I woke from a wonderful dream, instantly forgotten as I realised nothing had changed, that we were still imprisoned in this maze of caves. But the good feeling persisted, which was just as well, because the others, except Beau, were distinctly querulous and grumpy. It took me time to get them going, to make them believe that a breakfast of a handful of nuts and raisins and a drink of water from a brackish pool was sustaining.
However we made good progress that day, led by the indefatigable cat and heartened by the fact that the passages we followed all seemed to slope downwards and lead in the right direction. Then around five in the evening, we came across an unexpected hazard.
Beau came trotting back to announce that a few hundred yards farther on the passage dropped away some thirty feet after a recent subsidence, and it would be difficult to climb down.
"We mustn't get too near the edge: it's still crumbling away."
"No other way round? An alternative passage?"
"Sorry, no."
We proceeded cautiously, but there was no doubt when we came to the edge of the landslide, for there were still rattles of stone and pebble, and the ground felt crumbly beneath our feet.
"How do we get down?" said Danny.
"Not sure," I said. "Beau is going to take a look . . . Take care," I muttered to him. "We don't want to lose you . . ."
"Give us a kiss, then . . ."
"Shut up! Sorry . . ."
"Apology accepted. Don't worry: cats have nine lives, you know, even if they are princes in disguise . . ."
His fur slid under my hand and he disappeared. Claude, Danny and I huddled together, listening to the slithers still occuring.
"How long has he been?" I whispered to Claude.
"Nearly five minutes," he whispered back, and after that I must have asked him to consult his watch every thirty seconds, until he told me gruffly to stay still and wait. But the waiting seemed intolerable and it was with the greatest relief that I heard a scrabble of claws and a panting Beau arrived back.
I overwhelmed him with questions until he tapped his paw against my thigh. "Hush up! Let me get my breath back . . ." A couple of minutes later he told me what he had found. "Now you won't like it, but it isn't impossible. It's farther than I thought, some sixty feet or so, and it is more or less sheer all the way down. And before you ask, no, none of you could expect to climb down unassisted."
"Then how in the world did you manage it?"
"Have you ever watched a cat climb down from high up in a tree? No, I thought not. They spread out all their claws and come down backwards, paw over paw, back ones hanging on, front ones finding the best purchase, then, when they reckon they are near enough to the ground, they twist around, kick off with their back feet and land right way up."
I translated the essential bits to the others.
"All right for cats, but how do we manage?" said Danny.
"Find a witch, and we can all be cats." I said facetiously. Beau was the only one who knew what I was talking about, and he wasn't best pleased.
"Serve you right if I left you to work it out for yourselves!" he hissed. Of course he didn't mean it, and between us we planned a viable solution. We had a rope fifty feet long, which would have to be looped securely at the top; this would make it too short to reach the ground at the other end, but if we added a couple of blankets that should lengthen it enough. Unfortunately the nearest knob of rock to which we could attach the rope was some way back down the passage, so it meant tying our jackets together by the sleeves to get the extra length. At last Beau declared himself satisfied with our knots, and I only hoped the seams in our now rather tatty jackets wouldn't split.
"Well, who's first?" I asked. "Afraid I've never climbed down a rope before."
"Neither have I," said Claude.
"Sure and I have," said Danny. "Many's the time my pa and I went—"
He stopped suddenly as if afraid of saying too much. He shrugged. "I'll go first. Give us a candle and vestas, and it'll light the rest of you down." He spat on his hands and rolled the sleeves of his woollen shirt down over the palms. Grabbing the rope he swung himself over the edge accompanied by the rattle of stones and pebbles. He disappeared into the darkness, and there was only the creak of the rope and an occasional muffled exclamation to show us he was still there.
There was an agonising wait, then a thump and an "Ouch!"
"Are you all right?"
"Sure, fine and dandy!" His voice had an echo. "Apart from a broken leg and a lump on my head the size of a duck's egg . . . Only joking. The rope is still about three feet short: difficult to see where you're landing. Haul the rope back and send down the haversacks next, while I light this candle."
