Part 13 (1/2)

But at midnight I was still waiting, and asked myself for the hundredth time that inevitable question: 'What the h.e.l.l are they doing up there?'

In desperation, I put on an extra sweater under my overalls, lay down on a slab of rock, extinguished my lamp, and tried to sleep. Levi's descent must have been postponed for some good reason until tomorrow.

At 2 a.m., as I tossed and turned on my rocky bed, there was a feeble cry far up in the shaft. Half an hour later Robert Levi touched down. At last! I had been expecting him for fifteen hours, and had almost given up hope. He told me that he had been delayed time after time, but had determined to get down, no matter what the cost.

Sunday, 8 August Returning to the bivouac at about 9 a.m., we were able to phone the surface; for the cable had not been wound up again since Levi's arrival. When the time came for its departure, we again unrolled the guide-wire. Again it broke, leaving us in isolation!

We were resigned to our situation, hoping the cable would reach its destination before long, and certain of our programme. Delteil was to come down next; he had volunteered for the delicate and unpleasant task of bringing down the metal coffin . . .

At about 8 o'clock that evening a small avalanche of stones informed us of Delteil's approach.

Flushed with excitement after his memorable journey, Delteil was magnificent. He had battled all alone in the great shaft for three hours, and looked like a poilu at Verdun, with feverish eyes, his face lined with fatigue, his harness in disorder, his overalls torn, and one of his hands bleeding.

Our next job was to bear the coffin to the tomb. After slipping and stumbling from top to bottom of the slope, we got it into position ready for the exhumation, which was to take place as soon as we were joined by Dr Mairey and Louis Ballandraux, who would not be down until tomorrow. It was now 11 p.m. We had done enough for one day, and therefore withdrew, dead-beat, to a little tent which was scarcely large enough for three. Although packed like sardines, we were soon fast asleep.

Monday, 9 August I awoke with a feeling that it was time to get up, and took a peep at my companions. Delteil, as usual was snoring hard, but Levi, to judge by his breathing, was awake.

'Levi, what's the time?' I whispered, switching on my torch discreetly veiled in a handkerchief.

My neighbour stretched himself, looked at his wrist.w.a.tch, and then put it sharply to his ear. 'It says 11 o'clock, but it's not going,' he replied. 'It must have stopped last evening.'

I had left my watch in a suit of overalls that were in my haversack, and this lay some distance from the tent which was too small to hold anything but us three. Having extricated myself from my sleeping-bag, I crawled out of the tent, pulled on my boots, and eventually retrieved my watch. Good heavens! . . . yes; the second-hand was moving, so the thing had definitely not stopped.

'Guess,' I said to Levi.

'It's at least 8 o'clock in the morning,' he answered.

'Don't be absurd,' protested Delteil, who had just woken up. 'It's the dead of night!'

'Dead dark, certainly,' I rejoined, 'but believe me or not, it's midday!'

Neither of them would believe me at first; they thought I was joking. But it was a fact; down there in the chasm, where the temperature was no more than 7 Fahrenheit and the humidity 100 per cent, we had slept fully clothed in a tiny tent for thirteen hours! None of us had ever done anything like it, and we fell to discussing so memorable a feat. We were cut short by a formidable shower of stones.

'Hark! there's someone on the stairs,' said Levi quietly.

'Another bloke dropping in for lunch,' added Delteil.

We hurried immediately to the bivouac, where Louis Ballandraux had just touched down, carrying two outsize kitbags in addition to his normal load.

During the afternoon we were joined by Doctor Mairey, who brought his medicine-chest, several pairs of rubber gloves, and various accessories. We now prepared to carry out the work of exhumation, and were shortly afterwards gathered at the tomb. In that unstable ma.s.s of rock, it took us several hours to construct a horizontal platform on which to lay the container and walk about.

There were only four pairs of gloves, so it was agreed that Delteil, who had badly lacerated hands, should be excused from touching the body. At 6 p.m. we began demolis.h.i.+ng stone by stone, the great tumulus beneath which Marcel had been lying for two years, arrayed, as he had fallen, like a medieval knight. He wore his helmet, and, in place of the sword, a torch lay on his breast.

At 9 p.m., exhausted with fatigue and emotion, we removed our gloves. Delteil screwed down the lid, and we put forth what was left of our strength and determination to drag the heavy coffin to a point immediately below the shaft where in due course it could be attached to the end of the cable.

We had fulfilled our task, and it was now the turn of those who were to prepare the shaft for the container's upward journey. Lepineux and Bidegain went down to 257, Labeyrie and Rossini to 699. It had been calculated that their job would take two days.

