Sands of the Scorpion

by Bear Grylls

  ‘We only sleep next door!’ Peter protested, pointing at their hut.

  ‘So we’ll shut our door. We’ll be OK,’ Beck insisted.

  Finally the day was over and it was time to turn in. At the entrance to the enclosure they said good-night to Tahiyah and Anwar and all their new friends, and went into their hut.

  Peter was asleep almost immediately. For a while Beck lay on the floor on his bed of coarse rugs and watched the moonlight from the window move across the ceiling. Endless thoughts turned over in his mind.

  After a while he got up and fumbled in his rucksack for the torch and a couple of other items. Then he cautiously let himself out of the hut again. He followed his own advice and kept the torch beam on the ground, looking out for snakes.

  Five minutes later he was back in bed again, his mind put at rest. This time he rolled over and was soon asleep himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A metallic crash awoke him. It was loud and clanging, like a pile of saucepans falling to the ground. Beck knew exactly what it was.

  He was awake in a moment. He leaped out of bed and crouched by the window, then slowly raised his head so he could peer over the sill.

  Just before going to sleep, he had stretched a length of parachute cord at knee height across the entrance to the enclosure. At either end, out of sight of anyone entering from outside, he had tied a pot from the shed. Then he had piled a couple more on top. Anyone who walked into the enclosure would snag the line and dislodge the pots. And that was exactly what had happened.

  The figure of a man crouched at the entrance. Beck couldn’t see him clearly but the outline of his clothes said he wasn’t a Berber. The muffled swearing in Afrikaans helped identify him. Beck was almost certain it was the South African from the plane.

  His instinct had been right. Word about them had spread.

  Beck took a deep breath. If he shouted out loud enough, someone would hear. What was French for ‘help’? Oh yes – Au secours! People would come. But just then the man brought his hand up to chest level and Beck saw moonlight glint on a gun barrel. Yes, someone would come, but the man would still have plenty of time to shoot Beck and Peter – and anyone else who came running. Beck would have to do this on his own.

  He bit his lip and reached slowly for the axe. He had left it by his bed. His fingers closed around the handle and he sidled over to the door. The man would come in. Beck would have to hit him hard. It wasn’t something he had ever done before and he only intended to use the flat of the blade. But it was the man or him.

  Peter stirred and mumbled. In a flash Beck was by his side, pressing his finger against his lips. Peter’s eyes widened, but he stayed quiet. Beck went back to the window, as close as he dared, and peered out.

  It took a moment to spot the man again. Beck’s heart pounded.

  The man had crept over to the other hut, the one used for storage. He had a fifty-fifty chance of choosing theirs, but luckily he’d chosen the other one and disappeared inside.

  A pause.

  Another pause. And then—

  An ear-splitting scream. The man staggered backwards out of the hut, clutching at his leg, and toppled over. The gun flew out of his grasp and landed on the sand some way from where he’d fallen. He tried to stand, but fell again, screaming in agony.

  A line of wriggling darkness flowed out of the shed after him. The snake was trapped between the hut and the man on the ground – and a cornered snake is lethal. It raised its head and Beck recognized the outline. This wasn’t a horned viper, the snake he had described to Peter. There was no mistaking the hood that swelled out from its head. This was a cobra, one of the most recognizable and deadly snakes in the world.

  Beck didn’t think twice. He leaped out of the hut with the axe held high and brought it down on the snake. The reptile was sliced in two before it could bite the man again. He used the blade to flick the severed head into a dark corner of the enclosure. Then, chest heaving and still clutching the axe, he stood over the fallen man. For a moment they stared at each other, potential murderer and intended victim.

  ‘Help me . . . ’ the man gasped.

  For a moment Beck just wanted to shout, No! But he knew he couldn’t do that. He was better than this villain.

  Peter was now standing in the doorway to the hut. ‘What is it? What happened?’

  Beck came to a decision. ‘Bring the torch, and the rucksack.’ And then to the man: ‘Where did it get you?’

  ‘Back of the leg . . . ’ the man gasped through gritted teeth, rolling on the ground in agony.

  ‘Turn over and stay still.’

  A moment later Peter had come back with the rucksack. He kept the torch beam on the fallen man while Beck rolled up the leg of his trousers. The bite marks were plain to see in his calf: two dark holes, welling with blood and already swelling up.

  Beck hardly noticed as villagers gathered round. They would all have been woken by the racket the South African had made. Beck ignored them as he delved into the pocket of the rucksack for the contents of the medical kit. There was no time to lose.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Beck muttered. ‘It’ll just spread the poison.’

  The South African was ashen with shock and pain; he clenched his teeth.

  ‘So’ – Peter seemed fascinated and horrified at the same time – ‘are you going to cut the bite? Suck out the poison? Put on a tourniquet?’

  ‘You’ve seen too many movies.’ Beck fished out a gauze pad and a length of bandage.

  Beck pressed the pad firmly over the bite and started to wrap the bandage round and round the leg. ‘A tourniquet just blocks the blood flow. You could end up losing a limb. This just needs firm pressure to slow the release of the venom until we get him to a hospital. He was lucky, sort of. A cobra’s poison is neurotoxic, not haemotoxic like the viper’s. It attacks the nerves, not the blood, and he got bitten in the fleshy part of his leg. If he stays still, he could live.’

