Claws of the Crocodile

by Bear Grylls

  After that, nothing. By the time Beck had gone another ten metres he was pretty certain he had lost the trail.

  He went back to Brihony. She saw from his face that he was already feeling annoyed with himself.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.

  ‘Stand there.’ He pointed at the last footprint he had seen. ‘You need to follow and stand by every trace I find. That way, if I lose the trail, I can always come back to the last point I had it.’

  ‘Got it.’

  From that last footprint, the man could have gone in three possible directions. There was a pair of scrub bushes ahead. Beck had assumed he had gone on between them. However, he might have gone left or he might have gone right. Beck tried the left track first, and almost immediately got lucky. There were two footprints in quick succession.

  Something was bothering him and he couldn’t quite work out what it was, but for the time being he concentrated on what he had. He had two footprints, which meant he had the man’s natural stride.

  He quickly looked around for the longest, straightest piece of wood he could find. He cut a branch off a bush with the machete and lopped off the leaves and twigs. That left him with a stick about a metre long. He placed the end by the heel of the first footprint and laid the wood down on the ground. Where it reached the heel of the second footprint he cut a small notch in the stick. He put the base of the tracking stick in the heel of the second print and swept it in an arc across the ground in front of him. The notch marked the distance at which the next footprint ought to appear – and there it was.

  ‘Neat,’ Brihony said when she saw what he was doing. He worked his way along the ground, step by step. Sometimes there were no prints, but thanks to the stick Beck knew where they should have been. Gradually, he was seeing the other clues more clearly too . . . Pebbles that were dislodged or overturned – you could tell because the half that had been in the earth was darker from moisture. Bushes the man had brushed against – leaves generally grew in a set pattern, but some were twisted unnaturally in one direction. And always, every few metres, another footprint or two showed he was on the right track.

  ‘Keep this up and we’ll have him before sundown,’ Brihony commented.

  ‘Yeah, maybe . . .’ Something was still niggling away at the back of Beck’s mind. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but for the time being he was doing all he could.

  Until the trail vanished altogether. It led to the base of a boab, and stopped. The toes of the last footprint were right up against it, as if the man had stood with his face pressed to the bark. Or walked right into the tree.

  They stood and stared at it. Brihony craned her neck back to peer up at the bare branches. There was nowhere up there that a man could hide.

  Beck squatted down and studied the print closely. What was it that was bothering him? It was a normal footprint. It wasn’t faked. The heel had dug into the ground, and the toes . . .

  He groaned and clutched at his head, and slowly toppled over to one side. ‘Aargh!’

  ‘Beck?’ Brihony knelt down, worried. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m totally out of practice! That’s what’s wrong! Gaah!’ He climbed slowly to his feet, frowning with annoyance. ‘He led me right up the garden path. Right up it!’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Look. Watch my feet.’ Beck took a few slow, deliberate steps. ‘One, and two, and one, and two . . . heel first, then toes, right? The heel takes all my weight before the rest of my foot goes down. So the heel is always deeper than the toes.’

  ‘OK . . .’

  Beck squatted down again, and pointed at the footprints. ‘Not here. The toes are deeper than the heels. He was walking backwards! This is where he started from, and he finished at the first footprint we found. It was another test. I should have known it was just too easy.’

  Brihony groaned. ‘You’re kidding! Oh, that’s evil! So what do we do now?’

  Beck straightened up, and sighed. ‘We backtrack, and we start again. But at least there’s one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I recognize the sense of humour: no random guy would be trying to trick us like this. It’s definitely Pindari!’

  Chapter 19

  This time, Beck paid more attention. He started at the single footprint and worked out the distance of a man’s step. That gave him a starting circle. Pindari’s other foot must have touched the ground somewhere inside it.

  Imagining Pindari’s foot pointing to twelve o’clock, then Beck found the answer at eight o’clock, where some grains of dirt looked out of place on the bare rock. They were clustered together in lumps but were too heavy for the wind to have blown them. They were stuck together because they had been damp when they got there. They had been transferred on the sole of a human foot. Beck had his first trace.

  He used his tracking stick to mark out the line of where the next footprint should be. There wasn’t one, but there was a bunch of scrub grass that had been brushed to point in another direction. It didn’t matter if Pindari had been walking forwards or backwards – the grass was pointing the way he had gone.

  Bit by bit, trace by trace, Beck and Brihony worked their way along the trail. At first it was much slower than it had been when they were just following footprints, but Beck soon found himself settling into a rhythm. This time he tried not to walk with his eyes fixed on the ground right in front of him. It was more helpful to look five or ten metres ahead. It meant that you saw the traces coming, and it gave you a better idea of the landscape. Now and again he scanned ahead, just in case Pindari had come into view. He didn’t want to be concentrating on the ground in front of his nose so hard that he ran slap into a patiently waiting Pindari.

  The land was dry, the air wavering as far as he could see – the endless vista of rock and bushes and far-off sandstone cliffs. But if there had been someone out there, he would at least have seen a black dot moving through the shimmering air.

