,’Sergeant Andrews is mistaken,’ I said stiffly. ‘There are still the weekly reports from Jericho, Nod, and Egypt to be gone over.’
‘Place them on my desk and get out. That’s an order. I can’t have you going stale from overwork.’
I did not tell him that he had not even been to lodge himself in more than a month; I got out.
I dropped the message with Colonel Novak and hurried to where we always met near the women’s mess. Maggie was there with the other girl-a blonde named Miriam Booth who was a clerk in Quartermaster’s store. I knew her by sight but had never spoken to her. They had our picnic lunch and Zeb arrived while I was being introduced. He was carrying, as usual, the portable flood we would use when we picked out a spot and a blanket to sit on and use as a table. ‘Where’s yourç towel?’ he demanded.
‘Were you serious? I forgot it.’
‘Run get it. We’ll start off along Appian Way. You can catch up. Come on, kids.’
They started off, which left me with nothing but to do as I was told. After grabbing a towel from my room I dogtrotted until I had them in sight, then slowed to a walk, puffing. Desk work had ruined my wind. They heard me and waited.
We were all dressed alike, with the women in trousers and each with a safety line wrapped around the waist and torch clipped to the belt. I had gotten used to women in men’s clothes, much as I disliked it-and, after all, it is impractical and quite immodest to climb around in caves wearing skirts.
We left the lighted area by taking a turn that appeared to lead into a blind wall; instead it led into a completely concealed but easily negotiated tunnel. Zeb tied our labyrinth string and started paying it out as soon as we left permanent and marked paths, as required by the standing order; Zeb was always careful about things that mattered.
For perhaps a thousand paces we could see blazes and other indications that others had been this way before, such as a place where someone had worked a narrow squeeze wider with a sledge. Then we left the obvious path and turned into a blind wall. Zeb put down the flood and turned it on. ‘Sling your torches. We climb this one.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘A place Miriam knows about. Give me a leg up, Johnnie.’ The climb wasn’t much. I got Zeb up all right and the girls could have helped each other up, but we took them up roped, for safety’s sake. We picked up our gear and Miriam led us away, each of us using his torch.
We went down the other side and there was another passage so well hidden that it could have been missed for ten thousand years. We stopped once while Zeb tied on another ball of string. Shortly Miriam said, ‘Slow up, everybody. I think we’re there.’
Zeb flashed his torch around, then set up the portable flood and switched it on. He whistled. ‘Whew! This is all right!’
Maggie said softly, ‘It’s lovely.’ Miriam just grinned triumphantly.
I agreed with them all. It was a perfect small domed cavern, perhaps eighty feet wide and much longer. How long, I could not tell, as it curved gently away in a gloom-filled turn. But the feature of the place was a quiet, inky-black pool that filled most of the floor. In front of us was a tiny beach of real sand that might have been laid down a million years ago for all I know.
Our voice echoed pleasantly and a little bit spookily in the chamber, being broken up and distorted by stalactites and curtains hanging from the roof. Zeb walked down to the water’s edge, squatted and tested it with his hand. ‘Not too cold,’ he announced. ‘Well, the last one in is a proctor’s nark.’
I recognized the old swimming hole call, even though the last time I had heard it, as a boy, it had been ‘last one in is a dirty pariah’. But here I could not believe it.