Looping the straps through Claude's scarf, which gave us the extra length we needed, this was accomplished successfully, then it was my turn.
My palms were sweating. "I'll never make it!"
"Of course you will," said Beau. "Make a proper loop from the scarf and Claude will lower you down. You're not heavy, and it isn't very far."
After all that it was easier than going to the dentist; there was a moment of utter panic when I was lowered over the edge, but luckily I kept my mouth shut. Claude lowered me jerkily, hand over hand, but as I had my eyes firmly closed it wasn't until I found Danny's hands around my waist that I realised that I was safe. He set me down gently as I disentangled myself from the scarf.
"All right, Sophy?"
I nodded, exhaling a breath I hadn't realised I was holding.
Now it was Claude's turn. The rope started swaying, Danny grabbed the end to hold it steady, and soon enough I saw the soles of Claude's boots by the light of the candle some ten or fifteen feet above me. Then everything went wrong. There was a snapping, tearing sound and he fell the last six feet, bringing the scarf and my jacket, minus the right sleeve, to land heavily with his left ankle twisted underneath him.
He let out a cry as he tried to stand and crumpled back down again. Even by the sparse light of the candle I could see that his face was white and twisted with pain.
"Think I've broken it—swelling up like mad!"
I unlaced his boot carefully, before the ankle swelled up too much to get it off; casting about for something to wrap it up I saw the very thing: his own scarf. Pouring water from my water-bottle I handled the ankle carefully: there had been plenty of sprains and breaks in the school at which I had taught, and I could see and feel that there was no break, but sometimes a sprain was more painful. I wrapped it up tightly until he looked like a man with a bad case of gout.
"Just take it easy. I'll give you a headache powder to ease the pain a bit."
"Always knew his brains were in his feet. . . ."
"Don't be cruel, Danny . . ." although I was smiling to myself. I telegraphed Beau to unhook the rope and send it down, moving us out of the way. It snaked into a neat coil at my feet, closely followed by the cat himself.
I insisted that we carry on, although Claude was in considerable pain. Perhaps I was being hard, but I knew just how little food there was left and God only knew how long it would take us to find a way out. We did stop early for supper and sleep, although both were in short supply.
I lay awake longer than the others, trying to control my troublesome cough.
Next day we moved as fast and as far as we could, although Claude found it difficult to keep up, even though the passage was now mostly wide enough for Danny to walk alongside and hook his shoulder under Claude's. I was really worried; we were down to a mere handful of food, although there were plenty of little streams and rivulets to slake our thirst. Most worrying of all was the situation as far as the candles were concerned. There were only two and a half left, and while we could manage without food for a while, we couldn't stumble about in the darkness.
I was just about to suggest settling down for the night, having turned to see the exhausted faces of Danny and Claude, when Beau came bounding up the passage.
"Another half-mile and there is a large cavern. No way out, but a glimpse of the world outside."
Intrigued, we followed him into a cave, the largest I had ever seen, stretching away into a darkness too great for our feeble candle. Not only did it stretch away on either side, it also soared up like the roof of a cathedral, and even our whispers were tossed back in mini-echoes. It was awesome and I felt a bit like tip-toeing. It was the sort of place one would expect to find stalactites and stalagmites marching away like the pillars in a church.
We walked along the left side until we found a relatively smooth patch to settle down on. I dished out most of what was left—only a handful of dried fruit for breakfast, and that was it—then renewed Claude's bandage. As soon as we were finished I blew out the remains of the candle, hoping it would last us for a while in the morning.
Then it happened.
There was a glow in the cavern, a soft light that came and went. We all looked up in the same direction at once and there was a collective gasp of recognition.
"The sky!"
"Moonlight."
"Clouds!"
"And the stars—how absolutely wonderful!"