  ‘Could live? What do you mean, Could live?’ the man gasped.

  ‘Depends on how you react and whether or not the snake gave you a dry bite or not,’ Beck replied. He looked at the wound marks again carefully. ‘Looks like only two puncture marks. That means it might not have injected you with venom – you got a dry bite. If there’s a third puncture, that’s the injected venom. You might have got lucky.’

  The South African grimaced in pain again. ‘You bloody kids. If I die then you die too.’ He made a lunge to try and reach his gun in the dark, but Peter grabbed it first.

  Beck looked at the man angrily. ‘I know who you are. You smuggle diamonds and ruin lives in the process. When do people stop mattering more than lumps of stone that you dig out of the ground?’ Beck demanded. ‘Is it getting rich? Is that all you care about? ’Cos let me tell you, if I was rich there’s no way I’d end up lying face down in the dirt letting a boy half my age save my life.’ Beck stared him right in the eye. ‘How many people have lost their lives because of you? And I don’t mean one or two. I mean, how many thousands have died because of what you’ve stolen?’

  ‘Oh, spare me the sermon,’ the man snarled.

  ‘Well, you’ll have plenty of time to think about it in jail, won’t you?’ Beck muttered.

  ‘Jail?’ Now the man sneered through his pain. ‘I’m not going to jail.’

  This time Beck stopped winding the bandage round and stared at him in disbelief. ‘Why? You came here tonight to kill us. We have witnesses.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m a tourist who got lost. My car is nearby. I was looking for help.’

  ‘You have a gun!’ Peter put in.

  ‘So what? It’s not the safest country.’

  ‘We saw you in Sierra Leone! In a plane full of smuggled diamonds!’

  ‘Too true, kid. You knew about the diamond-smuggling – that’s why I hoped the desert would have killed you – and spared me the job of coming here to finish this.’

  Beck and Peter both opened their mouths to speak at
the same time.

  ‘So whose word will the police take?’ the man asked them. ‘An innocent tourist’s, or the ramblings of two kids?’

  ‘But you just confessed!’

  ‘Only to you two.’ The man lifted his head slightly to address the witnesses. ‘Hello, anybody? Does anyone here speak English? Anyone at all?’ He was smiling.

  Beck stared at the crowd, trying in vain to pick out Tahiyah. But she wasn’t there. It was just the men of the village, and none of them spoke a word of English.

  Beck’s heart pounded and he almost felt sick.

  This man had come to kill them. He had saved this man’s life because it was the right thing to do. This man had just confessed to everything. And there was nothing they could do about it. Was he going to get away with it?

  But another voice was speaking and it took Beck a moment to work out who it was. It was the man again.

  ‘Too true, kid. You know about the diamond-smuggling – that’s why I hoped the desert would have killed you – and spared me the job of coming here to finish this.’

  The voice was tinny but it could be understood perfectly. It was coming out of the microphone of Peter’s camera. Peter switched it off and beamed triumphantly at Beck, while still pointing the gun at the smuggler. Beck slowly grinned back, not quite daring to believe it.

  And the man let his head drop back down to the ground and let out a howl of pain, anger and frustration.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Early the next morning two Toyota Land Cruisers drove out of the desert. They both had police markings.

  A couple of policemen and a medic got out of the first one. They had words with the village chief and then disappeared into the hut where the South African was being held. The villagers had taken turns watching over him to make sure he didn’t escape. Not that this was likely in his weakened state.

  From the other car stepped a more senior-looking policeman, along with his assistant – and Uncle Al. Al didn’t say a word as he walked up to the grinning boys. He just pulled Beck hard into an embrace that squeezed the air out of him.

  ‘I can’t leave you alone for a second, can I, Beck?’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Told you he’d say that . . . ’ Peter remarked.

  Later, they had to tell their story again. Not only for Al’s benefit, but also as an official statement to the police inspector. They also handed over the diamonds they had collected on their journey. Tahiyah and a couple of other Berbers waited in the background, offering moral support.

  The inspector listened patiently while his assistant took notes. Sometimes he looked surprised; mostly he just nodded from time to time.

  But at one point he frowned. They had got as far as the oasis. The inspector said a few words to one of his men, who hurried out of the hut. He came back a moment later with a map, which he unfurled on the table.

  Beck and Peter looked at it with interest. They had walked across the whole area shown on this map. The inspector pointed to what was probably the wadi they had camped in, and the salt pan they had crossed. There wasn’t much else on a map of the desert.

  ‘But, see’ – the inspector waved a hand right across the map – ‘no oasis marked here. There is no open water south of here for two hundred miles.’

  Beck frowned and leaned closer. ‘There must be. It must have been about . . . here . . . no, here . . . ’

  But the inspector was adamant. According to the map, there was nothing that resembled an oasis anywhere near where they had been.

  ‘We know where you found water.’ Tahiyah spoke calmly and unexpectedly. ‘You not find it on map.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Peter asked.

