Rescue On Nim's Island (12 page)

Tristan’s heart began pounding again. As if he was the one stuck in the shaft, he felt darkness surrounding him, the rock closing him in, his body crushed by pain and terror.

It took all his strength to break free of that link. But if he was going to save his sister, he had to save himself first. And he was stuck halfway down a cliff, on a narrow bridge of rock, with an exhausted toddler in his arms.

N
IM CREPT STEADILY
up the tunnel, trying to keep to the edges where it was drier and not so slippery. Her headlamp glowed dimly; the trickling water was the only sound.

‘I’m glad you’re with me, Fred,’ she said, as he rubbed his spiny back against her neck. Fred pressed a little closer. He loved sunshine and being able to move fast when his blood warmed up, but he loved Nim more.

‘We don’t need to be quiet,’ Nim reminded him. ‘It’s okay if Lance and Leonora hear us now.’

Fred sneezed.

‘Truly. They’ll help us when I tell them what’s happened.’

But her voice still came out in a whisper.

Besides, it was easier to be quiet so she could concentrate on climbing up the tunnel without slipping backwards or falling down any other holes. She didn’t know how long she’d been climbing, and she didn’t know how long it had taken them to go down in the first place. Now there was another tunnel shooting off from the side. She was sure she was still in the right one, but not one hundred per cent sure.

And she had no idea how close she was to the cave. Or what she’d do if Lance and Leonora had already gone.

Go to the Emergency Cave.
There was rope there, and tools. Maybe she should have gone there in the first place. All she’d thought about was getting Tiffany and Ollie out right away.

She came to another side tunnel, and then another, and now she knew for sure that she was in the right tunnel and that it wasn’t far to the bats’ nursery cave.

She could hear voices: Leonora’s, and then Lance’s.

Nim remembered Leonora’s smile, and the way that she’d listened to everything Nim had to say last night. Everything was going to be all right.

‘Help!’ she started to call.

Then she heard what they were saying, and the ‘Help!’ slipped back down her throat as quickly as a chunk of coconut into Fred’s stomach.

‘Careful!’ said Leonora’s voice. ‘We don’t want it to blow up too soon!’

Blow up?
thought Nim, creeping closer.

‘Don’t worry – I won’t light the fuse till we’re out.’

‘Are you sure that’s the best place?’

‘Perfect!’ said Lance. ‘When it collapses this cave it’ll blow out the wall between here and the opal. No more stinky bats to worry about – and you’ll have all the room you want to cut out that whole fossil.’

‘The most perfect fossilised sea turtle ever found! I’ll be famous!’

‘Or we could break it into bits and sell the opals. There are some valuable pieces in there.’

‘Rich or famous – we can’t lose!’ Leonora gloated.

Oh, yes you can!
Nim wanted to shout.

‘Okay, it’s set!’ said Lance. ‘Let’s get out quick. Three minutes till BOOM time, and this cave is dust. Bye, bye, bats!’

‘Good riddance to the filthy things!’ Leonora said, her voice disappearing as she scurried out through the door hole.

They’re going to kill the bats!
Nim’s mind screamed.
And if I don’t get out of here, they’re going to kill me too.

Lance said three minutes,
said a calmer part of her mind
. All you have to do is cut the fuse. The dynamite can’t
go off if the spark doesn’t get there.

‘Hang on, Fred,’ she whispered. Fred clung to her shoulder a little tighter, and she crept the last three steps into the nursery cave. Her headlamp swooped around, lighting up the sleeping bats, the dripping stalactites and the pillars of stalagmite, the green-glowing fungi and the blue swinging glow-worms. It wasn’t just a home to one of the world’s most endangered species, it was a magical, geological, biological wonderland. And it was part of her island. It was not going to be destroyed.

Nim stepped into the middle of the cave and finally saw the dynamite. It was beside the stalagmite at the entrance to the fossil tunnel. Six little sticks, tied in a bundle, with a long rope of fuse leading out of the cave.

They looked just like they did in pictures, except they were horribly, dangerously real: six little sticks of evil. She didn’t want to touch them.

She reached for her knife – and then she remembered. The pocketknife wasn’t around her neck. It was with Tiffany in a hole filling up with water. Nim didn’t know that her brain could run so fast in so many different directions while her body was frozen in fear. She couldn’t run far enough down the tunnel in three minutes to be safe. Lance and Leonora weren’t going to help her save Tiffany.

When the cave blew up the mother and baby bats in the nursery would all die and the bats would become extinct.

Alex Rover’s Hero would pick up the dynamite and throw it down the cliff.

If the bat cave exploded, the start of the tunnel would fill up with rocks.

