by Orr, Wendy
He slid and gripped, steadied himself and slid again. His right leg first and then his left; his right arm found a new grip and the left arm found one too.
The left foot found a bump …
‘My hand!’ Tiffany screamed.
Edmund jumped off fast. So fast that he skidded right past her, down the smooth, sloping walls and into the water.
Tiffany screamed; Edmund gasped, gurgled, and sank. He kicked and thrashed, but the walls were slippery and the shaft was narrow, so he went on down. I’m going to drown! Tiffany’s held on all this time and I’m going to drown as soon as I try to help her!
His feet touched rock. Edmund kicked off as hard as he could and shot up to the surface. He grabbed the wall and braced, spluttering and coughing.
There was a gurgling sound, and a rush of running water.
‘The water’s draining!’ Tiffany exclaimed. ‘How did you do that?’
‘I guess I kicked the plug out,’ said Edmund.
They could hear the water splashing onto a puddle, somewhere far below – in another tunnel, or a cave, Edmund thought, though he wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
And his headlamp was waterproof. That was the best surprise all day. He shone it down the shaft as the last swirl of water drained away.
‘Thanks,’ said Tiffany. ‘My leg was going numb in the water. But for a minute I thought you were going to drown!’
‘So did I,’ admitted Edmund.
But Tiffany was still just as stuck as she’d been before. Edmund braced himself and shone his light on the rock that was trapping her foot. It looked like another loose rock that had washed down and got jammed in the crack in the wall. He’d kicked out the rock that blocked the drain; surely he could pull this one out too …
He tugged, yanked, pushed and grunted. The rock didn’t budge.
There was another crack in the wall just above it, with a strip of rock going across from one side to the other like the bar of an H. Edmund had another idea. He shrugged off his dripping backpack and pulled out Nim’s empty pack and the sheet.
FROM THE TOP of the rock arch, Nim was looking down at the deep blue pond. She was a very long way up, and the bridge was slippery with waterfall spray. Then she thought about Tristan and Ollie trying to cross it in pouring rain, and crawled quickly the rest of the way across.
The rock was almost flat where the arch joined the cliff. So much mud washed down to it with each rain that tough, straggly bushes were growing on it, the only bit of green on the harsh grey rocks. It was a good place to catch her breath.
Above the waterfall it was hill more than cliff; mud more than rock. Mud is easy to slide down, but hard to climb up. ‘There’s nothing else you can do,’ she told herself sternly.
She was just about to start climbing when she heard a faint voice.
‘You’re crazy!’
Which was exactly what Nim was thinking, but the voice wasn’t in her head. It was in the mountain – and so was the voice that answered.
‘Maybe. But if it’s strong enough to hold me it’ll hold you.’
‘Edmund?’ Nim called.
‘That’s weird,’ she heard. ‘It sounded like Nim.’
‘It’s coming from the crack where my foot’s stuck,’ said Tiffany.
‘I’m on the bridge!’ Nim shouted.
She pushed through the bushes till she found a hole leading into the cliff. Nim crouched and leaned in.
‘Can you hear me?’ she shouted, just as Edmund’s voice floated out, ‘Can you hear us?’
Nim really didn’t want to climb into another tunnel that she didn’t know, but the opening was wide, and she could see a long way in. It slanted upwards, so she wasn’t going to slide down anywhere except back to this safe flat patch. And she knew that Tiffany and Edmund were very close, at the other end of it. Though if the end was a crack small enough to trap Tiffany’s foot, Nim wasn’t going to fit through from this side.
Fred had already jumped off her shoulder and started in. Nim pulled on her headlamp and crawled after him.
The tunnel ended in a small cavern, tall enough for Nim to stand straight, but with water up to her knees.
Inside the shaft, light glimmered through cracks in the wall.
‘Look!’ Edmund called.
‘We can see your light!’ said Tiffany.
‘And I can see yours,’ Nim called back.
She sloshed through the water towards them. There were two strips of fabric across a bar of rock; when she got closer she saw they were the shoulder straps from a backpack – and when she looked through the crack above it she saw Tiffany swinging in a hammock seat.