  ‘It is . . . special water. If your . . . ah . . . ’ She frowned in frustration at her limited English, and said something to Al.

  He smiled, and nodded. ‘The legend is that the oasis appears to those in need,’ he said. ‘Specifically, to those whose cause is just and whose hearts are true. And I’d say that describes you two nicely.’

  Beck and Peter looked at each other, unsure what to make of this.

  The inspector waved a dismissive hand. ‘A legend? Who believes the old legends?’

  Al looked at him with a level gaze. ‘It wasn’t you who was lost in the desert in need of help.’

  ‘It could just be an oasis that the map makers didn’t know about,’ Peter said thoughtfully as they wandered through the village later on.

  ‘It could be.’

  But Beck thought back. He remembered the prayers he had offered up, and he remembered how Mrs Chalobah had described the smugglers. They shamed Africa. Was it so hard to believe that Africa could fight back? That good could win through?

  ‘Here’s another car coming,’ Peter remarked. The dust cloud had appeared some way off as another vehicle headed towards the village.

  Five minutes later it was close enough for Beck to make out a roof cluttered with what looked at first like a complicated roof rack.

  ‘Oh, no . . . ’ he muttered. The roof rack was in fact a collection of aerials and satellite dishes.

  The press had caught up with them. The boys stood still and watched the car approach the main hut.

  ‘Well, this will be good practice for you. You want to be a journalist,’ Beck teased Peter.

  Peter frowned. ‘Nah. I’ve had enough excitement for a bit. Maybe I should just keep the photography as a hobby . . . ’

  Beck smiled. ‘So what would you do instead?’ he asked him.

  ‘I dunno. Accountant maybe. That should be less dangerous. Chasing numbers instead of scorpions.’

  ‘Well, at least we had an adventure, Pete,’ Beck added with a wry smile.

  ‘Listen, Beck, you’re in danger of being the worst person on earth to go on holiday with!’

  They both laughed out loud, and with their hands in their pockets they wandered towards the press jeep, where Uncle Al seemed to be in full flow, recounting the story of diamond smuggling – and desert survival by his wayward nephew, Beck Granger, and his friend.

  BEAR’S SURVIVAL TIPS

  NAVIGATING BY THE SUN

  In Sands of the Scorpion, Beck Granger must make his way across the Sahara Desert, using the sun as a guide. Solar navigation, like astronavigation, is a time-honoured method of finding your way. There are two methods of doing this: the staff method and the watch method.

  The staff method

  This method works in northern temperate zones (from the Tropic of Cancer to the Arctic Circle) and southern temperate zones (from the Tropic of Capricorn to the Antarctic Circle).

  Find a straight stick about a metre long and stick it in the ground where it will cast a definite shadow. Mark the point where the tip of the shadow falls (1). Wait for about 15 minutes. The shadow will move. Mark the tip of the second shadow. Draw a line from the first mark to the second mark and about 30cm beyond (2). Stand with your left foot on the first point and your right foot on the second (3).

  If you are in a northern temperate zone, you are now facing approximately north; in a southern temperate zone you are facing approximately south.

  The watch method

  This is a handy method of getting a rough direction, but it’s not as accurate as the staff method. The closer you are to the equator, the less accurate it is.

  To orientate yourself using your watch, you need to make sure it is telling the accurate local time. If a daylight-saving hour has been added, you need to wind the watch back an hour.

  If you’re in the northern hemisphere, lay your watch flat with the hour hand pointing towards the sun. A good way of doing this is by laying it on a flat surface, then putting your eye at the same level of the watch. Now, draw an imaginary line from the centre of the watch that bisects the angle between the hour hand and the figure 12 on the dial. This direction is south.

  In the southern hemisphere, you need to point the figure 12 on your watch towards the sun, then bisect the angle between the hour hand and 12 o’clock. This direction is
north.

  About the Author

  BEAR GRYLLS is one of the world’s most famous adventurers. After spending three years in the SAS he set off to explore the globe in search of even bigger challenges. He has climbed Mount Everest, crossed the Sahara Desert and circumnavigated Britain on a jet-ski. His TV shows have been seen by more than 1.2 billion viewers in more than 150 countries. In 2009, Bear became Chief Scout to the Scouting Association. He lives in London and Wales with his wife Shara and their three sons: Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry.

  GOLD OF THE GODS

  Location: The Colombian Jungle

  Dangers: Snakes; starvation; howler monkeys

  Beck travels to Colombia in search of the legendary City of Gold. Could a mysterious amulet provide the key to uncovering a secret that was thought to be lost forever?

  WAY OF THE WOLF

  Location: The Alaskan Mountains

  Dangers: Snow storms; wolves; white-water rapids

  After his plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness, Beck has to stave off hunger and the cold as he treks through the frozen mountains in search of help.

  SANDS OF THE SCORPION

  Location: The Sahara Desert

  Dangers: Diamond smugglers; heatstroke; scorpions

  Beck is forced into the Sahara Desert to escape a gang of diamond smugglers. Can he survive the heat and evade the smugglers as he makes his way back to safety?

  TRACKS OF THE TIGER

  Location: The Indonesian Wilderness