Watching the Climbers on the Mountain by Alex Miller

and drew them deeper.
    Gazing through the tiny agitated particles suspended in the sunlit water, Alistair found himself looking directly into the eyes of the stockman as Gil held him under. The seconds passed and he saw the panic contort Crofts’ features. He and the stockman gazed at each other through the intervening metres of water. As if he were illicitly observing a private and slightly perverse act Alistair was overcome by an uneasy mixture of guilt and fascination. He was unable to conceal his enjoyment at the sight of Crofts’ features twisting convulsively as he fought against the desire to breathe. The hard bones of the stockman’s skull where the hair had been freshly shorn away gleamed in the broken shafts of sunlight, and from the shadows of his eye sockets his gaze remained fixed on Alistair. Something physical seemed to pass through the dense medium of the water between them; the boy felt Crofts’ hatred touch him. Alistair turned sharply and kicked himself upwards, thrusting with all his strength towards the safety of the sunlight above.
    Crofts broke the surface gasping for air. He swam a couple of frantic strokes before realising that Gil had dived away from him. Breathing heavily he let himself go with the current down towards the outlet, and gazed across the agitated surface to where Gil was playing whales, spouting mouthfuls of water into the air and laughing as he celebrated his victory, his mood at once good-natured again. Alistair bobbed in the water beside his uncle. At the far side of the waterhole, on the high basalt-capped cliff behind them, Janet appeared. Crofts watched her as she stood poised on a projecting lip of rock several metres above the creek. She waved casually then dived, her body curving gracefully through the air for a moment before plunging cleanly into the still green depths beneath the scoured base of the cliff. Gil turned and saw her a split-second before she entered the water.
    â€˜See who can swallow dive!’ he yelled enthusiastically, daring them all to go one better, caught up completely that instant in the new game. He struck out for the cliff. ‘Race youse all to the top!’
    Crofts watched the three of them swimming away from him towards the base of the cliff and he allowed the quickening current to take him towards the outlet of the hole. Here the water flowed silently between huge flood-burnished blocks of white sandstone which lay about in a maze of destruction, like the toppled remains of a monumental civilisation. He began to assist the current, flicking his arms and legs in short jerky movements as he rounded the projecting shoulder of one of the blocks, at once out of sight of the pool. He breathed deeply, expanding his lungs to their fullest and curving his body luxuriously against the calming flow of the water.
    Floating slowly on his back between rising walls of fine-grained white sandstone the stockman stared up at the sky. The creek flowing around these fallen masses had sculpted them over the millennia into gloriously sensual troughs and bowls, from the edges of which brilliant green water-weed slewed lazily from side to side in the glassy current. The pale blue and white limbs of the river gums arched over the creek more than fifty metres above its banks, and high in the air beyond them a wedge-tailed eagle passed across the stockman’s view. He watched it until it was out of sight, waiting for it to reappear in its circlings, and the water bumped him gently over the polished lip of an embedded boulder and slid him into a steep and narrow conduit.
    Ida Rankin was lying at the base of this conduit holding herself in the cascade by hanging on to a branch of flood debris which had been jammed in the rocks and was sticking up in the sheeting water like a periscope. She was enjoying resisting the current, exhilarated by its powerful thrust against her body. No more than a metre below her the cascade broke in an explosive shower of