‘Let’s say we had a slight altercation.’
‘Oh!’ He pulled a pack of cards from his shirt pocket and riffled them. ‘What about a game to pass the time?’
‘What would you suggest?’ I enquired acidly. ‘Happy Families!’
He grinned. ‘Can you play gin?’
He beat the pants off me.
There was nothing at the site. Fallon came back looking tired and drawn and I thought that his years were catching up with him. The forest of Quintana Roo was no place for a man in his sixties, or even for a man in his thirties as I had recently discovered. I had taken a machete and done a bit of exploring and I hadn’t left the clearing for more than ten minutes before I was totally lost. It was only because I had the sense to take a compass and to make slash marks on trees that I managed to get back.
I gave him a glass of his own whisky which he accepted with appreciation. His clothes were torn and blood caked cuts in his hands. I said, ‘I’ll get the first-aid kit and clean that up for you.’
He nodded tiredly. As I cleaned the scratches, I said, ‘You ought to leave the dirty work to Halstead.’
‘He works hard enough,’ said Fallon. ‘He’s done more than me today.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Getting cleaned up. I suppose Katherine is doing the same to him as you’ve done to me.’ He flexed his fingers against the adhesive dressings. ‘It’s better when a woman does it, somehow. I remember my wife bandaging me up quite often.’
‘I didn’t know you are married.’
‘I was. Very happily married. That was many years ago.’ He opened his eyes. ‘What happened between you and Halstead this morning?’
‘A difference of opinion.’
‘It often happens with that young man, but it’s usually of a professional nature. This wasn’t, was it?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘It was personal and private.’
He caught the implication—that I was warning him off—and chose to ignore it. ‘For anyone to interfere between man and wife is very serious,’ he said.
I drove the cork into the bottle of antiseptic. ‘I’m not interfering; Halstead just thinks I am.’
‘I have your word for that?’
‘You have my word—not that it’s any business of yours,’ I said. As soon as I had said it I was sorry. ‘It is your business, of course; you don’t want this expedition wrecked.’
‘That wasn’t in my mind,’ he said. ‘At least, not as far as you are concerned. But I am becoming perturbed about Paul; he is proving very awkward to work with. I was wondering if I could ask you to release me from my promise. It’s entirely up to you.’
I pounded at the cork again. I had just promised Katherine that I wouldn’t get Halstead tossed out on his ear,
and I couldn’t go back on that. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Other promises have been made.’
‘I understand,’ said Fallon. ‘Or, at least, I think I do.’ He looked up at me. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself, Jemmy.’
That piece of advice was coming a bit too late. I grinned and put down the antiseptic bottle. ‘It’s all right; I’m not a home wrecker. But Halstead had better watch himself or he’ll be in trouble.’
‘Pour me another whisky,’ said Fallon. He picked up the antiseptic bottle, and said mildly, ‘We’re going to have trouble getting that cork out again.’
The Halsteads had another quarrel that night. Neither of them appeared for supper and, after dark, I listened to the raised voices coming from their hut, rising and falling but never distinguishable enough to make sense. Just raw anger coming from the darkness.
I half expected Halstead to stomp over to my hut and challenge me to a duel, but he didn’t and I thought that maybe Katherine must have argued him out of it. More probably, the argument I had put up had a lot of weight behind it. Halstead couldn’t afford to be ejected from the expedition at this stage. It might be a good idea to pass on Fallon’s attitude to Katherine just to make sure that Halstead realized that I was the only person who could prevent it.
As I went to sleep it occurred to me that if we did find Uaxuanoc I’d better start guarding my back.
Four days later there was only one site to be investigated. Fourteen out of the fifteen in Fallon’s original list had proved to be barren; if this last one proved a bust then we
would have to extend our radius of exploration and take in another forty-seven sites. That would be a bind, to say the least of it.
We had an early-morning conference before the last site was checked and nobody was happy about it. The cenote lay below a ridge which was thickly covered in trees and Rider was worried about the problem of getting in while coping with air currents. Worse still, there was no possible place for a man to drop from the winch; the vegetation was thick and extended right to the edge of the cenote without thinning in any way.
Fallon studied the photographs and said despondently, ‘This is the worst I’ve seen anywhere. I don’t think there’s a chance of getting in from the air. What do you think, Rider?’
