, Sam."

"Sarah is safe?"

"I promise you, she is." Tungata hesitated, fighting his fear of the waters.

"You can't let them take you," Craig told him. "You owe it to Sarah and to your people." Perhaps Craig had discovered the only appeal that would move him. Tungata pushed the pistol back into his belt.

"Tell me what to do," he said.

it was impossible to hyperventilate in the gas-laden atmosphere.

"Get what air you can, and hold it. Hold it, force yourself not to breathe again," Craig wheezed. The tear gas was ripping his lungs all he could feel the cold and deadly spread of lethargy like liquid in his veins. It was going to be a long, hard road home.

down. "Fresh air!" There was "Here!" Tungata pulled him still a pocket of clean air trapped below the angle of the slab. Craig drank it in greedily.

He took Tungata's hands and placed them on the canvas belt. "Hold on! I he ordered, and when Tungata nodded, he pulled one last long breath, and they ducked under together. They went down fast.

When they reached the wall there was no bulky oxygen set to enc.u.mber them, and Craig pulled Tungata through with what remained of his strength. But he was slowing and weakening drastically, once again losing the urge to breathe, a symptom of anoxia, of oxygen starvation.

They were through the wall, but he could not think what to do next. He was confused and disorientated, his brain playing tricks with him. He found he was iggling weakly, precious air bubbling out between his lips. The glow of the lamp turned a marvelous emerald green, and then split into prisms of rainbow light. It was beautiful, and he examined it drunkenly, starting to roll onto his back. It was so peaceful and beautiful, just like that fall into oblivion after an injection of pentathol. The air trickled out of his mouth and the bubbles were bright as precious stones. He watched them rise upwards.

"Upwards!" he thought groggily. "Got to go up!" and he kicked lazily, pus.h.i.+ng weakly upwards.

Immediately there was a powerful heave on his waist belt and he saw Tungata's legs driving like the pistons of a steam locomotive in the lamplight. He watched them with the weighty concentration of a drunkard, but slowly they faded out into blackness. His last thought was, "If this is dying, then it's better than its publicity," and he let himself go into it with a weary fatalism.

He woke to pain, and he tried to force himself back into that comforting womb darkness of death, but there were hands bullying and pommelling him, and the rough barked timber rungs of the ladder cutting into his flesh.

Then he was aware that his lungs burned and his eyes felt as though they were swimming in concentrated acid. His nerve ends flared up, so that he could feel every aching muscle and the sting of every scratch and abrasion on his skin.

Then he heard the voice. He tried to shut it out.

"Craig! Craig darling, wake upP And the painful slap of a wet hand against his cheek. He rolled his head away from it.

"He's coming round!" hey were like drowning rats at the bottom of a well, clinging half-submerged to the rickety ladder work all of them s.h.i.+vering with the cold.

The two girls were perched on the lower rung, Craig was strapped to the main upright with a loop of canvas under his armpits, and Tungata, in the water beside him, was holding his head, preventing it from flopping forward.

With an effort Craig peered around at their anxious faces and then he grinned weakly at Tungata. "Sam, you said you couldn't swim well, you could have footed me!"

"We can't stay here." Sally' Anne teeth chattered in her head.

"There is only one way" they all looked up the gloomy shaft above them.

Craig's head still felt wobbly on his neck, but he pushed Tungata's hand away, and forced himself to begin examining the condition of the timberwork.

It had been built sixty years ago. The bark rope that had been used by the old witch, doctors to bind the joints together had rotted, and now hung in brittle strings like the shavings from the floor of a carpentry shop. The entire structure seemed to0 have sagged to one side, unless the original builder's eye had not been straight enough to erect a plumb-line.

"Do you think it will hold us all?" Sarah voiced the question.

Craig found it difficult to think, he saw it all through a fine mesh of nausea and bone, weariness

"One at a time," he mumbled, "lightest ones first. You Sally-Anne, then Sarah--2 he reached up and untied his leg from the rung. "Take the rope up with you. When you get to the top, pull up the bags and the lamps." Obediently Sally-Anne coiled the rope over her shoulder, and began to climb up the ladder.

She went swiftly, lightly, but the ladder work creaked and swayed under her. As she went upwards, her lamp chased the shadows ahead of her up the shaft. She drew away until only the lamp glow marked her position, then even that disappeared abruptly.

"Sally-Anne!"

"All right!" Her voice came echoing down the shaft.

"There is a platform here."

"How big?"

"Big enough I'm sending down the rope." It came snaking down to them, and Tungata secured the bags to the end.

"Haul away!" The bundle went jerkily up the shaft, swinging on the rope.

"Okay, send Sarah." Sarah climbed out of sight, and they heard the whisper of the girls" voices high above. Then, "Okay next!"

"Go, SamP "You are lighter than I am."

"Oh for Chrissake, just do it! Tungata climbed powerfully, but the timberwork shook under his weight. One of the rungs broke free, and fell away beneath his feet.

"Look out below!" Craig ducked under the surface, and the pole hit the water above him with a heavy splash.

Tungata clambered out of sight, and his voice came "Carefully, Pupho! The ladder is breaking up! back, Craig pulled himself out of the water, and sitting on the bottom rung strapped on his leg.

OW.