by Justin D'Ath
‘Bad Tam!’ she spluttered.
I was bad? I had just saved her from what was possibly the biggest, meanest, ugliest wild boar in the entire outback, and this was all the thanks I received?
Still, the poor kid had been through a lot in the past few hours. She was plucky, all right. One at a time, I raised her pudgy little hands to my lips and softly kissed their scraped palms.
‘All better,’ I said.
I was relieved when Nissa rewarded me with a small quivering smile.
16
THE NEXT THREAT
Nissa removed her thumb from her mouth. ‘Nitta hungry,’ she said.
We were huddled in the thicket, partway under the rocky overhang. It was cramped and smelled strongly of wild pig, but it was dry. Only in the past hour or two, since we’d found shelter and our lives were no longer in danger (or so I thought), had hunger become an issue. Neither of us had eaten since breakfast, which seemed like half a lifetime ago but was probably no more than twelve hours.
‘I’ll find something to eat in the morning,’ I said.
This wasn’t another rash promise. There was a coconut palm, so there would probably be coconuts. But I wasn’t searching for them tonight. Our clothes were beginning to dry and I didn’t want to go out into the rain again. It felt wonderful to finally be almost dry. Besides, it was nearly dark and I was worried about the wild boar. He was somewhere on the island and I didn’t want to run into him in the dark.
I had been thinking a lot about the wild boar during the past couple of hours. How had he come to be on the island? Had he, like us, been swept here by the flood? Or had he swum across from the riverbank? Then I remembered the line of trees between the island and the shore. It dawned on me that this wasn’t an island at all, but merely part of the riverbank that had become cut off when Crocodile River flooded. The wild boar had walked here! That meant he could walk back, and so could we. All we had to do was wait for the floodwaters to recede. Once I worked this out, I cheered up and was almost able to ignore my growling stomach. But Nissa kept reminding me.
‘Nitta hungry.’
‘Go to sleep.’
‘Tam get coconut.’
I had been silly enough to mention the coconuts earlier. ‘In the morning,’ I said, rocking her gently like Mum used to do when I was little. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘Nitta hungry!’
Mum used to sing to me too, but I wasn’t about to do that. Besides, I’d just remembered something. The cough lollies. I could feel them, a soft lump in the back pocket of my shorts. The soggy cardboard fell apart as I pulled out the box, but the lollies seemed dry inside the plastic wrapping. I gave one to Nissa and popped another in my mouth.
‘Have a lolly,’ I said.
Nissa chewed a couple of times, then screwed up her face and spat out the pink soggy mess. ‘Yucky,’ she whimpered, starting to cry.
They were a bit hot, I realised. I sucked on mine for two or three minutes, until the worst of the sting was gone, then popped the soft jelly into Nissa’s mouth. She stopped crying and began chewing. She didn’t seem to mind that the cough lolly was second-hand. We shared the rest of them like that: I chewed the heat out of them, then Nissa ate what was left. It wasn’t much of a meal, but it was better than nothing. By the time we’d eaten the last of the cough lollies, night had fallen. It was pitch black; I couldn’t see a thing. Nissa relaxed into my shoulder and fell asleep.
I was feeling sleepy too. It had been a very long day – the longest, scariest, most eventful day of my life. As I cast my mind back over everything that had happened, my thoughts kept returning to the ginger-bearded robber, the man who had started it all. The last thing I said to him before he’d been swept away was ‘I hate you!’ I hoped he hadn’t heard that. If it had been possible to save both him and Nissa, I would have.
I stayed awake for as long as I could – keeping guard, or so I told myself. When we first took over the pig’s lair, I had retrieved the big buffalo bone and placed it within easy reach. My plan was to use it like a club if the boar, or anything else, came visiting during the night.
Little did I know how useless it would be against the next threat we’d have to face.
17
JUST IN CASE
In the dream I was back in the ute. It had just plummeted into the river and the cabin was filling with water. It came up to my waist. Nissa was poking me in the nose and shouting.
I woke up.
Nissa was poking me in the nose! She was shouting!