‘I can drop a man,’ said Rider. ‘But he’d probably break his neck. Those trees are running to 140 feet and tangled to hell. I don’t think a man could reach the ground.’
‘The forest primeval,’ I commented.
‘No,’ contradicted Fallon. ‘If it were, our work would be easier. All this ground has been cultivated at one time—all over Quintana Roo. What we have here is a second growth; that’s why it’s so goddamn thick.’ He switched off the projector and walked over to the photo-mosaic. ‘It’s very thick for a long way around this cenote—which is archeologically promising but doesn’t help us in getting in.’ He laid his finger on the photograph. ‘Could you put us down there, Rider?’
Rider inspected the point Fallon indicated, first with the naked eye and then through a magnifying glass. ‘It’s possible,’ he said.
Fallon applied a ruler. ‘Three miles from the cenote. In that stuff we couldn’t do more than half a mile an hour—probably much less. Say a full day to get to the cenote. Well, if it must be done, we’ll do it.’ He didn’t sound at all enthusiastic.
Halstead said, ‘We can use Wheale now. Are you good with a machete, Wheale?’ He just couldn’t get out of the habit of needling me.
‘I don’t have to be good,’ I said. ‘I use my brains instead. Let me have another look at those photographs.’
Fallon switched on the projector and we ran through them again. I stopped at the best one which showed a very clear view of the cenote and the surrounding forest. ‘Can you get down over the water?’ I asked Rider.
‘I guess I could,’ said Rider. ‘But not for long. It’s goddamn close to that hillside at the back of the pool.’
I turned to Fallon. ‘How did you make this clearing we have here?’
‘We dropped a team in with power saws and flamethrowers,’ he said. ‘They burned away the ground vegetation and cut down the trees—then blasted out the stumps with gelignite.’
I stared at the photograph and estimated the height from water-level to the edge of the pit of the cenote. It appeared to be about thirty feet. I said, ‘If Rider can drop me in the water, I can swim to the edge and climb out.’
‘So what?’ said Halstead. ‘What do you do then? Twiddle your thumbs?’
‘Then Rider comes in again and lowers a chain saw and a flame-thrower on the end of the winch.’
Rider shook his head violently. ‘I couldn’t get them anywhere near you. Those trees on the edge are too tall. Jesus, if I get the winch cable tangled in those I’d crash for sure.’
‘Supposing when I went into the water I had a thin nylon cord, say about a couple of hundred yards, with one end tied to the winch cable. I pay it out as I swim to the side, then you haul up the cable and I pay out some more. Then you take up the chopper, high enough to be out of trouble, and I pay out even more line. When you come down again
over the cenote with the stuff dangling on the end of the cable, I just haul it in to the side. Is that possible?’
Rider looked even more worried. ‘Hauling a heavy weight to one side like that is going to have a hell of an effect on stability.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I reckon I could do it though.’
‘What would you reckon to do once you got down?’ asked Fallon.
‘If Rider will tell me how much clear ground he needs to land the chopper. I’ll guarantee to clear it. There might be a few stumps, but he’ll be landing vertically, so they shouldn’t worry him too much. I’ll do it—unless someone else wants to volunteer. What about you, Dr Halstead?’
‘Not me,’ he said promptly. He looked a bit shamefaced for the first time since I’d met him. ‘I can’t swim.’
‘Then I’m elected,’ I said cheerfully, although why I was cheerful is hard to say. I think it was the chance of actually doing something towards the work of the expedition that did it. I was tired of being a spare part.
I checked on the operation of the saw and the flame-thrower and saw they were fully fuelled. The flame-thrower produced a satisfactory gout of smoky flame which shrivelled the undergrowth very nicely. ‘I’m not likely to start a forest fire, am I?’ I asked.
‘Not a chance,’ said Fallon. ‘You’re in a rain forest and these aren’t northern conifers.’
Halstead was coming with me. There was so much weight to be put into the helicopter that there could be only two passengers, and since it was going to be a job for a strongish man to attach the gear to the winch cable and get it out of the helicopter Halstead was chosen in preference to Fallon.
But I wasn’t too happy about it. I said to Rider, ‘I know you’ll be busy jockeying this chopper at the critical moment, but I’d be obliged if you’d keep half an eye on Halstead.’
