by Justin D'Ath
I had heard that crocodiles were cannibals, but watching it was kind of gross. I wasn’t too upset, though. As far as I was concerned, it was better that she ate her babies than Nissa and me.
My arms were trembling from the strain of holding onto the branch, and my bruised legs were killing me. I lowered myself back into the water, and moved around behind the tree trunk. It was too narrow to hide behind, so I crouched down until only my head was above water, making myself as inconspicuous as possible. With any luck, the crocodile would forget I was there and swim away as soon as it had eaten the last of its babies.
‘Bad yizard!’ Nissa said loudly, from the tree above my head.
‘Shhh,’ I whispered.
Too late. The damage was done. The crocodile had heard us. It turned its massive head and gazed directly at me. As we eyed each other across five metres of water, I knew I was next on the menu. I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t climb the tree, and the nearest dry land was more than a hundred metres away. I was dead meat.
Then a strange thing happened. As the crocodile lay there with its jaws partly open – drooling, I imagined – one of the remaining babies climbed into her mouth and wriggled out of view.
Huh? I thought.
Then I noticed something even more weird: a row of little eyes peeping out between the adult’s teeth. The babies were alive in there! The big crocodile wasn’t eating them, she was rescuing them from the rising floodwater.
I watched, fascinated and relieved, as she took the rest of her brood carefully into her mouth. I was relieved because I had worked out something else, something very significant to my present situation. If the mother crocodile’s mouth was full of her babies, it was highly unlikely that she would want me in there as well.
What I hadn’t worked out, and what was even more significant to Nissa and me, was another reason why mother crocodiles sometimes carry their babies around in their mouths. It’s to protect them.
From other crocodiles.
21
DEATH-ROLL
At first I hardly noticed the log. Over the past eighteen or twenty hours I’d seen many logs floating in the river. Besides, when you’re crouched in the water only five metres from a fully grown saltwater crocodile, you don’t take much interest in the scenery. But the mother crocodile did. As the log slid slowly past the nest, she raised herself high on her front legs and sent a growling hiss in its direction. All the babies in her mouth stood up on their front legs and, poking their tiny heads out through the gaps between their mother’s enormous teeth, they hissed too. I looked at the log again, and realised it was going the wrong way. It was moving against the current, coming upriver – towards me.
And it wasn’t a log.
I thought the mother crocodile was big, but this one dwarfed her. It was a male, a bull crocodile. I could tell by its size. Its head must have been nearly a metre across. The monster rushed at me. And its mouth, when it opened wide, looked as big as a bathtub.
It came so fast that there was no time to move. I couldn’t have moved anyway – I was paralysed, resigned to my fate. But the bull crocodile wasn’t after me. It wasn’t even aware of my presence as I cowered behind the tree. Its eyes were on Nissa. When it reached the tree, it launched itself upwards, its massive head and shoulders rearing up like a tyrannosaurus rex. I didn’t see any more; I was flung back by the impact of two tonnes of voracious reptile hitting the other side of the skinny tree. As the tea-coloured water closed over my head, I saw a huge shadow looming above me and heard a high-pitched scream, then the gunshot crunch of the monster’s jaws slamming shut.
Assuming Nissa was dead, I simply let myself go limp. It would be better to drown than to be caught in those horrendous jaws and spun round and round in a death-roll that would wring the life out of me like water out of a twisted sheet.
The human body won’t let itself drown when there’s air close by. Besides, the water was little more than a metre deep. Next thing I knew, my head was poking above the surface. I began breathing again, softly, because the bull crocodile’s scaly body was circling past, so close I could have touched it. It had no idea I was there. It was looking up into the tree, where Nissa – alive! unscathed! – was looking down, her body rigid with fear. Even though I hadn’t been able to make her climb higher than the first fork, the monster crocodile had managed to persuade her to scramble up to the next branch.
‘Tam make bad yizard go way?’ she whimpered.
I would have liked nothing better than make it go away. But how? I no longer had the buffalo bone, and even if I did, I doubted whether I could pull off that stunt again. Not in the water. Not against a crocodile of this size. It looked easily six metres long.
