IT IS NOT GIVEN to every man to approve the interior of his own tomb before he occupies it, and Lance Dillon was vaguely grateful for the privilege. He saw it from the position he would finally occupy in it – flat on his back on the sandy floor with a cone of darkness above his head and a moonbeam slanting downward from the hole through which he had fallen.
The hole was high above him and he wondered, inconsequently, what he must have looked like, flailing through the air as he fell. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim twilight, he saw that he had rolled down a long sandy ramp on to the floor. Tentatively, he moved his limbs, his head and trunk. They were painful but articulating normally. He was whole in bone and still lucid – an uncommon triumph for a man lying in his own burial-vault.
The air about him was dry, warm and clean, but tinged with a faint fusty odour which he could not identify, until his straining eyes caught the outline of the bats hanging from the fretted limestone above him. One or two of them disturbed by his fall were dipping about in the darkness with faint mouse-like squeaking. They were odd timid creatures, well-made for this graveyard dozing, but they were harmless and infinitely better company than the kites who would have come wheeling about him at the first warmth of dawn above ground.
He closed his eyes and let his fingers scrabble in the sand. It was fine and powdery, with no hint of moisture. Sluggish reason told him the rest of the story. He had stumbled into a cave, scored out by one of the underground rivers that had run centuries ago, beneath the surface of the Stone Country. Beyond this cave would be others, large or small, linked by a tunnel which was the course of the ancient river. If he wanted a deeper grave, it was here waiting for him, given the strength and the drive to find it.
But for the present he was content. The sand was soft. The warmth was grateful after the bitter cold above ground, and after the moonlight there would be the sun, striking through the peep-hole of the vault. He might not be alive to see it, but it was pleasant to think of, a hope to hold, while reason remained with him.
Slowly the vague shapes of his surroundings solidified; the groining of the rock roof, the pendant points of stalactites, the narrowing gullet of darkness where a tunnel ran downward into the bowels of the earth, the niches in the walls, stacked with stones, and bundles wrapped in tree bark. These last he could not identify, but he guessed that they were the weapons and bones of long-dead warriors cached by the myalls in their sacred place.
He wondered whether they would accord him the same privilege after they had killed him – whether even this primitive decency would be denied him. Not that it mattered. Not that anything mattered now, except a comfortable exit from the ruins of his life.
He had never had any religious faith. Philosophy was a scholastic mystery to him. His whole life had been dominated by the pragmatic cycle of birth, increase, acquisition and death. A man’s only survival was in his offspring, and he was lucky if he died before they disappointed him. Death was the ultimate fear, but once one passed beyond this fear, there was only the calm disappointment that life had meant so little.
Suddenly the arid stillness of the air was broken by a sound; a single clear note, as if someone had flipped a finger-nail against a crystal goblet. The overtones hung a moment in the conical cave and then died. For a full minute Dillon lay listening, but the sound was not repeated. His thoughts drifted away from it.
…The drover’s son who wanted to be a cattle king… The snot-nosed boy holding a stirrup-leather for the great Kidman himself and gaping in wonder at the gold half-sovereign tossed for him to catch… The stripling stock-rider, plugging his first thousand head of beef over five hundred miles of drought-stricken country to the rail-head… The leather-faced gunner in the Japanese war, trading his cigarette and beer ration for a few extra pounds in his pay-book… Keeping away from the girls on leave, because a night on the town was half the price of a yearling heifer… The day his number came up in the repatriation ballot for a lease of Crown Land in the Territory… The tent in the middle of nowhere, while his stock grazed on the river flats… All the years of sweating and penny-pinching and denial, of meagre cheques and lean credit, until he could build his first house and pay off his first mortgage and make his first trip to the east to buy decent stock. So long as he was small and struggling, dealing in scrub bullocks and stringy beef, the big combines were prepared to leave him alone… But from the day he made his first leap into the breeding business, they began to put pressure on him – always on the same tender spot: credit. When he married and began to build a household and a staff, the pressure increased, but the greater the pressure the tougher he became, the more determined and single-minded, so that in the end his whole hope of life, security and happiness became centred in the genitals of a bull.
Looking at it now, in the thin twilight of his burial-place, he saw it as a monstrous folly, next door to madness. Yet it was the truth. Other men had laughed and kissed and got drunk and bred sons they couldn’t afford and laid their last shillings on a filly hammering down the straight; while he had lived, disciplined as a monk, in the service of a sacred animal. Who now was in profit – he or they? Who would be mourned longer, with more of love and pity?
