Outback by Michael Davies

Author:Michael Davies [Davies, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-27T17:00:00+00:00

PART THREE: RED

I

The first thing I had to do was rustle up some kind of splint for Adam’s busted ankle. At the bottom of a twelve-foot shaft, with a sprained wrist of my own, that was going to be tricky. I forced my foggy brain to function but the problem with that was that it immediately opened up a whole vista of other difficulties: even if I could patch Adam up enough to move him, what then? Sophie was capable at the wheel of the Land Rover but it was down at the bottom of a rock face it couldn’t climb and I couldn’t see what use it was in any case. We had no ladder, there was no way Sophie could haul us up from the shaft, and neither Adam nor I was in any fit state to start hammering holes into the walls to crawl our way to safety.

I slumped back against the side wall and stared blankly at the red earth opposite me. Adam was still talking to Sophie, high above us in the unstable entrance to the mine, but it was about his injuries rather than how to extricate ourselves from this cul de sac. As I stared, a large black millipede entered the torch’s circle of light and slithered lithely down the shaft wall to where the tunnel disappeared into the mine. I shivered and sat up, distancing myself from the wall.

I looked at the tunnel mouth again, uneven and crumbling where presumably George and his ancestors had shuffled through to gain access to the mine itself. Could this really be the main entrance to the site? And if so, how had they managed to extract the opals they dug out of the ground? My heart lurched optimistically and I shone the torch up to the top of the shaft, wondering if I might see a hook driven into the roof as part of some kind of pulley system for winching up buckets of gemstones. As a means of escape, that could offer distinct possibilities.

There was nothing in the roof of the cave but blackness.

The conversation between Sophie and Adam lulled and I took the opportunity to shout up to her.

‘Sophie, I need to fix Adam’s ankle. Is there anything up there I could use for a splint?’

‘I’ll find something,’ she said, and I heard the shingle crunch underfoot as she left the cavern.

She was back inside five minutes, calling down that the rope was on its way back down to us. I remembered not to look up this time as the cargo came over the edge of the shaft but I felt chunks of gravel and earth fall around me. I pointed the torch upwards and saw a large bundle, neatly packaged in a piece of material, being gently lowered. I stood and reached up to receive it, slackening the rope and shouting to Sophie that she could pull it back up.

Inside the bundle she’d prepared a miniature survival kit. Sticking out at either end of the material was a metal spike that I recognised as part of the Land Rover’s grille.

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