‘Tam, Tam!’ she was crying. ‘Water come!’
I pushed her hand away before she poked out my eyes. I was still half asleep, but I was alert enough to realise that I was no longer dreaming. I wished I was still dreaming. Because, as well as Nissa’s poking and shouting, there was another part of the dream that seemed to have followed me out of the land of sleep.
I was up to my waist in water!
My mind raced in circles. How could we be back in the ute? We’d escaped. I tried to stand up and knocked my head hard on the underside of the rock shelf. The pain woke me up fully and, finally, I remembered where we were. On an island. In a thicket. And somehow there was water in the thicket. Then it dawned on me.
The river was still rising.
‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,’ I said to Nissa.
I felt above my head where the rock shelf ended and broke a hole through the tangle of vines and foliage. I lifted Nissa out onto the rock and climbed after her. We were out of the water now. I could see it below us; or, rather, I could see the reflections of stars dancing on its black rippling surface.
Stars? I thought, and looked up.
The sky was clear. It was no longer raining. I had no idea when the rain had stopped, nor what time it was. I estimated that the river had risen nearly a metre since we’d crawled into the thicket. The shoreline had been ten or twelve metres away then, now it lapped around our feet.
I stood up and looked in the opposite direction. Dimly, I could make out the other end of the island; it seemed to be no more than twenty metres away. The island had shrunk. It was only half the size it had been yesterday afternoon. If the river rose another metre, I realised with a shock, the island would be completely submerged. Just as well the rain had stopped.
Nissa tugged on the hem of my shorts. ‘Piggy come,’ she whispered.
I could see it now: a dark silhouette beneath one of the skinny gumtrees. Only a dozen paces separated us. I lifted Nissa onto my hip. The boar didn’t seem to be moving. It had run away from us yesterday. We were probably safe so long as we remained calm and didn’t antagonise it.
‘Nice piggy,’ I said softly, hoping my tone would show it that we meant no harm.
‘Bad piggy!’ said Nissa, in a tone that conveyed the opposite.
The boar gave a little snort. It turned and ambled off towards the other end of the island. So much for all the stories my brother Nathan used to tell me about how dangerous they were. But I wasn’t completely reassured. Placing Nissa on the rock, I stepped down into the bushes and felt around with my feet in the water until I found the bone. Just in case, I thought, leading Nissa to the base of the gumtree where the pig had been. We settled down to wait for daylight.
18
WHERE PIGGY?
Once again I’d been having dreams about being stuck in the ute. And once again I awakened to find water lapping around my feet and lower legs. It was still very dark. Beside me I could see Nissa’s small form curled up on the ground. The water hadn’t reached her yet. I picked her up and gently carried her a few metres further along. The poor kid was so exhausted, she didn’t wake up. There wasn’t much of the island left now. It was only about ten metres from one end to the other, and roughly half that distance across. The boar stood six or seven metres away, a large black silhouette against the water at the far end.
‘That’s a good fella,’ I said. ‘You stay there and we’ll stay here.’
It was a stand-off. The boar
had one end of the island and we had the other. Would that still be the case if the river continued to rise? Keeping one eye on the animal, I backed down to the waters edge and stooped to pick up the buffalo bone.
The moment I lowered my head, there was a tremendous splashing noise at the other end of the island. I raced back to Nissa and stood over her, holding the heavy bone like a club in front of me. The splashing continued for a few seconds, then subsided into an eerie silence. My skin prickled. My heart raced. I peered into the darkness, turning my eyes right and left. There was no sign of the boar. I even looked behind me but it wasn’t there. The animal had disappeared. I picked up Nissa and carried her onto the mound at the island’s highest point. As I placed her gently down on a bed of sand and leaves, her eyes opened.
‘Where piggy?’ she asked.
‘Piggy swam back to shore,’ I told her. And hoped with all my heart that was true.