‘I tied the sheet through the pack’s top handle, and wrapped it around with the cord,’ said Edmund. ‘It’s pretty strong.’
‘It’s good,’ said Tiffany. ‘I couldn’t have hung on much longer.’
Her voice was trembly and faint, and she was still anchored to the cliff wall by her left foot. Her sneaker toe was pointing through a crack into Nim’s side of the cavern.
‘Can you push it back?’ Tiffany asked.
Gently at first, then harder, Nim tried to shove the sneaker through the crack. It didn’t move.
‘Try harder!’ Tiffany said.
Nim pushed as hard as she could.
Tiffany screamed. Her foot still didn’t move.
‘Sorry!’ Nim cried.
This was worse than ever. Now she’d actually hurt Tiffany as well as wasting time. She couldn’t get through and she couldn’t help from this side. She’d have to crawl back out and climb that steep, slippery hill with the rope and heavy pack on her back before she could even start to rescue Tiffany.
‘Come on, Fred,’ she called. Fred was trying to catch a glow-worm. He was balancing on the bar of rock with his tail poking towards her and his head in the shaft.
‘Don’t eat the lights!’ Edmund exclaimed.
‘No glow-worms, Fred,’ Nim agreed. ‘But great idea.’ She lifted him out of the way and poked the end of the rope through the gap. There was only one rope, but it was very long. Edmund caught it and knotted it into a harness around his waist. Nim looped it securely around the bar. There was still a lot left.
Now to get Tiffany’s foot free.
Nim searched through Lance and Leonora’s tool bag. It had a first aid kit, two spikes for hammering into rock, a pulley and two cleats, a hammer and a small, neat parcel of fishing net.
‘Why would they want a fishing net?’ Nim wondered.
‘To lower the fossil off the cliff,’ said Tiffany.
‘It wouldn’t be much use the way the fossil is now,’ said Nim. She wished she’d checked the backpack before carrying it all the way up here. This little spike and hammer were the only things she really needed …
‘Ow!’ Tiffany screamed.
‘I haven’t hit anything yet!’
‘It’s a cramp in my other foot,’ Tiffany groaned. ‘I don’t care if you hit this one – just get it out!’
Nim thought Tiff might care if the hammer did hit her, but she wedged the spike into the crack below the rock. She hammered and tapped, and then she stopped and Edmund tugged. The rock didn’t move. Nim moved the spike, hammered and stopped again, Edmund tugged again, and the rock didn’t move again.
This time she couldn’t pull the spike out to move it. It was in too deep.
‘Try the other spike,’ said Edmund, but Nim was already swinging the hammer for one last try. She missed the spike and hit the rock hard. The rock tilted forwards and tumbled down the shaft bouncing off the rock walls, and right through the hole at the bottom …
There was a splash, and a cross Honk!
Chapter 14
ALEX RAN OUT of her studio so fast she didn’t have time to shut the door. She was running down the narrow path towards the trail to the house, faster than she’d ever known she could. Nim was in danger.
She was trying to think as she ran but Alex wasn’t very good at doing two things at once, es
pecially if one of them was running. Get the satellite phone and call Jack to come home! That was easy to think. So was Keep Nim away from Leonora and Lance!
The tricky part was that first, she had to find Nim. Or find Leonora and Lance and then work out how to keep them away from Nim.
Alex was thinking-and-running so hard that she didn’t have time to look around when she reached the main trail. She didn’t see the boy with a smaller boy on his back running as hard as he could up from the creek towards her.
Tristan skidded to a stop, Alex crashed into him, and they all tumbled to the ground. Luckily Ollie ended up on top.
‘Are you Alex Rover?’
‘Yes,’ Alex gasped. She waited for the boy to say, ‘But you’re not a man!’ Or: ‘You’ve got the same name as the great adventure writer!’
‘Tiffany needs help. We need our parents to come back now.’
Alex pointed towards the house. She was still panting too hard to speak, but she started running again. Tristan and Ollie followed.