‘Tam get Nitta down?’ she asked.
I gave her a tiny shake of my head. She was safe up there, relatively safe, anyway. Safe compared to me. Very slowly, with only my eyes and nose above water, I backed away from the tree and from the scaly monster circling beneath it.
‘Tam!’ Nissa cried. ‘Tam! Don’t go way!’
I knew I couldn’t say anything without alerting the bull crocodile to my presence. And I certainly couldn’t stay where I was. As I backed away, the female crocodile watched me from her nesting mound. I was no longer worried about her – she had her babies to look after. But I wondered what she, a mother, would think of me for abandoning Nissa, for ignoring my little cousin’s cries.
I had no choice; there was nothing I could do other than try to stay alive.
The further away I moved from the tree, the deeper the water became. Increasingly, I had to hold myself against the current. My bruised shins hurt from the constant straining. I would never make it if I tried to swim ashore. My only chance was to get to one of the other trees. The palm tree was the closest. The top towered fifteen metres above the flood. If I could reach that, and maybe climb it, I might be able hang on until a rescue helicopter arrived.
If a rescue helicopter arrived. Would they know to search in the river? As far as anyone knew, the robber had taken the coast road. If the search was taking place, it might be centred several hundred kilometres to the south.
‘Tam!’ Nissa shrilled.
I looked in her direction and my heart lurched. What was she doing? She had climbed back down into the lowest fork! Now she was less than a metre above the water. The bull crocodile could reach her easily if it made another lunge.
I raised my head slightly and looked around. Where was the monster? There was no sign of it. For just a moment, my spirits rose. Maybe it had given up and gone away. We were safe!
Then I saw something that shattered my hopes. Fifteen metres from the tree, a swirl dimpled the current. Two yellow eyes broke the surface, followed by a long horny snout. Further back, a double row of tall saw-toothed scales appeared, dragging a swift V-shaped ripple that moved arrow-like towards Nissa’s dangling legs.
I stood up, head and shoulders out of the water, and yelled, ‘CLIMB BACK UP!’
Nissa looked at me but didn’t move.
‘NISSA, CLIMB UP!’ I screamed. The bull crocodile was less than five metres from the tree and increasing its speed. ‘GO HIGHER!’
It was too late. Nissa still hadn’t moved. Even if she moved now, she could not get out of the way in time. The monster was sliding through the water like a torpedo. It was massive, unstoppable, a killing machine. Nissa didn’t have a chance.
Part of me didn’t want to look. But I couldn’t stop myself. Nissa and I had been through so much together. By closing my eyes, I’d be denying my responsibility, I’d be turning my back on her. There was nothing I could do for her now. She was going to die, no matter what I did. I couldn’t simply shut my eyes and pretend it wasn’t happening. I had to watch. I had to be with my little cousin in her final moments.
Plucky kid, the robber had called her. She wasn’t even screaming.
As the crocodile reached the tree, I flinched. My whole body cringed as if it was me, not Nissa, being attacked. But I forced my eyes to
remain open, forced myself to watch. A big sob was already rising in my chest.
Take me! I wanted to yell out to the horrible creature. Take me instead of her!
The crocodile passed directly beneath Nissa’s bare feet and shot out the other side. It swung in a smooth wide arc and came weaving straight towards me.
I looked into its evil yellow eyes with their strange slit pupils. I watched the two lines of tall pointed scales that trailed behind them. I felt numb. This was what I had asked for – my life instead of Nissa’s – but now that it was about to happen, I knew it wasn’t what I’d wanted at all. People shouldn’t be given choices like that. I wasn’t a hero. I didn’t want to die, and I especially didn’t want to be killed by a crocodile.
But it was too late. There was no escape. I was as good as dead.
22
‘BIIIIIIIG YIZARD’
I closed my eyes. I did not feel obliged to watch my own death. Every muscle in my body was tense as I waited for the horrific impact of the monster’s jaws.
Nothing happened.