  All he could see was a dark line on the horizon. Beck looked at it through narrowed eyes, then dismissed it. It looked a little like far-off rain clouds, but this was the dry season; it was probably just darker ground, the image distorted. He turned his attention back to the ground and set off again. He had to concentrate on the task in hand – tracking Pindari.

  With his brain tuned to looking for traces, Beck found that they began to stand out from their surroundings again. Maybe a rock that had been overturned – the dark, damp sides fading as it dried out, but the dent in the ground still visible, showing where it had lain. Grass might be bent and broken, twigs scuffed in the direction of travel.

  Sometimes the trail was obvious. Sometimes Beck still needed the tracking stick to show him where signs might be. Footprints came and went. It wasn’t that Pindari was trying to hide his trail; it just depended on the hardness of the ground. His pace never changed much. If the toe prints had got deeper, and the heel prints all but vanished, that would have meant he was running. But he had kept going at the same steady plod – not too fast, not too slow, just the right speed to get where he was going without overheating. It was the best way to make progress through landscapes like this. It was the Aboriginal way.

  That wasn’t to say Pindari made it easy to follow him. There were still times when the trail seemed to vanish. He changed direction frequently, sometimes every few paces. Beck was still leaving marks for Barega and Ganan to follow, and he wondered what the men would make of these abrupt changes.

  Pindari would zigzag over a stretch of clear ground, then cross bare patches of rock, where the footprints dried up completely and they had to search for other signs. At one point he had walked over a small rocky plateau about fifty metres wide. Brihony and Beck had to go round the edge to see where the trail picked up again, rather than trying vainly to work out his exact course. Once, the trail led into a dry, sandy area littered with rocks, and then vanished. Either Pindari had learned to fly, or he had simply jumped from rock to rock in a ra
ndom fashion. They had to study the top of each one in turn for signs of dirt or scuff marks; then, when they found something, they had to check every rock within jumping distance and start again.

  Sometimes Pindari did what any sane man in the middle of the Kimberley would do: he sought shade. If trees grew close together and cast a good shadow, he would stay beneath them for a while. It was easy to fall into the rhythm of the Outback. Time seemed to pass differently out here, with no distractions – no traffic, no music to listen to, no TV to watch. There was little to show time passing. When Beck looked at his watch at one point, he was only a little surprised to find that several hours had passed.

  They would rest, they would take a sip of water, and then they would move on. If they passed a plant with berries or fruit that Beck could positively identify as edible, they would eat some. It kept their stomachs quiet without weighing them down, and it reduced the amount of water they needed to drink.

  Water. Beck was uncomfortably aware that the bottle was growing lighter and lighter with every sip. On the boat, he had told the men they needed one and a half litres per hour when they were moving in the heat. He knew he and Brihony were already falling behind that target. They had set off from the bluff with maybe three litres in the bottle. If they were each going to drink one and a half litres per hour, that meant a maximum of two hours travel. They had done more than that already.

  They needed more liquid. And there was only one source that Beck could think of.

  ‘Uh, Brihony . . .’ Beck swallowed and felt his face start to flush red.

  She paused, and looked at him suspiciously. ‘What?’

  ‘You still got that seed pod I gave you?’

  ‘Sure . . .’ She pulled it out of her pocket, frowning. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . .’ Oh good grief, he thought. He had been through all this with Pindari before, and it had been weird, but not embarrassing. But he and Pindari were male, and Brihony wasn’t. That was what made it awkward. ‘Look, if I was on my own I’d just use the water bottle, but we’ve got to share it, so . . . Look, I’ll do it myself because I brought a pod along too, but . . .’

  Brihony stared at him. She came and looked him right in the eye, and held up the seed pod. ‘Beck Granger, do you want me to pee into this and drink it?’

  He nodded awkwardly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re running low on water and we can’t afford to waste anything. Straight out of the human body, urine is almost sterile. As long as your pee is clear, it’s fine to drink and it’ll help to hydrate you.’

  ‘It might be fine to you.’ She held his eye, then turned away in disgust. ‘This thing we’re after from Pindari? It had so better be worth it.’

  They retreated in different directions. After a few moments they came back again.

  Brihony’s face was twisted in disgust. ‘I cannot believe I just did that.’ She glanced at Beck sideways. ‘You did it too?’

  He nodded. The taste had been . . . hard to describe. No one would be marketing a soft drink that flavour. But it had kept the fluids in his body, and that was what counted.

  ‘Guess we won’t be wasting water by washing our hands,’ she muttered. It was enough of a joke that they both couldn’t suppress a small grin.

  After another hour or so they came to another dry river bed. They stood at the top of a gentle slope. Beck looked from left to right and smiled at what he saw. At least one problem had just been solved.

  Pindari had obviously climbed down – Beck could see the pebbles dislodged by his feet: they had slithered down after him. It looked like no water had fallen here for a million years. Bushes and trees had begun to reclaim the river bed for themselves.

  The first priority was to see which way Pindari had gone, and it didn’t take long. At the bottom of the bank, his feet had dug into the dry earth, picking some up and transferring it to the rocks. Instead of crossing to the other side, he had kept straight on down.

  A hundred metres further along, they came to a point where the river bent round to the left. Beck beamed at Brihony. ‘Fancy a proper drink?’