‘SORRY,SELKIE!’ NIM shouted.
‘How did she get down there?’ asked Edmund.
‘She was checking out the bat cave,’ said Nim. ‘There’s a big puddle inside it … that must be what’s below this shaft.’
‘So maybe we can get out that way too,’ said Edmund.
‘But I’m still stuck!’ Tiffany shrieked, desperately trying to yank free. There was more room now that the top rock was gone, but her foot was so swollen that it was still stuck firm.
Nim stared at the sneaker toe sticking through to her side of the tunnel. Suddenly she had an idea. Inside the first aid kit there was a bottle of Leonora’s soothing, slippery coconut oil.
She handed it through the window. As Edmund held the hammock steady, Tiffany reached for the bottle. Holding her breath to keep her hand from shaking, she trickled the oil down the crack into her sneaker.
When every drop was gone, she grabbed her leg just above her swollen ankle, pulled, twisted, and with a final yell, threw herself back into her hammock. Red and puffy, scraped and bloody, her foot popped out of its oily sneaker. ‘I’m free!’
Tiffany reached through the gap and held Nim’s hand; she held Edmund’s hand with her other and Edmund held Nim’s. It felt as if they were dancing in a circle, except that no one moved.
Then Fred sneezed, and from far below, Selkie barked sharply.
‘We’re coming!’ Nim shouted.
But they still had to work out how. Tiffany was too weak and wounded to climb.
‘I’ll see if we can get down the shaft to where Selkie is,’ said Edmund.
Nim loosened the rope tying him to the rock bar, and cleated it so he could lower himself a little way at a time instead of crashing to the bottom.
Edmund slithered down to the narrow part of the funnel. The opening was big enough for his feet to go through, but not the rest of him.
‘Watch out, Selkie!’ he shouted. Because it looked as if there were more loose rocks, like the one he’d kicked out when he was trying not to drown. He jumped and stamped; Nim checked that the rope was holding tight, and he jumped again.
A big rock broke free. They could hear it splash into the puddle at the bottom. A mini-avalanche of little ones plinked in after it.
‘There’s heaps of room now!’ Edmund called up. Nim measured out more rope so he could go further.
Then Tiffany watched from her hammock, Nim and Fred watched through the gap, Selkie waited at the bottom and Edmund slipped down the rope till one foot touched water and the other touched sea lion.
He was in a knee-deep puddle of water in a far corner of the bat cave. Glow-worms danced all around him, bats hung upside down above him, and in front of him the pond sparkled deep and blue.
‘We can do it!’ he shouted. He rubbed Selkie’s head thank you, and started back up the rope.
It wasn’t as easy as sliding down. He walked his legs up the sides of the shaft and hauled himself up on the rope, with Nim cleating it in from the top so he didn’t fall back down what he’d just climbed.
By the time he got there, Tiffany’s foot looked like a balloon with toes. It didn’t look like a foot that could brace itself against walls to climb down the shaft.
So they threaded the other end of the rope around her hammock and pulled it in tight till Tiffany was sitting up with her knees bent. They checked all the knots, tugged and pulled and checked again before they undid the backpack straps from the bar of rock.
Then with Edmund guiding the sheet-hammock as he slid down his own rope and Nim paying the hammock rope out through a pulley, they lowered Tiffany gently down the shaft to Selkie’s waiting back.
THE SEA LION splashed gently forward until Tiffany could see the sky and the world beyond the cave. The water in the puddle was smelly, but Tiffany didn’t care – it was cool on her swollen, oily ankle. She rested her face against Selkie’s shoulder and felt her feet relax.
‘All clear!’ Edmund shouted up the shaft.
Nim untied the ends of the ropes. They snaked down with a splash.
That was when Tiffany realised that the water was getting warmer, fizzing and bubbling under her toes. ‘That’s weird!’ she said, but Edmund had his head in the shaft, untangling a loop of rope caught on a rock, and didn’t hear.
Tiffany was so tired she could hardly move, but she knew what she had to do. With trembling fingers, she reached for the water bottle on her belt.