The preparation of the balconies consisted in erecting near the rim of each a metal lattice girder 6 feet 6 inches long. These were meant to steer the container clear of overhangs, and thus avoid it becoming hung up or jammed in a crevice events which might prove dangerous if not disastrous. Each girder was made of duralumin sections (another of Lepineux's ideas), and was fitted at its base with a spindle enabling it to swing from side to side, and at the opposite end with a stout wooden pulley to facilitate the cable's pa.s.sage. Numerous stays, carefully placed and tightly stretched, a.s.sured the firmness and rigidity of the girder. Driving pitons into the rocky walls, in situations no less perilous than inconvenient, was a job whose difficulty was increased by the fact that our men were obliged to work beneath small but icy-cold cascades, consequent upon a series of violent storms which had transformed the shaft into an aqueduct. It was even necessary on several occasions to interrupt the work and hurriedly bring up the teams for fear of lightning, which is attracted by potholes. The long steel cable hanging in the shaft would prove a dangerous conductor. On the evening of the exhumation, after pitching a tent for Mairey and Ballandraux, we were roused from sleep at about midnight by the roll of thunder which grew minute by minute; and the cascade in the shaft, swollen by an exceptionally heavy downpour, allowed us a glimpse of its awful possibilities. At the same time, another sound, even more alarming, rose from the depths. This was the subterranean torrent in flood, growling below the chaos of rock. Hence the internal changes of the chasm those traces of extensive flooding which we observed last year, and the collapse of boulders. The whole place roared, vibrated, and there were falls of stone. Pierre Saint-Martin was in labour; we were in a living chasm in full process of evolution.

Lying in absolute darkness, wrapped in our sleeping-bags under the frail and illusory shelter of our canvas tents, the consciousness of our weak and helpless state in the presence of this awful demonstration taught us an eloquent lesson of humility.

All things considered, we were lucky to escape with nothing worse than a restless night. Mairey and Ballandraux were in worse danger than the rest for their tent was pitched on a stretch of gravel, clearly the bed of a river which might at any moment have reappeared but was, in fact, absorbed by its own deposit before reaching our camp.

Tuesday, 10 August At 9 a.m. I went up to the bivouac with Louis Ballandraux who had brought down a wireless transmitter and was anxious to establish communication with the surface, for the telephone was still cut off. He managed to converse with Fr. Attout, thanks largely to the cable, which had been lowered to 699 and served as a conductor for the waves between that point and the outside world. Among other things, we learned that Mauer would be joining us later in the day. He landed at noon, carrying another two kitbags and a large roll of telephone-wire. Levi, as chief of the expedition, was now required on the surface; he went up trailing this after him, and we looked forward to re-establis.h.i.+ng contact with those above.

In the normal course of events three more of us would have followed Levi without further delay; only two men would be needed to attach the coffin to the cable and a.s.sist at its take-off when the moment arrived. As it was, however, we had other plans.

We had been categorically forbidden to do any more exploring, and were supposed to limit our activities to recovering Loubens's body. From the very start we had considered these instructions as an unjustifiable abuse of authority; we had signed no undertaking, and it was therefore with an easy conscience that I decided upon my own responsibility to ignore them.

The finding of this pothole had been the climax of a search begun by E. A. Martel in 1908, and continued at intervals between 1925 and 1950 by the Groupe Speleologique de la Pierre Saint-Martin led by Max Cosyns and myself. Lepineux had actually made the discovery; Loubens, another member of the group, had died here; and Dr Mairey had been the victim of what might easily have been a fatal accident. So Pierre Saint-Martin was in a very real sense 'ours', and to go home without trying to explore upstream would have been a miserable surrender of our rights. In any case, we could not have restrained the determination of fellows like Mairey, Mauer and Ballandraux. Besides, to finish the job was surely the n.o.blest honour we could render to poor Loubens's memory.

A party set out at 4 o'clock in the afternoon; it consisted of Mairey, Ballandraux and Mauer. I stayed behind with Delteil, one of whose hands had been badly lacerated.

I had no fears as I watched the other three disappear from sight. All were highly trained and well-tried speleologists.

