After a little while though, they became silent, and they trudged onward looking like lost souls in a circle of the Inferno.
They soon came to the first cataract, the little one, Joe Miller said. It was so broad that they couldn’t see the other end, but it had to be ten times the width of Victoria Falls. At least, it seemed so. It fell from the mists above in a roar that made conversation impossible even if they shouted in each others’ ears.
The titanthrop led the way. They climbed upward past the waterfall, spray now and then falling over them. Their progress was slow but not overly perilous. When they had gotten to perhaps two hundred feet up, they stopped on a broad ledge. Here they let down their burdens while Joe climbed on up. After an hour, the end of a long rope fell through the fog like a dead snake. They tied the packs, two at a time, to the rope, and Joe pulled them bumping and swinging into the mists. When all the packs were on top of the plateau, they worked their way carefully up the cliff. At the top they resumed their burdens and walked on, stopping frequently for rests.
Tai-Peng related stories of his adventures in his native land and got them to laughing. They came to another cataract and quit laughing. They scaled the cliff beside it, and then decided to call it a day. Joe poured some grain alcohol over wood— a frightful waste of good booze, he said—and they had a fire. Four days later, they were out of wood. But the last of the “small” cataracts was behind them.
After walking for an hour over a stone-strewn gently sloping-upward tableland, they came to the foot of another cliff.
“Thith ith it,” Joe said excitedly. “Thithe ith the plathe vhere ve found a rope made out of clothth. It vath left by Ekth.”
Burton cast his lamp beam upward. The first ten feet was rough. From there on up, for as far as he could see, which wasn’t far, there was a smooth-as-ice verticality.
“Where’s the rope?”
“Damn it, it vath here!”
They went out in two parties, each going in opposite directions along the base of the cliff. Their electric lamps were beamed ahead of them, and they traced their fingers along the stone. But each returned without finding the rope.
“Thon of a bitch! Vhat happened?”
“I’d say that the other Ethicals found it and removed it,” Burton said.
After some talk, they decided to spend the night at the base of the cliff. They ate vegetables which the grails had provided and dried fish and bread. They were already sick of their diet, but they didn’t complain. At least, the liquor warmed them up. But that would be gone in a few days.
“I brought along a few bottleth of beer,” Joe said. “Ve can have one last party vith them.”
Burton grimaced. He disliked beer.
In the morning the two groups went out along the base again. Burton was with the one that went eastward or what he thought was that way. It was difficult to tell direction in this misty twilight. They came to the bottom of the huge cataract. There was no way for them to, get across to the other side.
When they got back, Burton spoke to Joe.
“Was the rope on the left or right side of The River?”
Joe, illumined in the beam of a lamp, said, “Thith thide.”
“It seems to me that X might have left another rope on the right side. After all, he wouldn’t know if his henchmen would come up the right or left side.”
“Veil, it theemth to me that ve came up the left thide. But it’th been tho many yearth. Hell, I can’t be thyure!”
The little big-nosed dark Moor, Nur el-Nlusafir, said, “Unless we can get to the other side—and it doesn’t seem possible—the question is irrelevant. I went westward, and I think that I may be able to get up to the plateau.”
After breakfast, the entire group walked five miles or so to the corner of the mountain and the cliff walls. These met at an approximately 36-degree angle as if they were the walls of a very badly built room. Nur tied a very slender rope around his waist.