The Nice and the Good

'It's so damn black. Keep on talking, I don't want to lose you., 'Oh God, it's coming right down. I think we'll have to crawl.'

'What's the point of this,' said Ducane, stopping. He had an image of crawling onward, onward, to end wedged in some narrow pocket of wet rock waiting for the tide. 'If this one's packing up we'd better try another one while there's still time, The water's just behind us.'

'It's here,' said Pierce in a cracked voice. 'Stay still, I'm coming back past you.'

Ducane stood rigid and felt Pierce's hands fumble him while the wet jersey slid past. There was barely room in the space for them to pass each other. There was a damp warmth on his legs as Mingo scrabbled by after Pierce.

In a moment Pierce's voice came out of the darkness. 'I'm afraid the water has practically filled the entrance. It seems to be coming up much faster now. We've had it in here one way or the other.'

Ducane gripped himself, almost physically, as one might grip and shake an alter ego, and then realized that he had hold of Pierce who had blundered up against him. 'Well, we must go on, then.' Ducane's voice was high too, raised as if to cross a vast auditorium. It seemed to echo away into the hidden spaces and honeycombs of the dark.

The water was making a new noise now, a grinding sucking sound of advance and retreat over pebbles in a narrow place.

Pierce, who had got past Ducane, moved away.

Ducane ran his knuckles along the slimy descending rock and began to stoop. Bent double he moved forward, reaching out to touch the limp tail of Pierce's jersey. Mingo passed him again, a long sliver of darkened warmth. The roof rose a little, then began to fall again. It was difficult to tell if they were going upward. Movement had become something different, a slow and painful pistoning of bones inside a mass of black matter.