“It means the pool is draining into something beneath it. That’s why it’s not overflowing its banks as the waterfall continues to pour into it. It drains below as quickly as it fills above.”
A lilt of excitement entered Anya’s voice. “You’re thinking it might be draining into a cave.”
“Maybe the cave. We’re exactly at De Klerk’s coordinates here.”
Tucker crossed back to the edge of the cliff and called down to Christopher. “I need the climbing rope from my pack. Can you toss it up?”
“Just a minute!”
“What did you find?” Bukolov yelled to them.
“That’s what I’m about to find out!” he hollered down.
Christopher pulled out the nylon climbing rope, tied a monkey’s fist in one end, and hurled the end up to Tucker. He caught it on the first try and reeled the rest of the length up. Before returning to the pond, he knotted the rope around one of the poolside boulders.
Pulling on gloves, he stepped back to the waterline and flung the other end of the rope—the one with the monkey’s fist still tied in it—out toward the center of the pool.
The knotted end sank—then after a few tense breaths, the remaining line between his fingers began uncoiling, snaking into the water. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. With a twang, the last of the line sprang taut in his fingertips, forming a straight line from the boulder to the whirlpool.
Tucker waded out a few feet, sliding his palm along the rope. When he was thigh deep, he felt a slight tidal pull of the drainage vortex. His fingers tightened on the line. He moved step by step. The tug on his legs became stronger. By the time he was waist-deep, his boots began to slide on the slippery rocks underfoot.
For safety’s sake, he straddled the rope, grasped it with both hands, and began backing toward the center.
Step by cautious step.
Then his left foot plunged into nothingness. Gasping in surprise, he dropped to his right knee. Water foamed and roiled around his upper chest.
“Tucker! Careful.” Anya stood on the bank, a worried hand at her throat.
Kane barked at him.
“I’m okay,” he told them both.
He pulled on the rope and yanked his left foot back from the hole. He gained a firmer stance against the tide. With his right hand clutching the rope, he bent down and reached back with his left. He probed the pool’s bottom until his fingers touched the rim of the hole.
“Seems wide enough,” he called to Anya.
“Wide enough for what?”
“Me.”
“Tucker, no. You don’t know what’s down there. Don’t—”
He took a deep breath, sat down on his butt, slid both feet into the hole, and lowered himself downward.
The current of the vortex grabbed him hard and sucked him through the drain. His gloved fingers slid along the rope in fits and starts. Then he popped out of the flooded chute and found himself swinging in open air.
He dangled and twisted in the faucet of water pouring down from the ceiling of stone overhead. Watery light flowed down with it, but not enough to illuminate the cavernous space below him.
Spinning on the line, he lowered himself hand over hand.
Finally his boots touched solid ground. He found his footing, backed up a few steps out of the torrential stream, and let go of the rope. Bent double, gasping, he spit water, coughed, and wiped clear his eyes.
He finally straightened, expecting to see nothing but what little daylight filtered through the chute above, but as his eyes adjusted, he noted fiery slivers of sunlight shining around him—some four or five of them, coming through fissures in the roof or sloping walls.
Still, they offered scant illumination.
He plucked his flashlight out of a buttoned pocket and panned it around the roughly oval-shaped cavern. The waterfall, which marked the space’s center point, flooded across the bottom of the cave, pooling in some places but mostly draining through fissures in the floor.
Turning slowly, he oriented himself with the outside landscape. Above his head was the boulder-strewn plateau. To his left would be the pig’s snout, the cliff that was framed by the shadowy boar tusks. To his right, he spotted a pair of tunnel entrances that looked like the twin barrels of a shotgun. He imagined they led deeper into the higher plateaus that extended behind the boar’s head.
Shining his light across the floor, he also saw evidence of prior habitation, washed up along the walls’ edges. He spotted broken furniture that could have once been tables or beds. His beam picked out a couple of bayonets oxidized to black.
As in the cave at Klipkoppie, Tucker pictured the ghosts of soldiers coming and going here, sitting around tables lit with oil lamps, polishing those bayonets, joking and exchanging war stories.
Eyeing the shotgun tunnels, he wanted to explore further, to see where they might lead, but now was not the time to go wandering by himself.
He stared at the rope whipping within the cascade of water and sighed.
He needed the others.
Going up proved a hundredfold harder than the descent. Hand over hand, he hauled himself through the pounding cascade, out the hole, and back to the surface of the pool. Exhausted, he waded back to the rim and threw himself flat on the bank. He rolled to his back and let the sun warm him.
“Tucker?” Anya dropped to her knees next to him. “Are you okay?”
Kane came up on his other side, nosing him fiercely, half greeting, half scolding.
“What’s down there?” Anya asked.
He only grinned at her and said, “You’ll see.”
5:23 P.M.
“Bless you, my boy!” Bukolov said by the bank of the pond. “And your dog!”
It took some effort to get the good doctor atop the plateau, but he proved fitter than he appeared. Even Christopher, after resting while Tucker took the plunge into the unknown, was walking more solidly on his left leg. He made it up the boulder staircase without any assistance.
Bukolov continued. “We stand at the entrance to De Klerk’s cave! At the threshold of discovering the greatest boon known to mankind!”
Tucker allowed the doctor to wax purple and lay on the hyperbole.
For in fact, they had done it.
Christopher and Anya chuckled, standing next to the doctor.
Tucker stood off by the cliff’s edge, inventorying the supplies they had shuttled up here by rope. There were still a few last items he wanted, but he could haul those by hand.
Straightening, he called to the others. “I’m going for another run to the Rover while we have daylight!”