As if to punctuate the unanswerable question, the tiny musical note sounded again. He strained at the tenuous echoes, but the next moment they were gone, while his mind still groped for the tag of association.
…Sunday dinner at the homestead… The meal all but over…Two people with nothing fresh to say to each other, idling over the coffee and the last of the wine. Mary tapping absently at the rim of her wine-glass with a coffee-spoon, so that the heavy air was filled with the thin, repetitive note. His own voice, sharp and surprisingly loud:
‘For God’s sake, Mary! Must you do that?’
And then Mary’s wintry, sidelong smile:
‘Wears you down, doesn’t it?’
‘Why do it then?’
‘Cattle for breakfast, cattle for lunch, cattle for dinner, cattle in bed.’
With each repetition, the spoon tinkled on the glass.
‘That wears me down, Lance. I’m a woman, not a breeding cow. Don’t you see what’s happening to us? I want a husband, not a studmaster.’
‘For God’s sake, Mary! Be a little patient! I’ve told you a dozen times, we’re battling now; but it won’t be for long. A couple more years and…’
‘And we’re building bigger herds and better ones – while love gets smaller and smaller; while our marriage goes from bad to worse.’
‘I’ve always thought it was a pretty good marriage.’
‘You’ve hardly thought about it at all. And I’m beginning to lose interest!’
‘You don’t damn well know what you want…’
And so on and on, through the dreary dialogue of disillusion, with its meaningless accusation and its hidden rancours that each was too proud to put into words…
Now, when there was no pride left, it was already too late. When he was ready to speak the truth, his swollen lips could not frame the words – and there was no one to hear them if he did.
Again the solitary crystalline sound rang through the vault. This time he understood what it was: the fall of a single drop of water into a pool. Behind his matted eyelids a picture formed: the slow seepage of minuscule droplets through the earth; their agglomeration at the root of a rusted stalactite; their slow, trickling course down the spear of limestone; the moment of suspension at the point; the final plunge into a basin where a million other drops had gathered safe from the sun and the thirst of man and beast.
Water…! The last demand of the dying on a world of such varied richness. He waited until the sound came again and fixed its direction in his mind. Then he rolled himself over on his belly and began to drag himself towards it, hoping desperately that he would not find it beyond his reach.
Finally his hands touched the base of the wall and felt it swell into a kind of pillar above him. The next sound of water seemed to come from directly above his head. The problem was to raise himself to reach it. He drew his trunk and feet as close as possible to the pillar of limestone and then grasping the nearest projection, he began to haul himself upward, dragging with his hands, thrusting with his feet, holding himself by friction to the rough surface when each instalment of strength gave out.
Then the pillar broke off and his fingers clung to a ledge. With a last convulsive effort he reached it and threw the upper part of his body across it so that he hung by his torso, with his face dipping into a shallow basin of icy water. The touch of it was like knife-blades on his torn skin, but he lapped at it greedily and felt it burning his gullet as he swallowed. Even when he had drunk his fill he still hung there, waiting for the little infusion of strength to seep outwards to his members.
His fingers explored the ledge around the basin and found it wider than their compass – wide enough perhaps for a man to lie within reach of the water. They found other things too: knobs and shards of limestone fallen from the roof, stalactites, long as daggers and almost as sharp. His fingers brushed some of them into the water, but closed on one, long as a man’s forearm, thin and smooth and pointed like an awl.
Again the cool reminder that he was not to be allowed to die in peace; that the last moment would be one of violence and terror. He had not cared before. But now, in this quiet place, a coal of anger began to glow inside him. He had suffered enough. He had run to the edge of the last dark leap. Why should he wait tamely till they thrust him over it? His fingers crisped round the smooth butt of the stalactite, then slowly relaxed.
First he must haul himself on to the ledge near the water. Here he could lie, husbanding his residue of strength, cooling himself when the fever rose again. From here he could make the final despairing leap at the first of his attackers, the stone dagger in his hand, all the anger, disillusion and regret arming him for the hopeless fight.
It was the last hour of the dark when Neil Adams got up, settled the blanket around Mary and walked down to the river-bank to take over the watch from Billy-Jo.
The black-tracker had nothing to report. The kadaitja men had been silent a long time. They would probably remain so until the first light of day. He shambled up the beach, threw himself down on his blanket and curled into sleep like a bush creature.
Neil Adams sat down on a rock ledge, lit a cigarette and let his mind drift with the smoke spirals, while his body relaxed into the sad sweet contentment that follows after the act of love.