High above, Nim had just finished packing up all the tools and extra bits when she noticed Tiffany’s empty sneaker still poking into her cavern.
Nim pulled it through the crack, but it was so slippery with the coconut oil that it slipped right out of her fingers into the puddle she was standing in. The water was cool, and up past Nim’s ankles, but she’d been in it for so long she’d forgotten about it.
By the time she’d fished the oily sneaker out, the water was fizzing and warm.
‘How did that happen?’ Nim exclaimed. Fred didn’t have any answers but Nim searched quickly through the tool bag for a test tube, because she knew Jack would have questions.
There were no test tubes, or bottles, or anything else to take a sample. Nim didn’t feel like exploring these tunnels and caves again for a very long time, but, ‘We’ll come back tomorrow,’ she said.
Hoisting the tool bag onto her back, she crawled out of the tunnel and down the rock bridge.
Selkie dived across the pool to meet her, barking happily, but there was no time for long sniffs and whuffles. They raced around the pond.
Tiffany was waiting in front of the bat cave, her face lifted to the sun as she breathed in the warm fresh air.
But after Nim got out the first aid box and helped her clean and bandage her wounded ankle and foot, Tiff was even paler than before.
Edmund was staring down the creek. Nim knew what he was thinking: there was no way Tiffany could walk over these rocks.
But Selkie had other ideas. She was looking at Nim, and nudging Tiffany.
‘Selkie wants you to ride her,’ said Nim.
Tiffany let her breath out in a long sigh of relief and excitement. ‘Truly?’
‘Truly,’ said Nim. She hugged Selkie for a moment, whispering, ‘I’m so proud of you!’ Tiffany handed her back the pocketknife, and Nim cut a piece of rope to loop around Selkie’s shoulders so Tiffany could hold on. Sea lions are slippery when they galumph, even when they’re not in the water.
That was when they heard a shout. ‘Tiff!’
Tristan was running towards them, with Ollie and Alex Rover a little way behind.
There was so much hugging, laughing and so many babbled questions – as well as a little bit of crying – that it took a while for anyone to understand what anyone else was saying.
‘Tiff’s foot’s too big,’ said Ollie. ‘It’s yucky.’
‘We need to get her back to the camp as fast as we can,’ agreed Tristan. Tiffany was lying with her face on Selkie’s neck, too tired to speak.
‘The creek path is a long way for Tiffany to ride Selkie,’ said Nim. ‘It’ll be faster to take the short cut back through the rainforest to the Black Rocks. Jack could pick us up there in the boat.’
‘I don’t know if he’s got the message yet,’ said Alex. ‘He might be ages.’
‘What would your Hero do?’ Nim asked, because sometimes when things were bad, the only way she could work out what to do was to try to be an Alex Rover hero.
‘You’re Alex Rover?’ Tiffany demanded. ‘The real Alex Rover? I thought he was a man.’
‘I’m the real one,’ said Alex. ‘I just made up the hero.’
‘She’s definitely real,’ said Tristan.
Nim wasn’t listening. Alex Rover’s Hero moved fast and thought faster, but he never moved before he thought. He’d want to know exactly where he was, and exactly where everyone else was, before he went anywhere.
He’d climb a tree, like the one in front of her.
Nim grabbed a thick vine dangling off the huge tree, and swung hand over hand to climb the trunk. Through her spyglass, she could see a faint shape that could be Jack’s sail. But when she looked again she thought it might be just a patch of sunlight on the waves – and whatever it was, it was very far away.
She wriggled partway around the trunk. From here the sea was a darker blue; she could see the Black Rocks, and the little cove at the bottom of the cliff … and Ryan and Anika’s wooden fishing boat.
‘I wonder why Lance and Leonora didn’t leave after I blew up the cave?’ said Nim.
Selkie barked sharply, showing her teeth.
‘You chased them away,’ said Nim.
Selkie honked happily. Nim stroked her. She wished she knew where the Bijous were now, but the other thing Alex Rover’s Hero always said was to only worry about one thing at a time. Right now, that one thing was getting Tiffany down to the boat and back to safety.