Tiffany was going to drown unless she stopped the rainwater from flowing down the tunnel into the shaft.

The only way to stop the water was to block the tunnel. The only way to block the tunnel was with a rockfall. And the only way to have a rockfall in just the right place …

If she threw the dynamite out to save the bats she’d be killing Tiffany.

Chapter 12

D
EEP IN THE
tunnel, Tiffany was struggling not to slide any further down the dark shaft. Her body was bruised and exhausted. She was cold, and she knew that she was probably still very, very scared. She was just too tired to feel the fear any longer.

It was her left foot that was stuck. It had slipped into the gap between two rocks as she fell and saved her from falling all the way down. At first she’d thought it was just a little bit stuck, and that she’d be able to pull it out when she wasn’t holding Ollie. But her sneaker had wedged itself in further when she was stretching to reach Nim’s dangling pocketknife, and that was when it had got jammed. The foot that had saved her was stopping her from getting out.

Now water had come up as high as her right ankle. Soon her stuck left foot would be underwater too, and she didn’t know why that would make it worse, but it would.

‘Can’t you get your foot out of your shoe?’ Edmund shouted.

‘I’ve
tried!
’

T
RISTAN WAS STUDYING
the best way to get off the cliff.

‘Don’t move!’ he ordered Ollie. He lay on his stomach and wiggled further out onto the rock bridge. Through the pouring rain, he could see the creek that Nim had told him to follow.

There was only one possible way to get there.

‘You want to help get Tiff out of the hole?’ he asked Ollie.

The little boy sniffed and nodded.

‘We’re going to crawl over this bridge.’

‘Crawl like puppies?’

‘Like snakes,’ said Tristan. ‘Flat on our tummies. You go in front.’

‘’Cause I’m the fastest,’ said Ollie.

So I can grab you if you slip!
‘Yes,’ said Tris.

Ollie was right, though: it wasn’t as long since he’d been crawling for real, and he was very good at it.

Tristan hated it. It hurt, it was scary, and it was very, very slow.

The bridge was quite flat on the top, and Tristan thought that on a sunny day it would be good to sit there and watch the waterfall splash past. But the rain was beating at their backs and pooling on the bridge so that sometimes it felt more like swimming than crawling, and the waterfall sent up plumes of spray that splashed into their eyes. Wriggle by wriggle, they slithered across.

Then: ‘Hang on!’ Tristan started to shout, but before he could finish the rain whooshed them down the other side of the arch, and they were rolling on the soft, soggy bank of the creek.

Tristan jumped to his feet. Ollie was still lying on the ground, looking as if he didn’t know whether or not to cry.

‘That was fun!’ Tristan told him.

‘Fun,’ Ollie repeated, not sounding too sure.

‘Want a piggy back?’ Tristan picked his brother up, and started down the creek.

He’d never have believed how fast he could run around rocks, through pouring rain and slippery mud, with a three-year-old on his back. He could hear himself puffing; he could see blood from the scratches on his arms, but he couldn’t feel the pain, the rain, or his heaving chest. All he saw was the best possible path in front of him, and all he heard was the chant in his head,
Follow the creek, follow
the creek to the house, follow the creek to rescue Tiff.

N
IM HAD BEEN
afraid many times in her life. She’d been nervous when she rode Selkie out to sea to rescue Alex Rover. She’d been scared when she dived off the cliff to rescue Selkie. But she’d never been terrified like this.

She grabbed her whistle from her pocket and blew three loud blasts under the sleeping bats. The air filled instantly with a chirping, flapping cloud. But instead of heading towards the door hole, the bats were disappearing down the long tunnel, the way Nim had just come. They were flying fast.

‘Oh, no!’ Nim groaned, ‘I’ve confused them!’

Or maybe they were going out the way they always did
. At the back of Nim’s mind things started to fall into place: why she’d never seen any bat poo outside the door hole on the Black Rocks, and why the tunnel had smelled of bats all the way down.

Now she had to make sure they had a nursery to come home to again.

She picked up the bundle of dynamite. It was heavier than it looked, but the hardest thing was making sure she didn’t trip on its snaking fuse. She wanted to run, but she didn’t want to fall.

‘Get down and get out!’ she ordered Fred. ‘What if I’ve worked out the time wrong?’

Fred dug his claws in deeper. He never liked Nim telling him what to do, especially if it meant leaving her. And most especially if it meant leaving her in danger.

Nim didn’t have time to argue. She rushed down the side tunnel to the turtle fossil. As gently as if were a clutch of newly laid eggs, she laid the dynamite at the bottom of the wall, under the gleaming fossil of Chica’s millions-of-great-great-grandmother.