That’s not quite true. Something happened, but not what I’d expected. Instead of being hit by the crocodile, I was hit by its bow-wave. The force was enough to make me lose my precarious balance in the swiftly flowing river and I was washed off my feet. My head went underwater. Still expecting to be struck at any moment, I held my breath and allowed the current to carry me along. Finally, after five or six of the longest, most suspense-filled seconds I’d ever experienced, there was an impact. But it wasn’t from the crocodile. It was from being swept into the trunk of a tree. I instinctively clutched it and raised my head above the water.
Nissa’s feet dangled a few centimetres above my eyes. Her small concerned face, wet hair plastered to her forehead, looked down at me.
‘Biiiig yizard,’ she said solemnly.
The big lizard was on my mind, too. Somehow it had missed me, but it would not make the same mistake twice. Leaping to my feet, I grabbed hold of the forked trunk on either side of Nissa. This time, fired by the adrenalin of my close encounter, I hauled myself up past her without a problem and clambered onto the skinny branch above her head. Then I dragged her up after me. The whole tree swayed precariously. But as long as it didn’t snap we would be okay. Provided the river didn’t rise any higher, bringing us into the bull crocodile’s reach.
What had happened to it? I searched the water below us. There was no sign of the huge reptile. I thought it was strange that it hadn’t followed through with its attack. I’d been a sitting target, an easy meal, yet the creature had swerved away at the last moment, knocking me off my feet with its wash. It was almost as if it had lost its nerve.
Or, as if something had scared it away.
‘Big yizard,’ Nissa repeated, her small damp body wedged against mine.
‘Yes,’ I said, shivering and dripping, but happy all the same. (At least, as happy as you can be when stuck in a tree on a submerged island in the middle of a flooded river, teeming with saltwater crocodiles.) ‘But it’s gone now.’
It seemed too good to be true. The female crocodile had disappeared as well. The nest, or what remained of it, was empty.
‘Big yizard come,’ Nissa said, pointing behind me.
Uh-oh.
I twisted round to look. And nearly fell out of the tree.
No wonder the other crocodiles had left. This one was GINORMOUS! Its mouth, which was wide open, could have swallowed both of them. At the same time! From a crocodile this size, the tree offered no refuge at all.
I tensed as the giant came steadily towards us. I firmed my grip around Nissa. With my other hand, I clung to the branch above me. My knuckles were white. My bruised leg muscles quivered, my toes were spread and bent like a monkey’s. I knew I’d have to get my timing exactly right.
At the very last moment, when the monster crocodile was about to hit the tree, I leaned away from the trunk, let go of the branch, and jumped right into its mouth.
23
ABANDON CROCODILE
I learned afterwards what had happened. The flood didn’t reach my home town Crocodile Bridge because it’s on a hill. The swollen river swept away the bridge after which the town is named, and with the bridge went our world-famous landmark, the thirty-five-metre fibreglass crocodile, affectionately known as Big Barry.
Somewhere on his seventy kilometre journey down Crocodile River, Big Barry became separated from the rest of the disintegrating bridge. Because he was hollow and water-tight, he floated over or around every obstacle, all the way to the coast. The island where Nissa and I were stranded was nearly at the end of Big Barry’s journey. And it would have been the end of ours had he not shown up when he did.
Nissa and I rode in Big Barry’s cavernous mouth for the final kilometre and a half to the coast. The water grew increasingly choppy as we came nearer to the sea. We got seasick, but neither of us had anything left in our stomachs to spew up. It made me worry about what lay ahead. The sea, waves. Sharks. Where would we end up, I wondered, provided we didn’t get pitched into the surf and eaten, or stung by box jellyfish, or drowned? Would Big Barry float all the way to New Guinea? Or would he float aimlessly in the open sea while Nissa and I slowly starved or died of dehydration?
Or would a rescue helicopter find us and whisk us away to safety?
I liked the idea of the rescue helicopter, but I didn’t like the idea of waiting to be rescued when I knew it might never happen. That’s why I saw the railway bridge as our last chance.
