The Hippopotamus Pool - Elizabeth Peters [112]
‘Confounded religion,’ Emerson grumbled.
Candles in our hands, we mounted the steps. It must have been a pretty sight from below – the line of flickering flames rising slowly into the darkness. At the last moment Emerson relented and allowed Abdullah to come with us.
He had done it, I think, as a tacit apology for his rude remarks about religion, but the dear old fellow proved useful. Abdullah’s strength and keenness of eye had diminished over the years, but he was the most skilled reis in Egypt. Together he and Emerson quickly constructed from the boards they had carried with them a ramp over the heaped-up debris to the opening. After Abdullah had had a look inside, he and Emerson engaged in a muttered colloquy, and then Emerson turned to Ramses. ‘He feels it is safe. Go ahead.’
Ramses scampered up the ramp and inserted his head and shoulders into the opening.
‘Curse it, Ramses,’ said his affectionate father, ‘don’t you know better than to plunge headfirst into a dark hole? Light your candle and for God’s sake try not to set yourself or any flammable objects you may encounter ablaze.’
‘I am chagrined to have neglected the candle, sir. Excitement overcame my customary caution.’
‘Ha,’ I said. ‘Proceed slowly, Ramses, and keep talking.’
‘I beg your pardon, Mother. Did I hear you correctly?’
It was certainly not an order I had ever expected to give, but I was in no mood for a display of Ramses’ peculiar variety of humour. ‘You heard me, young man. You have not been farther than six or eight feet into that hole. Describe exactly what you are seeing and how you are feeling as you go on.’
Candle in his outstretched hand, Ramses had already eased most of his body into the tunnel. His ‘Yes, Mother’ echoed weirdly.
‘Hold on a minute,’ Emerson ordered. The visible part of Ramses, his lower limbs from the knees down, obediently stopped moving. Emerson looped a rope around the boy’s left ankle and drew it tight. There was no comment from Ramses. ‘Go ahead,’ Emerson said. ‘And keep talking, or at least making noises. If your voice stops for more than thirty seconds, I will pull you out of there.’
We gathered together round the foot of the little ramp and the light of the candles showed faces as grave and anxious as mine must have been. Walter put a comforting arm around Evelyn, whose wide eyes were fixed on the opening into which Ramses’ feet had now vanished.
Emerson’s last gesture had brought home to those who had not already known it how perilous was the undertaking. The crudely dug tunnel might collapse. The air in the depths – their extent as yet unknown – might be poisonous. The list of possible dangers was too long to be comfortable, and the rope round Ramses’ ankle could be his only hope if he encountered one of them.
It must have been difficult even for Ramses to continue speaking in that confined space and with dust choking him, but he complied. As he went farther in, it became more and more difficult to understand his words. ‘Opens out’ was one phrase, and ‘mummy cloth’ and, loud and clear, the word ‘femur.’
‘We might have expected he would notice bones,’ I said softly to Evelyn, in an attempt to lighten her obvious anxiety.
‘I don’t care what he says so long as he keeps talking,’ Evelyn whispered. ‘How far has he gone, Radcliffe?’
Emerson had been paying out the rope. ‘Less than three metres. It is slow going with –’
The shriek, hideously amplified by echoes, that burst out of the opening made him stagger back with an answering cry of poignant terror. Only for an instant did he give way; grasping the rope, he gave it an emphatic tug. Ramses continued to howl and Emerson continued to haul on the rope with all his might until Ramses’ feet came into view. Dropping the rope, Emerson grasped the feet and pulled the boy out into his arms.
Ramses’ eyes were tightly closed, which was not surprising, since dust covered his lids and blood from numerous cuts and abrasions streaked his nose and forehead.