Chapter 14, The Hidden City. Blinded by spray, Bond felt that he was as good as dead.

The enormous flow of water going over the falls set up air currents which acted like an undertow on a swimmer,

and he dangled, terrified lest any attempt to throw his feet backwards should destroy his already precarious balance.

An updraft carried him away from the lowering clouds of spray, and he saw what had seemed like a

bottomless pit was in fact a deep gorge, which sucked in water from three of its sides.

Ahead of him beneath the suspension bridge of misty rainbow,

the reformed river escaped as a cataract between towering cliffs.

Bond's heart fell fractionally faster than the hand glider.

A down draft was carrying him below the lip of the falls.

He struggled to find a current of air, but he knew that it was hopeless. A down draft was carrying him below the lip of the falls.

He struggled to find a current of air, but he knew that it was hopeless.

He could never reach the surrounding jungle.

He would have to follow the river down the gorge,

and hope that some landing space would appear before he ran out of supporting air.

One look at the raging torrent, and his chances of survival seemed remote. The sides of the gorge were sheer, save for occasional patches of vegetation, and the river

raced through a shattered honeycomb of snagletoothed rocks. As the distance to them narrowed, he saw the battered shell of one of the

launches breaking apart like a bundle of kindling. That was the fate that awaited him. It was

like a nightmare in which with one jolt one is suddenly suspended in mid-air, drifting down,

down, down towards a hostile landscape,

twisting and turning, but unable to arrest the descent.

Bond felt a coldness which did not only come from fear.

Beneath the level of the cliffs, the atmosphere was glacial.

...