He had known many women, but this was the first with whom possession had seemed more like a surrender than a conquest. The ramparts of egotism had been tumbled down, the barricades of the Book of Rules had been taken without a fight. The legend of impregnability was destroyed for ever. He was a man who had taken another’s wife, a policeman who had betrayed his trust and was open to attainder by any man who cared to dig deep enough into his secrets.
It was a bitter dreg to poison the after-taste of love, but it was there, and gag as he might he had to swallow it. Get it down then at one wry gulp. Adultery and professional dereliction. It is done. There is no way to mend it – and perhaps, after all, there is no need. The odds are all on Dillon’s death, and what’s the harm in a tumble with a new and willing widow? If he’s alive, he doesn’t know; and who’s to tell or care – unless my lady has an unlikely attack of remorse?…
Even as he thought it, he knew it for a cynic’s defence, harder to sustain than the simple truth. For the first time in his life he had come close to love – the pain and the power and the mystery of it. Mary Dillon had come to it too; and even without the consummation, the love would still be there – the pain too, and the haunting questions: Will it look the same when the sun comes up? And if it does, what’s to do about it?
He stared across the water at the driftwood pile behind which Lance Dillon had hidden only twenty-four hours ago. Again he was touched with reluctant admiration for the endurance and resource of the man, naked, wounded and alone, pitting himself against the primitive to whom the bush was an open thoroughfare. How long had he lasted? How had he died? Had he known beforehand that his wife was lost to him? Did he end hating her or regretting his own failure to hold her? What would he have done in Neil Adams’s shoes? Fruitless questions all of them – except one: Where was Dillon now? If anyone knew the answer, it was Mundaru, the buffalo man, and he was coming nearer to death with every minute that ticked away towards the dawn.
Neil Adams listened to the night, waiting for the calls of the kadaitja men. None came. If Billy-Jo was right, none would come until the death-chant began and the banshee howling of the bull-roarer. He tossed his cigarette into the river and watched the current whirl it away into darkness. All his other loves had been like that – a swift enjoyment, a swift extinction. But who could tell how long this one might last and what fires might blaze up from its still warm embers?
At the sound of a footfall in the sand he turned sharply to find Mary standing over him, her face pale but smiling in the moonlight. He stood up, took her in his arms and they held to each other for a long quiet moment of renewal. Then they sat down together on the flat rock, hands locked but faces averted from each other, lapped in the tenuous content of new lovers.
‘Neil?’ Her voice was soft and solicitous.
‘Yes, Mary?’
‘There’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Remember the old gag: “The hardest thing about love-making is knowing what to say afterwards”?’
He turned at the hint of mockery in her voice, but there was no mockery in her eyes, only a smiling tenderness. He grinned and nodded.
‘I remember it. Is that your problem?’
‘No.’ The denial was emphatic. ‘And if it’s yours, Neil, forget it. There’s nothing to say and nothing to pay. I’m glad it happened and I’ll always remember. But if you don’t want to remember, I’ll never remind you. That’s all, darling.’
‘Is it?’
‘Is that a dismissal?’
Her face clouded. She shook her head slowly.
‘It’s an act of love, Neil. It’s the only way I can tell you that you’re as free now as – as you were with any of the others.’
‘I may not want to be, Mary.’
‘Then you’re free until you find out.’
‘And then?’
‘Then perhaps I’ll be sure too.’
He gripped her arms brutally and slewed her round to face him. His eyes and mouth were hard.
‘Understand something, Mary! This isn’t a bush meeting where you can back ‘em both ways and hedge your bets on the outsider!’
‘You think that’s what I’m trying to do?’
‘Yes.’
Her head went up proudly and she challenged him.
‘All right, Neil! Here it is. What happened tonight was real for me. I wouldn’t take back any of it, even if I could. If Lance is dead, I’m free. If he’s alive and well, I was going to leave him, anyway… And I love you, Neil. Now, what do you want to do about it?’
His grip on her arms relaxed. His eyes dropped away from hers. His voice lost its harsh commanding note.
‘I – I think we should both wait and see.’
‘That’s all I was trying to say, Neil,’ she told him coolly. ‘I love you enough to leave you free. But don’t ever tell me I’m hedging my bets. I did once, but never again.’
‘I don’t blame you. But I can’t let you blame me, either. If I blame myself it’s a private business, and I’ll never ask you to carry the load of it. Now kiss me, darling – and let’s not talk any more.’