The bridge spans the mouth of Crocodile River and is built on tall concrete pylons to withstand the high tropical tides. It was undamaged by the flood and cleared the water by a good four metres as Big Barry passed beneath it on the way out to sea. Big Barry was riding three metres above the water at his highest point, which was the tip of his wide-open upper jaw. That’s where Nissa and I balanced, awaiting our chance to abandon ship (or abandon crocodile, to be more accurate).
The bridge was concrete; there was not much to grip onto. I had been hoping to scramble onto it, holding Nissa; now I could see that was impossible. I needed both hands to haul myself up, but I couldn’t do that while holding Nissa. As we passed under the bridge, I lifted Nissa as high as I could and pushed her onto the bridge’s smooth concrete span. By the time she was up there, Big Barry had floated too far under the bridge for me leap up after her. I had to duck down and wait for him to float out the other side, then grab hold of the bridge in the split second before Big Barry was out of reach.
It was a close thing. I just managed to hook my fingers over the concrete edge before Big Barry drifted away and left me dangling. I hung onto the smooth, powdery concrete by my fingertips. My legs swung in empty air. My arms felt like rubber and I couldn’t haul myself up. My fingers were slipping. I looked around desperately. There was nothing else to grab hold of, no way up over the hard concrete lip. I was considering letting go and allowing myself to fall back into the river, then making an attempt to swim for it, when Nissa appeared over the edge. Wet and dishevelled, she looked down at me with her big, blue-ringed eyes.
‘Tam take Nitta home now?’ she asked.
She probably saved my life. I don’t think I’d have been able to muster the strength to climb up onto the bridge if she hadn’t been waiting for me. Depending on me to take her home. Dangling by my fingertips below her, I remembered we were in this together. Nitta and Tam, we were a team. Only then, somehow, did I manage to drag myself onto the bridge and collapse exhausted on the concrete span.
I allowed myself a minute or two to rest. It was fully light now. The sun had risen. Sitting next to Nissa, my arms wrapped around her, I watched Big Barry rocking out into the waves beyond the river mouth. For as far as I could see, the sea was brown and discoloured by the floodwater. Trees, branches and rubbish floated out almost as far as the horizon.
Finally, I took Nissa by the hand and we began walking very carefully along the railway sleepers towards the southern end of the bridge. I ha
d never felt so tired in my life. Nor so elated. We had made it. I could hardly believe that we had faced so many obstacles, so much danger, yet we were alive, safe, and finally on our way home.
A whistle blew.
No way! protested my mind. No way can that be a train!
I was wrong.
24
TRAIN
The two hundred carriage iron-ore train came sweeping around the bend. Already it was rushing onto the bridge. The whistle blew again, a high frantic sound that said: ‘Get out of the way! Get off the bridge! Jump into the river if you have to!’
I wasn’t going to jump back into the river. Nissa and I had had enough of Crocodile River. Even as I lifted my little cousin up in a piggyback and began running awkwardly over the widely-spaced railway sleepers towards the nearer end of the bridge, I knew that the train, laden with twenty thousand tonnes of ore, would never be able to stop in time. I would never be able to out-run it. Still, I kept running.
The whistle shrilled again, much closer now. I couldn’t look around. I concentrated on my feet, on placing them squarely on the narrow wooden sleepers, rather than in the ten-centimetre gaps between them. The entire bridge was shaking. There was a loud rumbling sound and the protesting shriek of metal on metal as the train driver applied the emergency brakes. The air seemed to throb in my ears. Nissa, bouncing on my back, was crying out about a crocodile. The train was just behind us now, almost on us! I could feel it, I could feel the wall of air it pushed ahead of it. It whistled again, so close that the sound was deafening. We were fifty metres from the end of the bridge now. Fifty metres from safety. It might as well have been fifty kilometres. We were never going to make it. My legs felt like lead, my lungs burned but still I kept running. And Nissa kept shouting about a crocodile. It made no sense, who cared about crocodiles now? Then a shadow fell over us, a strong wind nearly flattened me. Finally, I realised what Nissa was saying.