Most of the students were poised to dash along the passageway and distance themselves from the miserable black pit, but Ilika sat down with Boro and opened a jar of ointment. When they saw how badly Boro had scraped his hands and arms, they muttered apologies and found places to sit.
“I had a hunch Boro was worse than he realized,” Ilika said as he applied the softest ointment. “It’s easy to ignore pain for a while when things are happening quickly.”
“Miko does that too,” Neti said with fondness.
“It’s good to be able to do that, as long as you take care of yourself as soon as possible,” Ilika added.
“That feels a lot better,” Boro said. “They were starting to sting.”
“Accurate reporting is more important now than ever before,” Ilika said as he looked around the group. “This isn’t a classroom. This is real. Mistakes can get us killed. Any other problems?”
“I’m still shaking inside a little,” Mati admitted. “But I think I’ll be okay in a few minutes.”
About a quarter hour later, they all felt truly ready to move on. The level passage, with its collection of old smuggling booty, allowed the group easy walking for about fifty feet. Another small window revealed the half moon in the eastern sky. From that point, a stairway led steeply downward, but was covered with even more rubble than the first.
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Boro and Rini tried to lead very slowly and carefully, but most of the students, and even Ilika, were repeatedly slipping and scraping themselves.
Mati found her crutch nearly useless, and soon had to let Boro steady her while Sata carried the crutch. Rini took the lantern and the lead, announcing whenever anything dangerous was underfoot, from broken steps to rusty spikes in old boards.
Toli and Neti fared the worst. Buna wasn’t strong enough to keep Toli from falling. Miko would have carried Neti if he hadn’t been having almost as much trouble himself. Only Rini and Sata seemed to be okay.
Suddenly a number of changes caused them to halt. The rubble they were constantly kicking loose came to rest a moment later.
Buna shivered. “It just got colder.”
“And the walls are made of smaller rocks,” Toli added.
“And they’re dripping wet,” Kibi said, touching some yellow slime with a finger.
“I think we’re below ground level,” Ilika speculated, looking up at the rotten wood and crumbling stone on the ceiling.
Sitting would have been nearly impossible, so after a moment to examine everything they could see or touch, Rini continued to lead them down into the earth.
“Something ahead!” Rini called a few minutes later. “A doorway. We’re coming to a room, I think.”
“Take it slow,” Ilika said from the end of the line. “Report as you can see.”
“Loose rock floor that slopes down, and . . . oops! . . . a pool.”
As the others entered the room, they spread out to the sides when they saw Rini holding the lantern at the edge of the dark water, one of his boots wet.
When Ilika finally arrived, he raised his lantern. The room was a square about twenty feet on each side, the walls rough stone blocks with no other doors or openings to be seen. The dark pool covered about a third of the floor, going all the way to the far wall.
Boro took the lantern from Rini and walked as much of the outside edge of the room as he could, then returned to Ilika and Kibi. “No other way out,” he said.
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After eating a piece of cake, Ilika looked around. All his students were tired and sore. Some were trying to get comfortable on the sloping rubble, without much success.
Boro wandered over to where Sata was sitting. He could see Buna, not far away, putting ointment on Toli’s scrapes and cuts. Neti handed them pieces of cheese, and Boro gladly ate one.
He was gazing across the room, starting to feel sleepy, when something caught his eye. At one point on the edge of the pool, a little stream of water came from somewhere under the rubble. The stains on the rocks, however, showed the level of the pool to always be about the same.
Boro patted Sata on the back and rose to investigate. After making his way around the pool to the little inlet, he sat down to think about the situation.
Ilika noticed Boro’s thoughtful look and joined him.
“If the water’s coming into the pool all the time, and the pool isn’t getting any deeper, where’s the water going out?” Boro pondered aloud.
“Could be just cracks in the walls,” Ilika said with a slight shrug.
Boro looked across at the place where the pool touched the far wall. “I’m a good swimmer. I’m gonna find out.”
“Let’s tie a rope around your waist so I can follow you if necessary,” Ilika said.
Boro stripped off most of his clothes while Ilika got the rope from Toli. By now everyone was sitting up, watching. Ilika secured the rope around Boro, who entered the frigid water slowly.
“Be careful, Boro!” Sata called after him.
When he came face to face with the stone wall, his head and shoulders were still above water. He glanced back. Ilika was playing out the rope, Kibi beside him. Sata was down at the water’s edge. He turned back to the wall, took a deep breath, and went down to his knees.
After blinking to get his eyes used to the water, a dim grayness loomed before him, rough to the touch. He felt farther down, and the wall ended with a jagged edge. He felt for its limits, finding it roughly circular, about three feet across.
Pulling himself into the opening, Boro guessed the wall to be about two
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feet thick. He pulled himself through, then felt above him. His hand broke the surface, so he pushed off the bottom.
Breathing deeply of the cold air, he strained to see, but found only darkness all around him.
Then, as time passed and his eyes got used to the darkness, he sensed a tiny bit of green light coming from under the water, from the submarine hole in the wall. It failed to illuminate anything in the room, but showed the way back to his friends.
After breathing for another minute, he went down and aimed himself back through the hole, pulling on the rope to speed himself along.
“Wow! You sure can hold your breath a long time!” Sata said with admiration.
“I wasn’t holding my breath,” Boro admitted as he sloshed his way out of the pool. “I was in the next room over. Only problem is, it’s pitch dark in there.”
Ilika untied the rope and listened to Boro’s report of the size of the opening and the thickness of the wall.
“How far under is the top of the opening?”
“Only about a foot.”
Boro dried off with a piece of clean clothing Sata handed him. Then he looked at Ilika, who seemed to be lost in thought. “How can we get a lantern over there?”
Ilika was silent awhile longer. “That’s exactly what I was wondering. I can see how we can get everything else through without too much damage. But getting the lanterns through that pool while lit . . . or in any condition to be relit . . . doesn’t seem possible.”
Boro remained silent, but his face showed intense frustration that his discovery had been for nothing.
Deep Learning Notes
As Ilika explained to his students, the human body is capable of ignoring pain
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for a while when excitement is high and the body is full of the “fight or flight”
hormones like adrenaline. Then, when the excitement is over, the social values of pride and chauvinism (at least for males) often take over, causing people to ignore injuries even longer. Ilika is beginning to teach them ship-board procedures, like reporting injuries, long before they are anywhere near his ship.
If a half-moon is in the nighttime eastern sky, about what time is it?
Boro personally examined the outer walls, even though they could all be seen from anywhere in the room. What does this tell us about his personality?
Why would a simple rope around Boro’s waist be okay in this situation?