But even in the kiss there was still the sour taste of regret, the comfortless revelation that guilt is a lonely burden – and that a man needs a special kind of courage to carry it in silence. Mary Dillon had it, but he wished he were half as sure of himself.
When the grey of the false dawn crept into the eastern sky, Mundaru the buffalo man halted, just inside the fringe of the grass-lands. He was cold, weary, hungry, and above all confused. All night long he had been creeping in the tracks of the white man. At every moment he had expected to come up with him, living or dead: but still he had not found him.
Ten paces ahead the grass-land faded out into tussocks and stunted mulga trees, a wide waterless area limited by the limestone ridge where painted poles were grouped around the sacred bottle tree. The whole space was empty of life or movement. The white man had disappeared and Mundaru lapsed into the final despairing conviction that he had died long since and that what he had followed was a spirit-shape, luring him to destruction.
With the conviction came a kind of calm. Death was already lodged in his carcase. He could hope no more, run no further. When the kadaitja men came, as soon they must, they would find him waiting for them, a passive participant in the ritual of propitiation.
Stiffly he got to his feet and pushed through the grasses into the open space beyond. The light was spreading now, the stars receding to pin-points in the grey firmament. A little breeze was beginning to stir in the leaves of the mulga trees. The bull-frog chorus died slowly into silence and the first bird of the morning rose, a black sinister shape in the sky ahead of him. It was a kite, and soon there would be more of them, many more, wheeling above him, waiting for him to die.
Half-way to the ridge he halted, laid down his spears, unwrapped his fire-sticks and squatted down on the ground to coax a little flame into a handful of dry, spiny grass. It was a meaningless action. He had no food to cook. The fire would have no warmth in it. But the motion of twirling the stick between his palms, spinning its point against the hard wood of its mate, blowing the first spark into a tiny flame, required a concentration that took his mind from the men who were stalking him.
When he himself had worn the kadaitja boots, he had found his victim crouched like a frightened animal, vomiting on the ground. He did not care to die like that. He could not fight. There was no challenge to the sacred spears, but at least he could go through the last motions of manhood, with the first gift of the dream-people flowering into flame under his hands.
Eastward the sky brightened, blood-red, as the sun pushed upward towards the rim of the world. The point of the spinning stick ran hot against the hollow of hardwood and a thin whiff of smoke rose from the tuft of grass. Mundaru grunted with satisfaction and blew steadily to coax out the first spark. A long shadow fell across the ground in front of him, and he looked up to see six men, painted and motionless as rocks, standing in front of him. In their upraised arms they carried throwing-spears, and the long, barbed heads were pointed at his breast.
The fire-sticks fell from his hands. The smoke was extinguished. Mundaru’s arms hung slack to the ground and his eyes searched the painted faces above him. Between the bars of yellow ochre, their eyes looked down at him, cold as granite.
Then from behind him the bull-roarer began, a thin howling, growing in volume and tone to a deep, drumming roar. The air was full of it. The ground vibrated to it. It hammered at his skull and crept into the hollows of his bones and filled his entrails like wind. It stuffed his ears and seared his eyeballs and choked his nose so that he could not breathe.
The kadaitja men watched and listened immobile, their spear-points ready. The roaring went on and on for nearly twenty minutes, then stopped abruptly. Blind, deaf and shivering in the silence, Mundaru waited. There was a sound like a rush of bird-wings at his back and he pitched forward with the sacred spear in his kidneys.
Long before the bull-roarer began, Billy-Jo had the horses saddled and the pack-pony loaded. Mary Dillon and Neil Adams were standing by the fire drinking pannikins of scalding coffee. The tension between them had eased and they talked gravely and companionably of the day ahead.
‘I’d like you to understand my reasoning, Mary. It could be wrong, but it’s the only logic I can see.’
‘You can’t ask more of yourself than that, Neil. Go ahead ’
‘Strictly speaking, I should forget about the myalls and concentrate on a search for your husband. The tribal blood-feud is secondary, I can deal with that any time. But the fact is, we could cast about all day and still find no trace of your husband. Billy-Jo’s the best tracker in the Territory, but even he can’t work miracles. You understand that?’
‘Of course.’
‘So I’m working on the assumption that your husband is dead. All the signs point that way. This is the third day, and we know he was quite badly wounded. The only man who can give us any information is the man who’s been tracking him - Mundaru. The kadaitja men are after him, and they’ll get him – sure as God.’
‘How can he help you then?’