19
‘YIZARDS’
I didn’t get a moment’s sleep after the boar disappeared. For what must have been two or three hours I sat nearly motionless, holding Nissa and staring over the black expanse of water. Gradually, the water crept closer. And closer. By the time dawn spread its first pink glow across the sky, the mound was all that remained of the island. It was two metres in diameter and half a metre high. Everything else, apart from the tops of the three gumtrees and three quarters of the coconut palm, had disappeared beneath the floodwater. Even the baobab tree, which I now regretted leaving, had been swept away.
‘Nitta hungry.’
I looked down at her and tried to smile. I hadn’t realised she was awake. ‘I’m sorry, Niss. There’s nothing to eat.’
She struggled off my lap and stood up. I stood up too. My legs felt wobbly and my feet sank a few centimetres into the unstable mixture of sand and rotting leaves that composed our tiny island. Nissa took hold of my hand.
‘Want go home now,’ she said, determined.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘So do I.’
My eyes searched the sky. If a helicopter was going to come looking for us, now would be a good time. The horizon remained empty for a full 360 degrees. There was land to either side, but it was a long way off. The line of trees between the island and the shore had vanished overnight, submerged beneath the rising water. I remembered how the wild boar had disappeared and my skin prickled. Deep down I suspected what might have happened, but I didn’t want to think about it. Fate, however, was working against me.
‘Yizard,’ said Nissa.
‘Beg your pardon?’ I asked, not taking much interest.
She released my hand and crouched down for a closer inspection of something on the ground. ‘Cute baby yizard,’ she said.
I heard a strange chirping sound and suddenly I was taking interest.
‘Get back!’ I cried, grabbing Nissa by the shoulder and roughly pulling her away. ‘Don’t touch it!’
Nissa was right: it was a baby and it did look cute. But it wasn’t a baby lizard, it was a baby crocodile! I recognised the sound it was making from a documentary I’d seen on TV. It was calling its mother!
The baby crocodile was only about fifteen centimetres long, but I wasn’t taking any chances with those needle-sharp teeth. Lifting it by the tail, I tossed the little reptile out into the swirling water.
‘Go find your mum,’ I called as it wriggled away across the surface. ‘And don’t bring her back here, okay?’
I felt something move beneath my bare foot and stepped quickly to one side. From the deep sand- and leaf-lined foot mark, a little reptilian head looked up and chirped.
‘Nother yizard,’ Nissa cried happily.
I was anything but happy. I noticed a small movement behind her. A clump of sandy leaves shook, then fell to one side as a third reptile appeared. Then a fourth. Now I understood what was going on.
Our tiny island, the squashy mound where Nissa and I had been forced to take refuge, was a crocodile’s nest! Buried in the sand and rotting vegetation beneath us was a whole stack of crocodile eggs.
Perhaps it was the floodwater. Perhaps it was us stomping over them, or maybe they had been due to hatch anyway. Whatever caused it, the eggs started to hatch at that moment, and it was very bad luck for Nissa and me. Because as each new-born crocodile dug to the surface, it joined its voice to that of its siblings, making a high-pitched yelping chorus that no mother crocodile could ignore.
Nissa tapped me on the arm. ‘Tam.’
‘What?’ I said, busy scooping up baby crocodiles and pitching them into the river.
‘Yizard come.’
‘I know.’
‘Big yizard,’ she said.
I straightened up and turned around.
This can’t be happening! my slow-motion mind started saying, but I told it to shut up. This was happening. We weren’t in a movie. That four-metre crocodile swimming towards us wasn’t a computer-generated special effect. It was real.
‘Stay behind me,’ I said to Nissa, and picked up the buffalo bone.
20
CROCODILE ATTACK
I expected it to come in a rush. I’d seen crocodiles on TV, and when they attack they generally hit their victims at about one hundred kilometres per hour. But this crocodile was a mother, and she didn’t want to trample her babies.
