A Journey in the Dark

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When the big man pointed at my glasses, our guide Fernando quickly snapped a few inches of twine from a rope hanging nearby, neatly removed my glasses from my head, and tied the two ends of the cord to the arms of my glasses. As he handed the modified glasses back to me, I knew we were in for a better than average adventure.
Ten minutes later we arrived at the mouth of the cave. A large pool of still, dank looking water lay in front of a large, locked gate. We stood, momentarily stymied while Fernando searched for the key that would open the gate. All this was reminding me of something, something bad, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
But then Fernando found the key and the gate swung open. Lighting our candles, my companions (Vanessa, two towering Germans, and one stout German fraulein) and I hurried into the waist deep water and into the cave. The water was cool, but not unpleasant, so long as we could control our imaginings as to what lay beneath that opaque surface. Fernando leading the way, we waded ahead and around the corner, leaving the light of the living world behind.
Within some twenty paces, the pool's bottom fell away. "Here, you swim," Fernando cackled with glee, and he slid gently off the submerged edge into the water, carefully holding his candle aloft. I followed quickly, wanting to keep his candle in sight should I prove less adept at performing this one-armed doggy-paddle. The others followed just as quickly, and soon there were six little circles of light splashing awkwardly down the narrow cavern. This one-armed thrash is certainly not the most efficient swimming stroke devised. That, coupled with the burst of adrenaline produced each time my leg brushed something unidentified in the murky depths, as well as the mounting anxiety as we crawled ever closer to what, in the echoing cave, seemed like a deafening roar of rushing, falling water, ensured that when at last we reached solid ground a mere twenty or thirty yards later, I was disproportionately out of breath.
From here our way led gently up into the second hall. The roaring water turned out, due to some trick of acoustics, to be merely a small stream and inch or two deep running over the cave floor. Arriving at the second cavern, we paused while Fernando pointed out some of the more spectacular formations. Then it was back in the water, swimming through narrow channels until we could haul ourselves up and climb cautiously along ledges at the sides of the cavern.
The third cavern ended abruptly at a huge boulder. Hanging from the darkness above, a rope ladder climbed the side of this boulder. Vanessa plowed bravely ahead, carrying her light up into the darkness until it disappeared over the top. Sticking my candle in my teeth, I followed, clambering up the boulder and joining her in a narrow crawlspace above. Our companions followed until the six of us were crouched and huddled together in the tiny space atop the boulder, shying away from the inky black pool on the other side.
"Swim again," however, was the word from our guide, and so back into the darkness we slid. Further this time, with rocks hidden below the surface to scrape your kicking ankles. Half way along this fourth cavern, Fernando again stopped to show us great beard formations on the wall, like gigantic upside down coral hanging down the side of the cave from the ceiling 10 metres above us. Knocking on the various segments of this formation, Fernando produced reverberating, perfect notes, like playing some ancient stone xylophone. "Drums, drums in the deep," flashed through my head, and "Doom, Doom, Doom," and "They are coming." Strange.
Fernando chose this moment to explain that we would try to proceed as far as the seventh cavern, but that we should probably turn back at that point, because we really wanted our candles too last until we made it back to daylight. Sounded sensible to me.
Further up, and through the fifth cavern, and we came to a proper waterfall, careening down 10 or so feet from the hall above. No ladder this time, if not a simple rope hanging right in the middle of the rushing water. Fernando clambered up with inhuman speed and grace, and perched on a ledge halfway up the waterfall, extended one foot with strangely prehensile toes for me to pass up my candle. Suppressing a shudder, I passed my candle to the strange appendage, and grasping the rope followed as best as I could. Not being accustomed to rappelling up slick rock through cascades of water, my ascent lacked Fernando's ease and surety. Nonetheless, I arrived in one piece and took back my candle.
Continuing up through the sixth cavern, we climbed along a short smooth walled corridor to the seventh. Here Fernando seemed especially in his element, like he had lured us into his den. Clambering quickly up the cavern wall on his right, he perched atop a narrow pillar set into the wall, its top providing just enough room to almost support his two feet. The top of the pillar was perhaps ten feet above the pool below. He know explained that he would leap from his perch into the middle of the pool, then swim over to where we were standing, dive down into the pool and come up through a tiny hole, perhaps two feet across and one wide, almost under our feet. Having done just as he said, we were now invited, with a sly grin, to do the jump ourselves. So, following his careful instructions, I clambered up to the same perch. He pointed out where I needed to land, not too far out where there was a ledge just below the surface. Interesting, I have to say, standing up there outside the circle of light, peering into the almost pitch black below, and deciding to step off the edge. Nonetheless, it was the only reasonable way down and I took the leap. I landed, however, with too big a splash. "Fool of a Took," I thought.
The other men chose to take the leap as well, and doing me one better proposed to attempt to find the narrow passage that connected the pool to the narrow crawlspace. The first man's attempt went awry, and he came up in a corner of the main pool, clearly thinking he had squeezed through. Fernando cackled and danced a little jig of delight, and for a moment, in the pale light, his too long toes, his slick clammy skin, something seemed wrong. The moment passed, however, and we were soon heading back the way we came.
Back, down the rope ladder, Fernando again passing the candles down between his creepily agile and almost webbed toes. Through the caverns swimming. This time, however, we were not going to be climbing down and rope ladder. No, he led us another way, into a narrow space to the left of the boulder. Here, he took one of the german's candles from him, and proposed that he should lower himself into pitch black hole just large enough slide his torso through. Water was coursing down the hole, and when he had lowered himself halfway, Fernando told him to just lower himself down and let go. Into the pitch blackness.
Once he was gone, it seemed I was next. "This way, my precious," hissed Fernando, beckoning with his long fingers. Lowering myself down, carefully tilting my head back so that the waterfall wouldn't knock loose my glasses, I discovered that you kind of had to twist your torso to fit the contours of the tunnel as you dropped through it. And then, of course, when you were fully extended, you couldn't quite feel the floor, and had to let go while levering against the walls to lower yourself down. Having found the floor, I had to crouch down until up to my neck in the water to crawl into the low tunnel that was the only exit.
As the rest of my companions joined me, the flickering candle light began to play tricks on me. Vanessa joined us, but her eyes had a cold grey sheen, old beyond measure, and her ears were markedly more pointed than I recalled. The tall german seemed at moments to have a long flowing beard and pointy hat, and the stout fraulein seemed squatter and was carrying some kind of axe. I heard muttering from above as Fernando lowered himself down. "What has it gots in its pocketses, hmmm, my precious?"
"Right, well, I'm out of here," I thought to myself. Scrambling and splashing back down the last chamber, I searched desperately for some sign of light beyond the small circle cast by my guttering candle. And then slowly, a hint of light returned. Wading around the last corner, I spied the exit, and dashed into the daylight.
Or something like that. It's all kind of hazy. All I can say for sure is that half an hour later, when we were all floating down the river towards our hostel in inner tubes, there were absolutely no marauding bands of orcs firing arrows at us from the shore.

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