‘In a kadaitja killing, the victim lives for some hours. That’s the point of it. He dies by a magical power, not by a man’s hand. If I can come up with him before he dies, I may be able to get something out of him. But I can’t promise…. If we fail there, then Billy-Jo and I will beat the swamp for the rest of the day.’
‘Neil?’ There was tenderness in her voice and a curious touch of pity. ‘You’re a good policeman. Believe it always.’
‘I’m glad someone thinks so.’ He bent and kissed her lightly, tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and turned away towards the horses, just as the first booming sound of the bull-roarers sounded across the swamp. The three of them froze: Billy-Jo in the act of tightening a girth, Adams in mid-stride, Mary with the tin mug half-way to her mouth. Even in the cold light of morning, the primitive terror held them strongly.
Billy-Jo cocked his head like a hound listening. He flung out his hand in an emphatic gesture.
‘Over there, boss. Long way. Outside swamp.’
Adams nodded.
‘We’ll try to skirt the billabong. No point trying to hack our way through.’ He turned to Mary. ‘Before we go, Mary…you ride between Billy-Jo and me. No matter what happens, no matter what you see, keep your head. And do exactly as I tell you. Understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Let’s get moving.’
He hoisted her into the saddle and they moved off, Neil Adams in front, Mary behind him, with Billy-Jo last and leading the pack-pony. They splashed across the ford, struggled up the steep bank and began to work their way up-stream along the narrow strip of clear ground between the bushes and the grass-fringe.
They had gone perhaps a mile when the bull-roarer stopped. Neil Adams reined in and they waited while he stood in his stirrups and scanned the swamp-lands, stirring lightly under the morning breeze. After a couple of minutes he lowered himself into the saddle, dug his heels into the pony’s flanks and set off at a canter with the others trailing behind him.
For the next mile Mary Dillon found herself moving in a kind of waking dream, conscious of all her surroundings yet absorbed in an inner contemplation. She felt everything, saw everything: the thrusting muscle of the pony, the twigs and branches that whipped at her, the wind rushing in her face, the new light spilling over the land and the sky, Neil Adams a galloping centaur ahead of her. Yet her thoughts were all bent backward: to the river-bank, to the homestead, to the swift passion that had driven her into the arms of Neil Adams, to the slow death of her love for Lance, to the one vaulting moment in which the world and her relationship to it had changed completely.
She had seen the change before, in other women; but she had never understood it until now. There was an alchemy in the act of union. The transmutation for better or for worse was terribly final. One emerged from it curiously free; yet free in a new country, the contours of which hid mysteries unguessed at in the time of wholeness or fidelity. It was the old drama of Eve and the Tree of Knowledge, when the world changed overnight at the first bite of a strange fruit.
She was a wife, but not the same wife. From a creditor in marriage she had become a debtor. Her rights in law had been forfeited. The wholeness of herself had been broken and parcelled out, valueless to one man, to the other worth only what he cared to pay for it.
How much would he pay? How much was his hesitation dictated by fear for himself, how little by concern for her? How much did she care whether he paid or not, provided she could still read love in his eyes and a respect, however reluctant? And Lance? Was it only because he was dead that she could still think of him with tenderness? If he was alive, could she still face him with dignity? Even the most merciless self-security told her that she could. Few marital contracts were breached without fault on both sides and the moralist’s finger often pointed in the wrong direction.
Ahead of her Neil Adams reined in suddenly and her own horse reared up on its haunches, and it took all her strength to hold and steady him. Adams turned in his saddle and pointed out across the grass-land to where a thin column of brown smoke was rising into the sky.
‘What do you make of it, Billy-Jo?’
The black-tracker called back:
‘Kadaitja men, boss. Takeum man. Burnem spirit snake in back.’
Adams nodded and turned to Mary.
‘This is it. Close in.’
She edged her mount close to him so that their stirrups were almost brushing.
‘How far, Neil?’
‘About half a mile. We’ll take ‘em through the grass.’
‘I’m scared, Neil.’
His hand reached across and closed over her own. His voice was very gentle.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll be together from here on.’
As they urged their horses through the high rank grasses, she wondered what meaning she should read into those eight simple words.
Mundaru the buffalo man was lying spread-eagled in the dust. The kadaitja men were squatting round him, holding his twitching body, while their leader extracted the spearhead from his back. Beside them, a small fire was burning, and in the centre of the fire lay a stone, elliptical in shape and flattened on both sides. As the coals built up around it, they brushed them carefully to one side so that the sacred object was always visible, like a heart absorbing heat from the fiery body that encased it.