He caught the implication without half trying. ‘I operate the winch. You’ll get down safely.’
We took off and were over the site within a very few minutes. I waggled my hand in a circle to Rider and he orbited the cenote at a safe height while I studied the situation. It’s one thing to look at photographs on solid ground, and quite another to look at the real thing with the prospect of dangling over it on the end of a line within the next five minutes.
At last I was satisfied that I knew where to aim for once I was in the water. I checked the nylon cord which was the hope of the whole operation and stepped into the canvas loops at the end of the cable. Rider brought the helicopter lower, and I went cautiously through the open door and was only supported by the cable itself.
The last thing I saw of Rider was his hand pulling on a lever and then I was dropping away below the helicopter and spinning like a teetotum. Every time I made a circuit I saw the green hillside behind the cenote coming closer until it was too damned close altogether and I thought the blades of the rotor were going to chop into projecting branches.
I was now a long way below the helicopter, as far as the winch cable would unreel, and my rate of spin was slowing. Rider brought the chopper down gently into the chimney formed by the surrounding trees and I touched the water. I hammered the quick-release button and the harness fell away and I found myself swimming. I trod water and organized the nylon cord, then struck out for the edge of the cenote, paying out the cord behind me, until I grasped a tree root at water-level.
The sides of the cenote were steeper than I had thought and covered with a tangle of creeper. I don’t know how long it took me to climb the thirty feet to the top but it was much longer than I had originally estimated and must have seemed a lifetime to Rider, who had a very delicate bit of flying to do. But I made it at last, bleeding from a score of
cuts on my arms and chest, yet still holding on to that precious cord.
I waved to Rider and the helicopter began to inch upwards, and slowly the cable was reeled in. I paid out the cord, and when the helicopter was hovering at a safe height, five hundred feet of cord hung down in a graceful catenary curve. While Halstead was no doubt struggling to get the load on to the end of the winch cable I got my breath back and prepared for my own struggle.
It was not going to be an easy task to haul over a hundred pounds of equipment sixty feet sideways. I took off the canvas belt that was wrapped around my middle and put it about a young tree. It was fitted with a snap hook with a quick release in case of emergencies. There was very little room to move on the edge of the cenote because of the vegetation—there was one tree that must have been ninety feet high whose roots were exposed right on the rim. I took the machete and swung at the undergrowth, clearing space to move in.
There was a change in the note of the chopper’s engine, the pre-arranged signal that Rider was ready for the next stage of the operation, and slowly it began to descend again with the bulk of the cargo hanging below on the winch cable. Hastily I began to reel in the cord hand over hand until the shapeless bundle at the end of the winch cable was level with me, but sixty feet away and hanging thirty feet above the water of the cenote.
I wrapped three turns of the cord around the tree to serve as a friction brake and then began to haul in. At first it came easily but the nearer it got the harder it was to pull it in. Rider came lower as I pulled which made it a bit easier, but it was still back-breaking. Once the chopper wobbled alarmingly in the air, but Rider got it under control again and I continued hauling.
I was very glad when I was able to lean over and snap the hook of the canvas belt on to the end of the winch cable.
A blow at the quick-release button let the cargo fall heavily to the ground. I looked up at the chopper and released the cable, which swung in a wide arc right across the cenote. For a moment I thought it was going to entangle in the trees on the other side, but Rider was already reeling it in fast and the chopper was going up like an express lift. It stopped at a safe height, then orbited three times before leaving in the direction of Camp Two.
I sat on the edge of the cenote with my feet dangling over the side for nearly fifteen minutes before I did anything else. I was all aches and pains and felt as though I’d been in a wrestling match with a bear. At last I began to unwrap the gear. I put on the shirt and trousers that had been packed, and also the calf-length boots, then lit a cigarette before I went exploring.
At first I chopped around with the machete because the tank of the flame-thrower didn’t hold too much fuel and the thing itself was bloody wasteful, so I wanted to save the fire for the worst of the undergrowth. As I chopped my way through that tangle of leaves I wondered how the hell Fallon had expected to travel half a mile in an hour; the way I was going I couldn’t do two hundred yards an hour. Fortunately I didn’t have to. All I had to do was to clear an area big enough for the helicopter to drop into.