The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 85

G.o.d, that feels good." He patted it affectionately, and gave a few trial kicks.

"I'm coming up," he called.

He had not reached the halfway point when he felt the structure move under him and he flung himself upwards too violently.

One of the poles broke with a report likea musket shot, and the entire structure lurched sideways. Craig grabbed the side frame, just as three or four cross-rungs broke away under him and fell, hitting the water below with a resounding series of splashes. His legs were dangling in s.p.a.ce, and every time he kicked for a foothold, he felt the timberwork sag dangerously.

"Pupho!" I'm stuck. I can't move or the whole b.l.o.o.d.y thing will come down."

"Wait!" A few seconds of silence and then Tungata's voice again. "Here's the rope. There is a loop in the end." it dropped six feet from him.

"Swing it left a little, Sam." The loop swung towards him.

"A little more! Lower, a little lower!" It dangled within reach.

"Hold hard! Craig made a lunge,4i it and got his arm through the loop.

"I'm coming on!" He released his hold on the side frame and swung free.

He was too weak to climb.

"Pull me up!" Slowly he was drawn upwards, and even in that dangerously exposed position, Craig appreciated the strength that it needed to lift a full-grown man this way- Without Tungata, he would never have made it.

He saw the glow of the lamp reflected off the walls of the shaft and getting closer, and then Sally-Anne's head peering over the edge of the platform at him.

"Not far now. Hold on!" He came level with the edge of the rock platform, and there was Tungata braced against the far wall, a loop of the rope over his back and shoulder, hauling doublehanded on the rope with the cords standing out in his throat and his mouth open, grunting with the effort. Craig hooked his elbow over the edge and then as Tungata heaved again he kicked wildly and wriggled over the edge on his belly.

It was many minutes before he could sit up and take an interest in his surroundings again. The four of them were huddled, s.h.i.+vering and sodden, on a canted platform of water-worn limestone, just large enough to accommodate them.

Above them, the vertical shaft continued upwards, disappearing into darkness, the walls smooth and unseal, able. The ladder work built by the old witch-doctors reached only as high as this platform. In the silence, Craig could hear the drip of water somewhere up there in the darkness and the squeak of bats disturbed by their voices and movements. Sally' Anne held the lamp high, but they could not make out the top of the shaft.

Craig looked about the ledge. It was about eight feet Hill wide, and then in the far wall he saw the entrance to a subsidiary branch of the tunnel, much lower and narrower than the main shaft, cutting into the rock on the horizontal.

"That looks like the only way to go," Sally' Anne whispered. "That's where the old witch, doctors were headed." n.o.body replied. They were all exhausted by the climb and chilled to the bone.

"We should keep going!" Sally-Anne insisted, and Craig roused himself.

(Leave the bags and rope here." His voice was still hoa.r.s.e and scratchy from the tear gas and he coughed painfully.

"We can come back for them when we need them." He did not trust himself to stand. He felt weak and unsteady and the black drop of the shaft was close at his side. He crawled on hands and knees to the opening in the far wall.

"Give me the lamp." Sally-Anne handed it to him and he crawled into the low entrance.

There was a pa.s.sage beyond. After fifty feet the roof lifted so that he could rise into a crouch and, steadying himself against the wall with his free hand, go on a little faster. The others were following him. Another hundred feet, and he stooped through a last low natural doorway of stone and then stood to his full height. He looked about him with swiftly rising wonder. The others coming out of the opening behind him jostled him, but he hardly noticed it. He was so enraptured by his new surroundings.

They stood in a group, close together, as if to draw comfort and courage from each other, and they stared.

Their heads revolved slowly, craning upwards and from side to side.

"My G.o.d, it's beautiful," whispered Sally-Anne. She took the lamp from Craigi hand and lifted it high.

They had entered # cavern of lights, a cavern of crystal.

Over countless ages I the sugary crystalline calcium had been deposited by water seepage over the tall vaulted ceiling and down the walls. It had dripped onto the floor and solidified.

It had crafted marvelous sculptures in glittering iridescent light. On the walls there were traceries, like ancient Venetian lace, so delicate that the lamplight shone through them as though through precious porcelain. There r were cornices and pillars of monolithic splendour Joining the high roof to the floor, there were suspended marvels of rainbow colours shaped like the wings of angels in flight.

Huge spiked stalact.i.tes hung as menacingly as the bur rushed sword of Damocles, or as the white teeth in the upper jaw of a man-eating shark. Others suggested gigantic chandeliers, or the pipes of a celestial organ, while from the floor the stalagmites rose in serried ranks, platoons and squadrons of fantastic shapes, hooded monks dressed in ca.s.socks Of mother-of-pearl, wolves and hunchbacks, heroes in gleaming armour, ballerinas and hobgoblins, graceful and grotesque, but all burning with a million tiny crystalline sparks in the lamplight.