When the spearhead was extracted, there was a small rush of blood, and the kadaitja man held the lips of the wound together while he rummaged in the small bark bag which Willinja had given into his hands. He brought out a small sliver of white quartz, about the length of a finger, and this he inserted deep in the wound, covering it with a plug of brown gumresin. Mundaru twisted and heaved convulsively at this magical invasion of his body, but the kadaitja men held him down and forced his mouth into the dust so that he could not cry out.
The leader stood up and walked to the fire. Without a moment’s hesitation, he plunged his hand into the coals and picked up the sacred stone. It was nearly white-hot, but he grasped it firmly. He felt no pain, and when he laid it over the wound in Mundaru’s back, the flesh and the resin were instantly cauterised, while his own hand was unharmed. When the operation was over, he laid the stone on the ground, filled his mouth with water and squirted it with his lips on the stone to wash off any evil which might have clung to it from Mundaru’s body. When it was cool he put it back in the bark bag and stood up. The others stood with him and looked down at Mundaru, jerking and groaning at their feet.
It was all but done. There remained only the death-walk. They hauled Mundaru to his feet and held him until they felt him steady, then they pushed him forward. At the first step, he collapsed, but they dragged him up again, set his face to the sacred place and prodded him forward with their spears. Miraculously he stayed on his feet and, one hand clamped to the torn muscles of his back, he began to shamble ahead. The kadaitja men followed, with pointing spears, measuring their pace to his.
A foot outside the circle of painted poles they laid hands on him again and held him, turning his head this way and that so that his glazed eyes might see the symbol of all the power he had outraged. Now for the first time he began to struggle. This was the final vision of death. No matter how long more he survived, this was the ultimate agony. But they had no pity for him. With one concerted heave, they tossed him forward into the leaves and watched the ground swallow him up.
The echoes of his last despairing scream were still in the air when the shot rang out, and they wheeled to face the riders pounding towards them over the plain.
The scream woke Lance Dillon out of a doze, filled with the phantasms of fever. He was lying on the edge near the pool, one arm dangling numb and helpless in the water, the other still grasping the pointed stalactite. When he opened his eyes, he saw at first only a formless blur of light; but as his vision cleared, he understood that it was the sunlight slanting down from the entrance to the cave.
It was morning then. He had lasted the night. He wondered whether he would see the noon. He eased himself carefully on the rock ledge, trying to work a semblance of life into his numbed arm. The effort brought him perilously close to the edge of the platform, and as his angle of sight shifted he was able to focus on the spot where the sunbeam struck the sandy floor of the cave.
Terror flooded through him like a purge. Crouched on all fours in the sunlight was the figure of a myall black. As he looked, the myall raised his head, and Dillon could see the bulging eyeballs and the mouth drawn back in a grin from the white teeth. Recognition was complete. This was the man who had wounded him in the valley, who had led the trackers through two nights and a day, and who had found him at last, cornered and ready for the kill.
The myall moved forward out of the sunbeam, and Dillon lost him for a moment, when his head drooped and his body melted into the darkness. He could still hear him breathing in short savage gasps as he moved closer to the low pillar of limestone. Any moment now he must stand up, and as soon as he did he must come leaping to haul him off his pedestal.
He must not die like this, trapped like a rat in a dark hole. Every nerve in his body was alive with the instinct of survival. His fingers tightened round the stone dagger and he could feel the remnants of his will gathering themselves like a spring inside him.
With a huge effort he forced himself up to his knees, slewed his body so that his legs dangled over the edge of the platform, and he was sitting more or less upright. The effort made him groan aloud; pieces of limestone, dislodged by his movement, splashed into the pool. When his dizziness had passed he wondered why the myall had not come for him. His heavy animal breathing was closer than ever.
Dillon blinked away the sweat that bleared his eyes and peered about the dark hollows of the cave, searching for his adversary. Then he saw him, a pace away from the foot of the platform, still on his knees and snuffling at the sand. A faint highlight outlined the shape of his shoulder muscles and the line of his dorsal bones.
It was now or never. If the myall lifted up his head, it was the end. Dillon’s fingers crisped round the thick butt of the stalactite and, holding it forward in both hands, he plunged downward on to the body of the myall.
He felt the point of it dig deep into flesh, heard the sound as the limestone snapped under his weight, then darkness swept over him like a wave, tainted with the smell of death.