The Angels Weep Read Free Page B

day I was born, you
have been telling me of your courage and daring,’ Ralph
reminded him, as he placed an arm around Jan Cheroot’s
shoulder and led him gently back to the mouth of the shaft.
    ‘Perhaps I exaggerated a little,’ Jan Cheroot
admitted, as Zouga knotted the rope under his armpits and
strapped a saddlebag around his tiny waist.
    ‘You, who have fought wild men and hunted elephant and
lion – what can you fear in this little hole? A few snakes,
a little darkness, the ghosts of dead men, that’s
all.’
    ‘Perhaps I exaggerated more than a little,’ Jan
Cheroot whispered huskily.
    ‘You are not a coward are you, Jan Cheroot?’
    ‘Yes,’ Jan Cheroot nodded fervently. ‘That
is exactly what I am, and this is no place for a
coward.’
    Ralph drew him back, struggling like a hooked catfish on the
end of the rope, lifted him easily and lowered him into the
shaft. His protests faded gradually as Ralph paid out the
rope.
    Ralph was measuring the rope across the reach of his
outstretched arms. Reckoning each span at six feet, he had
lowered the little Hottentot a little under sixty feet before the
rope went slack.
    ‘Jan Cheroot!’ Zouga bellowed down the shaft.
    ‘A little cave.’ Jan Cheroot’s voice was
muffled and distorted by echoes. ‘I can just stand. The
reef is black with soot.’
    ‘Cooking fires. The slaves would have been kept down
there,’ Zouga guessed, ‘never seeing the light of day
again until they died.’ Then he raised his voice.
‘What else?’
    ‘Ropes, plaited grass ropes, and buckets, leather
buckets like we used on the diamond diggings at New
Rush—’ Jan Cheroot broke off with an exclamation.
‘They fall to pieces when I touch them, just dust
now.’ Faintly they could hear Jan Cheroot sneezing and
coughing in the dust he had raised and his voice was thickened
and nasal as he went on, ‘Iron tools, something like an
adze,’ and when he called again they could hear the tremor
in his voice. ‘Name of the great snake, there are dead men
here, dead men’s bones. I am coming up – pull me
up!’
    Staring down the narrow shaft, Ralph could see the light of
the candle flame wavering and trembling at the bottom.
    ‘Jan Cheroot, is there a tunnel leading off from the
cave?’
    ‘Pull me up.’
    ‘Can you see a tunnel?’
    ‘Yes, now will you pull me up?’
    ‘Not until you follow the tunnel to the end.’
    ‘Are you mad? I would have to crawl on hands and
knees.’
    ‘Take one of the iron tools with you, to break a piece
off the reef.’
    ‘No. That is enough. I go no farther, not with dead men
guarding this place.’
    ‘Very well,’ Ralph bellowed into the hole,
‘then I will throw the end of the rope down on top of
you.’
    ‘You would not do that!’
    ‘After that I will put the rocks back over the
entrance.’
    ‘I am going.’ Jan Cheroot’s voice had a
desperate edge, and once again the rope began slithering down
into the shaft like a serpent into its nest.
    Ralph and Zouga squatted beside the shaft, passing their last
cheroot back and forth and waiting with ill grace and
impatience.
    ‘When they deserted these workings, they must have
sealed the slaves in the shaft. A slave was a valuable chattel,
so that proves they were still working the reef and that they
left in great haste.’ Zouga paused, cocked his head to
listen and then said, ‘Ah!’ with satisfaction. From
the depths of the earth at their feet came the distant clank of
metal tool on living rock. ‘Jan Cheroot has reached the
working-face.’
    However, it was many minutes more before they saw the wavering
candle light in the bottom of the pit again and Jan
Cheroot’s pleas, quavering and pitiful, came up to
them.
    ‘Please, Master Ralph, I have done it. Now will you pull
me up, please?’
    Ralph stood with one booted foot on each side of the shaft,
and hauled in the rope hand over hand. The muscles of his arms
bulged and subsided