Still in a small group, hesitantly, a step at a time, they moved forward down the length of the cavern, picking their way through the gallery of tall stalagmitic statues and stumbling over the dagger like points of limestone that had broken off the ceiling and littered the floor like ancient arrowheads.

Craig stopped again, and the others pressed up so closely to him that they were all touching.

The centre of the cavern was open. The floor had been swept of fallen debris, and in the open s.p.a.ce human hands had built, from gleaming limestone, a square platform, a stage or a pagan altar. On the altar, with legs drawn up against his chest, clad in the golden and dappled skin of a leopard, sat the body of a man.

"Lobengula." Tungata sank down on one knee. "The one who drives like the wind: Lobengula's hands were clasped over his knees, and they were mummified, black and shrunken. His fingernails had continued growing after death. They were long and curved, like the claws of a predatory beast. Lobengula. must once have worn a tall headgear of feathers and fur, but it had fallen from his head and now lay on the altar beside him.

The heron feathers were still blue and crisp, as though plucked that very day.

Perhaps by design, but more likely by chance, the sitting corpse had been placed directly beneath one of the seepages from the roof. Even as they stood before the altar, another droplet fell from high above and, with a soft tap, burst upon the old king's forehead, and then snaked down over his face like slow tears. Millions upon millions of drops must have fallen upon him, and each drop had laid down its deposit of s.h.i.+ning calcium on the mummified head.

Lobengula was being transformed into stone, already his scalp was covered with a translucent helmet, like the tallow from a guttering candle. It had run down and filled his eye-cavities with the pearly deposit, it had lined his withered lips and built up the line of his jaw. Lobengula's perfect white teeth grinned out of his stone mask at them.

The effect was unearthly and terrifying. Sarah whimpered with superst.i.tious dread and clutched at Sally' Anne who returned her grip as fervently. Craig played the lamp beam over that dreadful head and then slowly lowered it.

On the rock altar in front of Lobengula had been placed five dark objects. Four beer-pots, hand-moulded from clay with a stylized diamond pattern inscribed around each wide throat, and the mouth of each pot had been sealed with the membrane from the, ladder of a goat. The fifth object was a bag, made from the skin of an unborn zebra foetus, the seams st.i.tched -with animal sinew.

"Sam, you-" Craig started, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat, and started again. "You are his descendant. You are the only one who should touch anything here." Tungata was still down on one knee, and he did not reply. He was staring at the old king's transformed head, and his lips moved as he prayed silently. Was he addressing Sir, the Christian G.o.d, Craig wondered, or the spirits of his ancestors?

Sally-Anne's teeth chattered spasmodically, the only sound in the cavern, and Craig placed his arms around the two girls. They pressed against him gratefully, both of them s.h.i.+vering with the cold and with awe.

Slowly Tungata rose to his feet and stepped forward to the stone altar. "I see you, great Lobengula,"he spoke aloud.

Samson k.u.malo, of your totem and of your blood, greet you across the years!" He was using his tribal name again, claiming his lineage as he went on in a low but steady voice. "If I am the leopard cub of your prophecy, then I ask your blessing, oh king. But if I am not that cub, then strike my desecrating hand and wither it as it touches the treasures of the house of Mashobane." He reached out slowly and placed his right hand on one of the black clay pots.

Craig found that he was holding his breath, waiting for he was not sure what, perhaps for a voice to speak from the king's long-dead throat, or for one of the great stalact.i.tes to crash down from the roof, or for a bolt of lightning to blast them all.

The silence drew out, and then Tungata placed his other hand on the beer pot and slowly lifted it in a salute to the corpse of the king.

There was a sharp crack and the brittle baked clay split.

The bottom fell out of the pot, and from it gushed a torrent of glittering light that paled and rendered insipid the crystalline coating of the great cavern. Diamonds rattled and bounced on the altar stone, tumbling and slithering over each other, piled in a pyramid, and lay smouldering like live coals in the lamplight.

cannot believe these are diamonds," Sally-Anne whispered. "They look like pebbles, pretty, s.h.i.+ny pebbles, but pebbles." They had poured the contents of all four pots and of the zebra-skin bag into the canvas food-bag, and leaving the empty clay pots at the feet of the old king's corpse, they retreated from Lobengula's presence to the end of the crystal cavern nearest the entrance pa.s.sage.

"Well, first thing," Craig observed, "legend was wrong.

Those pots weren't a gallon each, more likea pint."