Our companions had been gone an hour when I climbed that ma.s.s of cyclopean boulders in the Salle Lepineux which they had now left behind, and through which Mairey and I had begun our journey upstream (due south into Spanish territory) twelve months ago. My immediate purpose was to revisit a platform of rock where I knew there was a colony of diptera, a kind of mosquito. Lost in this immensity, they had for some unknown cause, taken up residence just here, where I soon found them. Isolated from one another, and quite motionless, they look so easy to catch, but as soon as you approach with a light, they scurry sideways over the rock like crabs. When they become conscious of imminent danger, they take to flight and then you begin to appreciate their unwillingness to use their wings. They are poor flyers, with an uncertain, dipping movement; and they soon come to rest on the floor or on another rock, but always below their starting-point. Their clumsy flight is due, of course, to atrophy of the wings consequent upon their surroundings, and I have no doubt that in another few thousand years these strange mosquitoes of Pierre Saint-Martin will be wingless. The few that I caught were destined for the microscopes in the Musee de Paris.

During my stroll I came across a short strip of Scotch-light, a piece of cloth treated with reflecting material in the form of powdered catadioptric gla.s.s. It was a guide-mark left by Mairey and his companions. These objects, when strategically placed, enable one to go ahead without fear of losing one's way on the return journey through the complicated maze of debris. I followed the trail of these guideposts until I heard the voices of my friends. They were looking for a road to the head-waters, but repeatedly found their pa.s.sage blocked by boulders reaching to the ceiling. I felt certain, as they did, that once they had overcome these difficulties, and pierced some gap in the wall, they would find the chasm extended for some considerable distance.

I returned to the bivouac. Delteil was busy patching his overalls; they had suffered badly during his descent with the container and were actually in rags. We employ somewhat original tailoring methods at Pierre Saint-Martin; holes are made in the material with the point of a knife, and telephone-wire takes the place of thread. While Delteil was thus engaged I sat on the ground beside him and made a few entries in my notebook. Suddenly we heard a noise high up in the shaft, as of someone falling. It grew louder; and as we ducked, a body landed with a terrifying crash at a distance of 13 or 14 feet on the debris slope. From there it rolled out of sight. Horror-struck and trembling, we jumped up and hurried down to find the unhappy man who had just been killed before our very eyes. Delteil pulled up sharply and bent over a contorted ma.s.s. Then he stood erect with a shout of laughter. Thank G.o.d! The victim of that dreadful fall was only a large kitbag which had escaped from its owner at 699 and fallen 436 feet to the bottom. It had burst open, and we picked up a number of articles, including a camera (which as you may guess, was useless). We knew then that the bag belonged to Vergnes. Having recovered from the shock, we resumed our peaceful if trivial occupations.

Presently Robert Vergnes himself came down and joined us. His arrival was far more sedate than that of his kitbag. Mairey, Mauer and Ballandraux returned soon afterwards, pleased with their reconnaissance and tremendously excited. They had managed with some difficulty to pa.s.s the danger zone, where rocks and ceiling met, and found, as I had predicted, that the gigantic wilderness of rock extended much farther.

Our commandos had done a fine job, and had turned back in order to make their report. I was thrilled, and determined to lead a party on the following day as far as it was possible to go.

Wednesday, 11 August This was to be the day of days if one may speak of 'day' in places where there is no dawn. It would provide an answer to that question we had left unanswered for a year: did the chasm reach into Spanish territory; and if so, how far?

Pierre Saint-Martin consists of a shaft, 1,135 feet deep, giving access to an enormous cavity through which flows a subterranean river. In 1953 we had travelled downstream for a distance of nearly two miles and to a depth of 2,388 feet in French territory. How far would we get today, through the chaos of its head-waters, into Spain?

The whole team, excepting Vergnes and Delteil, set off at 8 a.m. We expected to be absent for at least a day, perhaps two if all went well. On leaving the bivouac we had to climb in heavy kit up that mountain of boulders, which stands at the near end of the Salle Lepineux, and then descend the opposite face, guided by Scotch-lights which Mairey had laid yesterday. Presently the doctor pointed out one of these signposts lying on a rock which was not on our present track. It was of a pattern used last year, and I recognized it as marking the spot where he and I had forced our way into the heart of the wilderness.

Mairey smiled as we pa.s.sed that Scotch-light which had so nearly marked the end of his career as a speleologist; and before long we reached the summit of a rise which we had to descend with the help of an electron ladder. This manoeuvre brought us out from the labyrinth into a colossal chamber, so vast and tortuous that we could make out neither its size nor its shape. It was perfectly stupendous, exceeding all conceivable dimensions, far transcending human architecture.

'Since we are now in Spain,' I said, 'let us call this prodigious chamber ”Salle de Navarre”; territorially the name is correct, and it will be a gesture towards our Spanish friends who had hoped to be with us on this occasion.'