  Her smile was weary. An afternoon of almost nonstop walking in the heat of the Kimberley had taken its toll, though Beck knew she would never complain out loud.

  ‘Something bubbly with ice would be great, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do . . .’

  He began to dig, scraping away at the top soil, with the machete still sheathed to protect the blade. The top layers were baked hard, but then they grew softer and damper. After a moment Brihony found a stick to help dig. Together they widened and deepened the hole. The soil that brushed against their fingers was pleasantly cool and moist.

  Eventually it was more than just moist. Beck’s fingertips were wet now. Water was slowly seeping into the hole they had dug. There was a little pool about a centimetre deep, but it was slowly filling up.

  ‘We’re on the outside of a bend in the river,’ he said. ‘When the water passes along, this is where it flows slowest and has the most time to sink into the ground.’

  Brihony glared at him. ‘You mean to say there’s enough water here to drink? That we drank that pee for nothing?’

  Beck held up his hands apologetically. ‘Not for nothing,’ he said. ‘In a survival situation, it’s always a good idea to recycle your urine when you can. But hopefully this means we won’t need to do it again!’

  By now the pool was deep enough for him to hold the bottle under. Water bubbled and spluttered as it flowed in. When he picked it up again, it felt heavier. He had bought them a couple more hours of searching before he had to do this again.

  ‘In an ideal world we would boil this before we drink it,’ said Beck. ‘But the soil’s pretty sandy here, and that will have filtered out most of the impurities. I think we can chance it this once.’

  Brihony smiled. ‘Good work!’

  They scooped water into their mouths with their hands. Before long the pool had filled up again so that Beck could top up the bottle a little more. Feeling stronger and invigorated, they set off after Pindari.

  There weren’t many bushes to brush against here, which meant that Pindari had left few signs. The bed itself was mostly smooth rounded stones or patches of dry earth. Pindari had tended to keep to the stones, so there were hardly any footprints.

  Beck and Brihony gave up on the stones; instead, they split up and walked down either side of the river course, studying the banks. If Pindari had climbed out of the river bed, he would have gone up one bank or the other, and left prints. Eventually Beck found the traces on his side. Pindari had gone up at this point, so they followed him.

  Beck wasn’t surprised to find that he had chosen the far side of the river. If he had left it on the near side, he would have been doubling back on himself. Pindari’s course was irregular, but he was always heading further and further into the Outback.

  Beck checked his watch. It was late afternoon. He and Brihony would never make it back to their camp before dark, so they were committed to spending a night here in the Outback. There were a couple more hours of daylight left, though, so he decided to press on. Give it another hour, then construct a shelter for the night.

  And then a rumble echoed across the Kimberley, and all Beck’s plans changed.

  It was a noise like the sky clearing its throat. It was so familiar that he took a moment to realize what it was. He stopped in his tracks and stared up at the sky ahead of them in horror. It was still blue and clear. Then he turned round and looked back the way they had come.

  Behind, a wall of dark cloud stretched across his vision. The clear colours of the Outback blurred into a haze of rain.

  ‘Beck Granger, you should have known that was coming!’ Beck screamed in fury to the Outback in general.

  He remembered that dark line he had seen earlier, on the horizon. He had put it out of his mind, because it was the dry season: he hadn’t imagined that it might rain.

  This was a freak rai
n storm, and they were the worst, because they struck without warning. They were violent and deadly.

  ‘It’s going to rain!’ he shouted.

  Brihony shrugged. ‘Oh, great. We’re going to get wet.’

  Beck shook his head. ‘We’re going to drown if we don’t do something.’

  When it rained on ground that had been baked hot and hard for months, Beck knew it was like pouring water onto concrete. There was no way it could all soak in. Instead it just ran off. In an area like this a flash flood could grow out of nothing. Flash floods killed dozens of people each year – people caught out in the open, with nowhere to go. Beck hadn’t exaggerated. They could easily drown.

  Chapter 20

  ‘OK,’ Beck stated, ‘we need a shelter, and we need it now.’

  At least they weren’t still in the river bed, he thought. A wall of water up to a metre high would soon come pouring down, washing everything away. Whatever happened to them up here, it wouldn’t be as bad.

  But it could still be grim if he didn’t take care of things immediately.

  A sandstone bluff rose out of the ground about twenty metres away. Beck immediately saw the possibilities for what he needed. Close by to it was a eucalyptus tree. About a metre from the ground, its trunk split into a Y. Higher up, the branches divided and divided again. The whole thing was crowned by a thick mass of green leaves that gave off a pungent, oily scent.

  The rock face next to it overhung slightly, and there was a nook in it at about waist height. There would just be room for the two of them to crouch in there and shelter. The overhang would protect them from the rain.

  But it wouldn’t be very comfortable. They would be cold, and stuck there for however long the storm lasted. What Beck had in mind would be better than that.

  He studied a clump of bushes the size of a garden shed. The stems and leaves were intertwined with long strands of ivy – which would be several metres long when pulled out straight.

  ‘OK,’ he said to Brihony. ‘Get as much of this ivy together as you can. Try to keep it in one piece.’