Hammond Innes - Levkas man

"I was running short of air by then," he said. "Also I'd only got a small hand torch, so I backed out. I'll have another go at it tomorrow." He wasn't sure whether that was the end of the cave or whether it opened out further in. "There wasn't much light, you see. If I could anchor over it and take down a spotlight. . it's a bit tricky like, 'cos if it don't open up you've got to back all the way out."

Back at Vathy he was still talking about it. The row with his wife, the harsh words said, seemed wiped from his mind. And for her part, Florrie seemed to take it for granted that nothing had changed. Sonia was on board with us and when I told her what had happened between them earlier, all she said was, "What did you expect? Only a fool would go into marriage with her eyes shut to the sort of man she was tying herself to for life, and Florrie isn't a fool." She was looking at me very directly as though to say "and nor am I."

She had supper with us and then I rowed her ashore. She sat in the stern, her face a pale oval in the starlight, and she didn't speak until we were close in to the quay. "Bert seems very excited about that hole he's found."

"It's a challenge," I said. "An object for doing something he likes doing."

"Yes, but he seemed to think if he could get through he'll find the cave continuing."

"With pictures of animals painted in brilliant colours, I suppose." That was wliat the old man had hoped and the cave was Holroyd's now.

She caught the note of bitterness in my voice, for she said gently, "Surely to prove him right-wouldn't that be something worth while?"

"Not my department," I said, thinking of Holroyd starting at crack of dawn, intent on breaking through to the cave beyond. "I'll get his body out and then I'll go." And I added, without conscious thought, "There's something about that place, a voodoo, something-I don't like it."

The bows touched and she sat there for a moment, staring at me, silent. Then she jumped for the quay, and with a quick goodnight she was gone like a shadow into the night. I leaned on the oars, wondering what the hell she expected of me. The old man was dead, and though his death might mean more to her than it did to me, she surely couldn't be childish enough to think that I could carry on where he had left off.

When I got back to the boat, Bert was on deck to take the painter. "Can you give me a hand at the work bench?" he said. "I'm rigging a battery-operated spotlight. It'll be better than trailing a long cable, but I need help with the waterproofing."

I suppose you could call it a displacement activity. Give a man like Bert a technical problem and he lost himself in it completely, everything else forgotten. It took us just over two hours to fix and test that spot, and all the time he was talking about how he'd get through the crevice if he found the cave opening out beyond it.

Afterwards we tuned in to Radio Athens and listened to the English news broadcast. Florrie had gone to bed and we were alone in the wheelhouse, a drink in our hands and the announcer telling of gun duels across the Suez Canal, air strikes and Cairo in an uproar of militant demonstration. The Security Council of the Ignited Nations was meeting in the morning. Florrie used to get tracts from an outfit called the British Israelites," Bert said as he switched the radio off. "That was when we were in Great Yarmouth. Bloody queer stuff, too; prophecies based on the pyramids and the Bible, that sort of thing. Didn't go for it myself, but one thing I remember-they were convinced Armageddon would start in the Middle East." He raised his drink, his battered face creased in a smile. "It's times like this I'm glad I'm just a simple bloke with a boat of my own and things to occupy my mind. Give me a cave to explore or a bit of engineering to do and I don't give a damn whether the human race is hell-bent on self-destruction or not. There's so much in the world, why the hell aren't we content with what we've got? We go to the moon. Space platforms next. And yet we can't sort out a little matter like the Jews and the Arabs living together. And right here beneath our keel a whole underwater world, virtually unexplored, full of marvels and so bloody beautiful. Makes you sick, don't it?"

That was the longest speech I had heard him make in

the two months I had been with him. "Well, to hell with the human race!" He grinned and downed his drink. We went to bed then. Tomorrow they would dig out my father's body, and then I'd have to bury it again and we'd sail for Pan-telleria. I lay in my bunk, sleepless, thinking about the future, and about Sonia. A new dimension. I'd never had to think about anybody but myself before.

We were up at seven next morning, and after tea and a cigarette, began winching in the anchor chain. A boat put out from the quay, and by the time we had the anchor stowed, Zavelas was alongside with Kotiadis. "You do not mind if I come with you?" He climbed on board, smiling politely. The patrol boat had returned to Levkas and he was taking no chances.

The day was overcast, hot and very humid, the sea a sheet of glass. Bert and I took it in turns to go below for breakfast. Kotiadis had coffee, nothing else, and he didn't talk much, his eyes watching us warily. By eight forty-five we were in the Meganisi Channel, and as I wolfed my bacon and eggs, I wondered what he'd do if we continued straight through it, heading for the open sea. He came on deck with me as the engine slowed and we coasted in to the shore below the brown gash of the overhang. A boat lay in the gut, nobody in it and no sign of life on the rocks above. "They are working in the cave," Kotiadis said. "Today we discover the truth."

I turned on him angrily. "You won't be satisfied till you see his body, will you?"

He looked at me, his eyes hooded against the cloud-glare. "No. The evidence of my own eyes-that is important in my business."

Bert was manoeuvring close in, positioning Coromandel over the shelf to the south of the gut. I dropped the kedge over the stern and then, after taking the bow warp ashore in the dinghy and making it fast to the rock it had been looped over the previous day, Kotiadis and I hauled her in close while Bert paid out astern. When everything was fast, Coromandel was lying as before, bows-on to the shore with lines out fore and aft. Moored in this way, she was broadside to the direction of the channel and this had a bearing on what happened later.

"Don't be too long," Bert said as I got into the dinghy with Kotiadis. "Conditions are ideal and it may not last." His mind was set on the dive he had planned. It was a tricky one and Florrie had very sensibly insisted that he wait till I was back on board.

"I'll be right back," I told him. "They're not likely to have discovered anything yet."

But I was wrong there. The three of them had been working since first light, and when we reached the cave, Holroyd met us, stripped to the waist, his pale, almost hairless torso glistening with sweat. "I think we're almost there." He said it flatly, but there was a gleam of excitement in his eyes as he set the rock fragments he was carrying down on the pile, examining them almost automatically before going back into the darkness of the cave.

Kotiadis was not interested in prehistoric caves and he had clearly mistaken the gleam in the Professor's eye. "You have found Dr. Van der Voort's body?"

Holroyd turned and stared at him. Then he laughed, an extraordinary, almost macabre sound. "There is no body," he said. And I realized that the man was under extreme nervous tension, the laugh a sort of release. "Come on in. I'll show you."

Cartwright and Winters stopped work as we reached the fall. They had progressed another two yards or more since dawn. "Look at this." Holroyd picked up the pressure lamp, which had been placed to illimiinate the face of the fall, and held it up. "See the way the roof rises at that point? Didn't notice it yesterday-too intent on clearing the rubble."