I have travelled a good deal in Spain, especially in the mountainous province of Navarre, but I can safely say that I have never seen in the whole of the Peninsula so wild a stretch of country as that through which we now advanced by lamplight. Here Earth's structure, which so fascinates Delteil, is set forth on the grandest scale. The journey became so arduous and complicated that we had to make alternate use of ropes and wire ladders in order to negotiate precipice-roads or steep cliffs.

Mauer was lagging behind when he suddenly called for help. We turned round and saw him kneeling, apparently in difficulties on the sloping ground. But there was nothing wrong; he was interested in something quite different from the recovery of his balance. Considering this fearful desert of rock, his eyesight was most remarkable, for he had noticed an insect a superb Aphaenops Loubensi which Mairey recognized as a giant of the species. Taking from his entomologist's pack a small wet paintbrush, he caught the beetle, and put it in a tube of alcohol. It was the fifth specimen to fall into our hands in two years. Animal life, of course, does not abound here; conditions are too severe to make existence anything but precarious.

We should really have been gaining height, since we were travelling upstream. In point of fact, however, we had spent most of our time going downhill. Ballandraux was walking ahead; or rather he was tumbling and jumping from rock to rock, for the ground seemed to consist mainly of pits, fissures and creva.s.ses. He had just made a neat landing on top of a great tubular rock, when we realized with horror that the thing had begun to swing forwards. Then, as in a dream, we saw Ballandraux raised higher and higher into the air. Here was an example of those swaying boulders known as 'Crazy Stones'.

Having recovered from his surprise, Ballandraux purposely renewed the see-saw movement, the effect of which was amplified by the height and ma.s.s of the rock. We called 1 'Roche Ballandraux', and each enjoyed a spell of its majestic oscillation.

We might also have exercised the privilege of pioneers and named the huge gallery through which we now proceeded over jagged ground. Our attention, however, was riveted upon the difficulties of progress and of finding our direction, so that we had neither the leisure nor the freedom of imagination to a.s.sign names and t.i.tles to the places through which we pa.s.sed.

At this point the torrent flows quite close to the surface, but is still hidden by great boulders beneath which you can hear it rumbling. We were already moving uphill; but the way before us involved an exhausting climb to the level of the ceiling, so we decided to call a halt and have some lunch. Nearby was a small cascade, issuing from the wall; it was a tributary of the main stream, but with a temperature of 7 Fahrenheit it was not much use for diluting the concentrated milk, of which Mairey had produced several tubes from his haversack. I proceeded to distribute pieces of sausage, which Ballandraux cut into rounds with the blade of a metal saw. Having no bread, we rounded off our meal with two packets of dry cake, and then moved on. Presently my companions led me into a narrow pa.s.sage, on the ceiling of which there were numerous stalact.i.tes which did not greatly impress me. I told them so quite frankly; they were shocked, and put me down as blase!

Yesterday's journey had ended at this point. But the system extended farther in undiminished grandeur; the way continued rough and downhill. We now separated, and each took a different path in order to check up on and eliminate blind alleys. After several reconnaissances and a brief council of war at the rallying point, it was clear that Mauer had found the right track. We followed him over some very rough ground into a winding corridor where we found the river. We advanced first on one bank and then on the other, sometimes on natural bridges and perilous overhangs. It was a strenuous and exciting journey, and we longed to know where it would lead us. At every bend, at every barrier of rock, we quickened our pace to seek what might lie beyond, and to a.s.sure ourselves that yet more distant perspectives opened out beneath those mysterious vaults. So far, however, we had kept our heads. The obstacle which now met our gaze was enough to daunt the bravest of the brave.

We had been walking for some minutes on banks that narrowed steadily above foaming rapids. Suddenly the river became deep, and flowed between vertical walls of smooth rock. We could go no farther, except by swimming in that icy water at a temperature of about 20 F, sufficient to cool the most determined hot-head! We had no collapsible boat, not even a raft; but we managed to balance ourselves on an isthmus of rock, which enabled us to advance a few yards and ascertain that 40 or 50 feet beyond that point the stream made a right-angled bend; its far bank was a sheer wall of stone. Considering its enormous width elsewhere, this section of the gallery was relatively small 16 or 20 feet wide by about 13 feet in height. The contraction set up a violent current of cold air, a regular hurricane, which pierced us to the bone, extinguished our lamps, and churned the surface of the water. This wind, blowing at gale force, proves that the cavern extends for a great distance upstream; but the depth of the river const.i.tutes an impa.s.sable barrier unless one has means of navigation. We had come as far as would be possible this year.