Free Medusa by Hammond Innes

When do you think they did it?’
    She turned her torch on the fallen roof and the gap that showed between the broken rock and the rubble below was about three feet wide and not more than two feet at the highest point. There was air coming through it. I could feel it cool on my face and there was a smell of the sea. ‘I should have come back,’ she said again. ‘Knowing somebody had been working on this fall, I should have stayed here to explain to them how important that drawing was.’
    I tried to tell her not to worry about it too much. ‘This is quite an extensive roof fall. Get this rubble shifted and you may find more drawings as you expose the rest of the cave walls.’ It wasn’t the cave drawing that interested me, though I realised the loss of it meant a lot to her, it was the fact that a passage had been cleared through the rooffall. It wasn’t only that I could smell salt water, I could hear it, the slop of wavelets on the rocks in the cove or against the base of the cliffs. ‘I’m going through,’ I said.
    â€˜No.’ Her hand gripped my arm. ‘It’s dangerous.’
    â€˜Don’t you want to know what’s the other side, why they’ve been digging away at this roof fall?’
    â€˜Well, of course I do.’ We were crouched together in what was clearly another expansion chamber, and as I circled it with my torch I saw that all the rubble they had cleared from the fall had been piled around the walls. Petra was straining at a large chunk of rock. ‘Give me a hand, will you?’ But when we had pulled it away, and she had cleared the rubble and dust that was piled behind it, exposing another foot or so of the limestone wall, there was nothing there, the surface completely bare. Her frustration and anger was something tangible. I could feel it as she shifted her body into the gap, kneeling now and working away at the rubble, dust rising in a cloud as she scooped the loose fragments of rock up in her hands and thrust them behind her.
    â€˜Leave it till tomorrow,’ I said.
    â€˜No. I must know what’s here.’
    â€˜In the morning you can come back again with the proper tools.’
    â€˜I must know,’ she repeated, her voice urgent. ‘If there are more drawings, then I’ll have to stay here, make certain they don’t start shovelling out more of this debris. If they come here again in the morning and begin enlarging the passage through this roof fall –’
    â€˜Listen!’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Just stay still for a moment.’ She had been working so furiously, making such a clatter in the confined space, that I couldn’t be certain I had really heard it. ‘Listen!’ I said again and she sat back on her haunches. Dust blew up into our faces, and in the sudden silence the slap of waves breaking seemed preternaturally loud.
    The wind’s getting up,’ she whispered. That’s all.’ And then, when I didn’t say anything, all my senses concentrated on listening for that sound again, she asked, ‘Did you hear something besides the wind and the sea?’
    I nodded.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜A voice. I thought I heard a voice.’
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜No. Of course I’m not sure.’
    We stayed frozen for a while, listening. ‘There’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Just the wind. I can feel it on my face, much stronger now.’
    I could feel it, too. It was as though a door had been opened and was letting in a draught. She bent forward again, working at a rock up-ended against the side of the cave. My torch, probing the hole through the roof fall, picked out a grey sliver of what proved to be bone. But when I showed it to her she brushed it aside. ‘There are several bits of bone lying around. A sheep, or a goat maybe. Probably got trapped in here, or came seeking a dark den in which to die. It’s drawings of animals, not