She climbed slowly up onto the mound, making a low growling sound in her throat and nudging the little crocodiles aside with her broad, scaly snout. I backed down into the water on the other side, waving the buffalo bone in the giant reptile’s face, and keeping Nissa behind me. The nearest of the three gumtrees rose out of the rippling water about five metres away. Our only chance was to get to it before the crocodile got to us. Against all hope, I prayed that she would stop when she had reclaimed her nest, when we’d been driven off the mound and no longer posed a threat to her babies. But she kept coming. Over the top of the nest and down the other side. Backing slowly away from her, I was nearly knee-deep in the water. Nissa was immersed up to her waist. Her thumb was in her mouth, and with her other hand she clutched the hem of my shorts.
It was now or never. If the crocodile reached the water before Nissa and I reached the tree, we’d be dead meat. Literally. I had to stop her now, while she was still on the mound. I also knew, deep in my heart, that I didn’t have a chance.
Maybe, just maybe, I could delay the huge creature long enough to get Nissa to the tree.
‘Go to the tree, Niss,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘Run!’
She can’t run to the tree. The water’s too deep, some logical part of my brain told me, but I was through listening. If I was going to die, I didn’t want it to be in vain. I didn’t want everything we’d been through in the past twenty hours to be for nothing. Nissa had to survive!
With a despairing cry, I launched myself at the crocodile, swinging the buffalo bone with all the strength I had. ‘YΑΑΑΑΗ!’
As I rushed forwards, so did the crocodile. She took me by surprise and spoiled my aim – made it better, as things turned out. Instead of hitting her on the nose as I’d intended, I gave the crocodile a solid whack between the eyes. Momentarily stunned, she tilted her head to one side and snapped blindly at the source of the attack. I whipped my hand out of the way, releasing the bone. It was a hundred to one chance: somehow the crocodile’s mouth closed over the makeshift club, end-to-end, and the bone lodged there, wedging her jaws wide open. She went into a frenzy, roaring like a lion and swinging her head frantically from side to side. I leapt out of the way but I wasn’t fast enough. The crocodile struck a massive blow across my thighs, sending me flying.
I landed in the water three metres away. For a few moments there was no feeling. My body and my mind were numb. Floating peacefully on my back, I became dimly aware of a commotion nearby – a tremendous roaring and splashing. It made no sense. I didn’t know where I was.
Something gripped my arm. Then a small pale face framed by rattails of thin blonde hair thrust itself between me and the peach-coloured morning
sky.
‘Tam!’ it said. ‘Tam, get up!’
Everything came back in a rush. The peaceful feeling disappeared, to be replaced by mortal fear. I splashed to my feet. It was agony. My legs felt as if a car had run into them. But that was the least of my concerns. Five or six metres away, the crocodile was roaring as it thrashed and twisted and rolled over and over in the water, throwing curtains of spray fully ten metres into the air. At any moment it might dislodge the bone from its jaws. And then there would be trouble.
I lifted Nissa onto my hip and waded, limping painfully, to the tree. The trunk was barely thicker than my arm but it was our only hope. It divided into a fork just above my head. Standing waist-deep in the eddying floodwater, I pushed Nissa up into the narrow V and told her to climb onto a small nearly horizontal branch about a half metre above that. Nissa didn’t seem to understand. She clung to the fork and wouldn’t move. She was looking over my head, in the direction of the crocodile’s nest.
All at once I became aware of the silence. There was no more roaring and splashing. All I could hear was the rasp of my own ragged breath. Too scared to look behind me, I gripped the fork just above Nissa’s hunched shoulders, wrapped my legs around the skinny trunk and hauled myself partway up the tree. But Nissa was in the way. I couldn’t climb any further without squashing her. Hanging there with my dripping backside centimetres above the water, unable to go up, and too scared to go down, I risked a quick peek over my shoulder.
As I’d feared, the crocodile had dislodged the bone from her mouth. Fortunately for me, she seemed to have forgotten who was responsible for putting it there in the first place. Instead of coming to get her revenge, she was climbing ponderously back up the nest. Her babies – there must have been twenty now – were gathering around her, squawking excitedly as they wiggled and wobbled towards her fearsome toothy jaws. Then the crocodile did something that nearly made me fall out of the tree. She snapped her head sideways and ate one of the newly-hatched babies! In the next instant – snap! snap! – she had eaten two more.