hooked to some rock, or trapped in a tight fracture, or maybe just hanging lifeless on the rope.

Things after awhile began to be "routine," since only one fact stood up without discussion: it seemed as though we were surviving!!! Checking the water's height above and to the left of us, inspecting the solid sixty-five degree inclined mud wall to our right, and aiming a powerful flashlight every five minutes or so toward the entrance of the belly crawl, twenty-five feet below us, those things were all we could do. Myself, very deep inside, knew that the final sump at -321 feet just couldn't hold all of the entering waters, so it was only a matter of time for our room number seven to start flooding, and then... But before that happened, our two missing buddies fate down below would've then been certainly sealed.

SAME DAY, AROUND 18:10 OR 18:15 HRS.

This was about the twelfth time I had checked the water's level at the crawl's entrance; there had been about forty-five minutes of a steady holding flow of rushing waters going past us, but it was now obvious that both the volume and the speed of them had gone down some twenty to 25 percent at least. For instance, we could now speak in fairly loud voices, instead of shouting, and the color of the flood, still wild, was only dark brown instead of heavy chocolate.

I was about, as I said, to light up my flashlight when all of a sudden, I saw a streak of light way down below; only a brief tiny light, and certainly coming from under the still rushing waters. I shouted and everyone jumped up and started screaming like madmen, and would have shot down to help unless stopped. "Wait, wait! We CAN NOT assist them without possibly losing someone! But we can shout instructions and give them light and direct them to the best route, and grab them when they are close, but only that!" And so we did: "Keep next to the left wall! Now, around the right and up that boulder! Watch out! Now climb up that mud incline." and etc. etc. And a couple minutes later, both Randall and Primo were finally with us! Dirty, with no gear at all, soaking wet with no t-shirts, with tons of cuts and bruises, but miraculously with us, after too long of a nerve shattering wait. Oh God, how merciful Thou art!!! We were now six persons standing on the same six square feet of hard mud that had been our "salvation raft" for the past forty-five minutes or so, but we were now six joyful spirits! Tragedy makes giants out of each of us, with all the adrenalin and brotherhood that fills our bodies and our minds.

But not everything was smooth running: we were still trapped or marooned in a flooded pit-cave at -240 feet, we didn't know if our rigged rope had held without damage and, above all we still knew nothing about Bryan's whereabouts. Had he managed to take cover, to get out of the way of that incoming, awful mess? We still couldn't stop our praying, but certainly, just to kill time and lift up our morale, we were soon telling jokes and making fun of our problems. Such is life in the tropics, as they say! The codeword was not to give up.

SAME DAY, 10 MINUTES LATER 18:25 HRS.

At this moment, and as said, no more than ten minutes after that incredible rescue, one of