Stumbling in the dark, but drawn irresistably by the light, we walked into the centre of the cavern, and stood under the jagged hole that scarred the southern wall of the cave. No way could we climb up there: it must have been a hundred feet up, but from where we stood we could feel the occasional breath of fresh, colder air. Heavy clouds interrupted the westering moon, now near full, and I felt a sudden alarm when I realised the Eg had to be delivered on the night after the full—
"Reminds me of home," said Danny. "The roof's leaking. Anyone got a bucket?" and he pointed to the shaft of light, down which drifted a few desultory snowflakes.
We awoke to light, real light, day-light.
None of us had passed a particularly good night. There was the uneven dripping of water from somewhere nearby; it was colder than it had been and the blankets were not much help; worst of all there were certain cracking and rumbling noises, mostly far off, although the echoes in the cavern were distortive, and my chest felt tight and uncomfortable.
"Sounds as if the whole complex is falling to pieces," I muttered to Beau.
"Nothing of the sort! Every now and again, especially when the temperature changes, or when water has built up and seeks a way out, then you get a rockfall or two: that's what you can hear. Go back to sleep. . . ."
And now, like all mornings in the light, the night fears and dangers were chased away. The dawnlight coming down through Danny's "hole in the roof" was still grey, but quite strong enough for us to see to eat the handful of food left.
"That's it," I said unnecessarily.
Beau, who had eaten nothing for two days, now came and nudged my elbow. "Come and see something that might cheer you up."
He led me over to a spot almost directly opposite the soft light coming through the jagged hole. I peered at the wall: it looked as though there were faint scratches in the stone.
"What is it? Why is it important?"
"It's hope. Our first. Wait a minute until the light grows stronger, then look closer."
I did as he suggested, then I could make out what looked like pictures of animals, but the sort of animals I had never seen before. A long-tusked elephant with a thick coat of hair, a tiger with down-pointing canine teeth, horses with thick, stubby legs and manes, deer with enormous antlers, just like the ones we had seen in the ice . . . And among them all were sketches of fur-clad men with spears and clubs. Some of the animals were pictured lying on the ground, stuck with broken spears—
"What does it mean?"
"It means that once upon a time, perhaps thousands of years ago, men lit fires in here, cooked, ate, slept and raised their children—and they couldn't have done that unless there was a way in and a way out. Those pictures you see were their record of the animals they hunted and how."
"Then why did they leave?"
"Probably an Ice Age, like the one that created the glacier. They were meat-eaters, so would follow the migration of their food farther south. It could have been tribal warfare or disease, but there are no bones. I've looked."
"You said yourself that could have been thousands of years ago! The way could well have been blocked long since!"
"There are signs of more recent occupation, if you move a little farther along—there! Put out your hand: what do you feel?"
It sounded very silly when I said it. "Big toes?"
"Right. Step back some way and then look up."
I saw what looked like six statues, some twenty feet high, carved into the rock. The light from the roof was stronger now and a shaft of sun struck momentarily against one of the eroding faces: slanted eyes, a calm flat face, curved lips.
"The Six Immortals, I guess," said Beau. "This place must have been some sort of temple some three or four hundred years ago. If you look between each pair of feet you will find a niche or bowl for offerings. So the worshippers had a way in and a way out."
"Then why did they stop coming to worship?"
"That I don't know. What I do know is that we cannot be far from the way out now, and the quicker we get going, the quicker we get out."
I told the others what we had seen, we packed up and started off, but it took longer than we thought. Claude's ankle had stiffened up, and we had to adapt to his slower pace, so that it was well past mid-day when we had traversed the full length of the cavern, some two miles, and left what there was of the light behind, lighting our penultimate candle in the only passage Beau could find.
It seemed claustrophobic being in a passage again after the size of the cavern, but we stumbled on as best we could, and I reckoned we had made another mile when the passage turned a corner and widened abruptly. At the same time the sound of running water we had been hearing intermittently suddenly intensified until it almost drowned speech, and the candle-flame bent back on itself. The only encouragement was that there seemed to be a slight lessening of the darkness ahead.
Now the walls on either side of us were dripping with water, and as we rounded yet another turn we saw why: across our path raged a roaring torrent of water, effectively blocking our progress.
We had come to the end of the road.