OCR Text |
Show fflfc! Ml i IM ... m svr. r m ss ' ' ;f J -c Li: ' i-- f - . . ' ' . i f is i . 'v - ' j I SS! water... if . I out Or (he .' -- as . - - ' i r 1 r - BUT a: 20-fo- ot SOCO0I5 soclean, so fresh above some jagged stalagmites that jutted from the floor of the pool like pikes. If I fell, I could be impaled. ' We 'didn't debate it for long, though. Two of our flashlights were soaked and dimming to a dull yellow. Only Bill's would be working soon, and if that went we'd be lost in a deaf and blind world, left only with a groping sense with Tampax ' . , f It ?? lry.. ', 'K V "'. I w t , of touch that could leadjis in deadly directions. Jim and Bill pulled the rope as horizontal as possible, and I started up. The exertion felt wonderful, pumping warmth into me and stretching taut muscles. Bill moved his beam of light just ahead of me as if drawing me upward, and Jim called hoarsely, "You got it, boy. Keep going!" I reached out with blistering : Jiands '."for the knot and clung tight. By now, my lungs were seared, and my arms, felt as if somebody were wringing them out like a piece of wet wash. I didn't look down, but I could sense those stalagmites, their spiked snoots sticking up under me. I got within three feet of the ledge when I realized feel- ing was draining from my hands. "You okay?" Bill called. "Slide back if not. Don't chance a fall." I thought that over, but as I did the light picked up the shadowy ledge. It was just out of reach. I was almost out of this pit, and I could r E ft- - ' i J Tampax internal sanitary " protection keepK. v your secret safe. Nothing can show, no one can know. You can't even feel Tampax in -- place. By all . summer's hottest days'. Doing what Tampax s Incorporated, Palmer, Mass. m. si 1 . s. . Invented by 1 docto- rnow used by millions of women e HE-plung- p' lit --- H was" black and dizzying. Helpless, I plummeted down sideways, most of my body exposed to. the rocks below. But I smashed into shallow water and sank against the cushion of mud beneath. Off balance, I bobbed up and staggered only a couple of feet before I struck the knife-sharedge of crusty rock, "I'm okay," I managed to call. Bill and Jim moved to my side. Some of the light reflected on their faces, and I. sawreal frigWntteri IFthe thiiTIiFes of thei the set of their jaws. We had come close to the worst, and the thought left us more helpless than ever. We didn't say much to each other. We just clawed our way back to our ledge and fell limply across one another. There was fitful dozing, broken only by little animal sounds T what you wish, feeling free! - be pulling - 55 a Family Weekly, July S, 1962 2L James Mason, Jr. William Bartne as a cramp hit us or as some phantom sound alerted, then disappointed,' us. What time was it now? At least Sunday afternoon, we decidedcWe''d"lieeri:missed for sure. Kescuers might be right above us! "Let's give them something to hear!" Bill said with the. first vigor we'd managed since my fall. We yelled wildly then common sense told us to organize ourselves. We would count to three, then bellow. The' moment we would stop, all sound would choke off, not fade away as normally. Crushed, we would lapse into a silence as deep as this underworld. The slightest" foreign noise, however, would, set us on a yelling binge again. Once we heard what sounded like a firecracker explod-- i n g, and we almos t fell off our perch shou t ing. Then came another loud pop, and we realized it had come from the pool. "Bubbles," Jim said disgustedly. "Air bubbles from the ground popping on the pool's surface." We slumped back,cruel trick. angry, at-t-he It. was after our estimate, a very conservative one, that Bill Bartee laid down the rules for the thing we had never mentioned dying here. We never doubted we'd be rescued, but obviously somethingiad gone wrong above, and just in case the wrong wasn't righted in time, we wanted to make sure our last moments were nofa horror. at-.first- , 48-ho- ur - colder and weaker we got, the harder it was to stay awakeJ.WeJqckcMLaunsarpund a sleeper from tumbling down, and we made sure at least two of us were always on alert for any sound. During my turn at sleep, I felt Bill and Jim go tense as if they'd just taken a shock. They strained forward in the darkness, holding their breath. More listening, I thought sourly. But something intruded on the pure stillness. A shuffling sound, prolonged, not short and curt like the others. "Let's give it a try," Jim said. We yelled again, then fell silent. I listened so hard in that muteness that my ears seemed to hum. We shouted again, answer a long, subdued call. We shouted, paused, shouted, paused. Soon we heard: "Keep yelling. We're'getting closer." time we -- a pkked-ap-ou- r -- shouts heaid-a- n iL Dick Shuptrine, ATO fraternity brothers, and Harry Jim before. They were part Lange; who had spelunked-witn of a rescue effort that had been bogged down in a vast expanse of cave we had never realized was so big. "You fellows all right?" a rescuer called down. "Need anything?" Yes. We needed something to see, hear, smell but most of all we needed ourselves with time again. We had never realized what a limbo lifeJ)ecomes without a sense of passing time. "It's about 4 p.m.," somebody told us. "Monday." Just short of three days, and now 1 could safely admit I thought we'd been trapped closer to a week. Army Rangers and spelunkers from the Atlanta Grotto of .the' National Speleological Society soon had looped ropes around us arid were dragging lis5 up to the cave. When we finally emerged, blinking, into the outside world, somebody asked Bill if he would ever go into that cave gain. "Nope," he replied, "That was my 12th look insi.de. The 13th might be unlucky." We laughed but we haven't been back to Lookout. h 150-ma- . yo like, wearing If to apart, and I could hear my breath come in explosive gasps. Numbness spread up my forearm, and I couldn't be sure I was gripping the ?bpe. I tried to flex feeling back into my hands, but they were dead. I started slipping back, the ledge fading in the darkness. Feeling rushed back into my hands now the searing feeling of rope burn. way to sail :i againTake only a few feet. now. But my muscles seemed ; odds, this is the ---- time didnt pass.. It lay as heavily around us as the darkness. My thoughts went back to the rope. "You know," I said, "I think I could climb that rope if it were at an angle rather than straight up and down. Why don't we pull it over to the bank and hold it taut between us .'and that outcropping of ceiling? That would give me about 20 feet of sloping rope to get a start on." I knew, too, that there was a splice mark at the mark. I could rest there: Another 20 feet up was a shelf of rock where I could get another breather. It seemed likea good idea until Jim pointed out a draw- - ypu feel ' my- - as I . (Continued from page 4) one of us by the half cry, half sigh we would make. At 10 feet, we knew our bodies were locking in rigid ityBetter cut out a ledge here and just sit it out," Jim said. We took turns with the knife, hacking away a shallow indentation with enough room for the three of us to perch on. "The rescuers wil find us soon," Bill said when we scrambled on our shelf. We nodded arid dozed off for a wnile. We couldn't judge how long we'd been under fhe mountain now. By all the trouble we'd encountered, by our hunger and beard growth, we figured it must bearouiLd late Saturday night. That meant our fraternity and familiesJim's and Bill's in Atlanta and mine in Ormond Beach, Fla must have realized we were in danger. They'd be after us first thing Sunday. That wouldn't be long, so we sang fraternity and folk songs to pass the time. mm wr ftaI 1"' v . m mm Trapped |