Rescue On Nim's Island (11 page)

The pocketknife swung on the long cord, clattering against the walls, and stopped, swaying above Tiffany’s head. With Ollie clinging tight to her neck, Tiffany jammed her legs harder against the sides and reached.

She could nearly touch it – it was so close she could feel the air moving above her fingers as it swung – she tried again. And again and again, over and over …

‘I can’t! I just can’t.’

‘I can!’ Ollie squealed.

He clutched a handful of his sister’s hair and pulled himself up to stand on her shoulders. Tiffany grabbed his feet, and the little boy stretched for the swinging knife.

‘Got it!’ he shouted triumphantly.

‘Sit down on my shoulders while I use it,’ said Tiffany. ‘I don’t want to cut your legs by mistake.’

Ollie handed her the knife and sat down obediently. Tiffany shoved the knife into the tight knot of the sheet.

Edmund and Nim aimed their lights onto it.

‘Cut towards the wall!’ Nim called. Tiffany didn’t look like someone who’d used a pocketknife much before.

‘I’m stuck, not stupid!’ Tiffany grunted. She pushed hard; there was a ripping sound – but the sheet stayed stuck in its knot.

‘Are you cutting the sheet, Tiff?’ asked Ollie.

‘I’m trying!’

‘That’s naughty,’ said Ollie. He sounded confused.

‘Mum won’t mind,’ Tiffany panted, as she dug the knife into the knot one more time. There was another ripping sound. The knot loosened.

Tiffany dropped the knife into her pocket and tugged the sheet open.

‘Pull Ollie up now!’ she called. She tossed her end of the sheet up the shaft. They all leaned down to grab it, with Tristan down the hole as low as he could go and Nim and Edmund holding his ankles till their arms ached and their hands were so slippery with sweat they were afraid he’d slide right out.

The sheet fluttered up and billowed down, like a baby bird learning to fly. It was too soft and loose to throw straight up.

Nim looked at Fred. Fred looked back at Nim. Fred was greedy, but he was brave too, and sometimes he knew what Nim was thinking. She lifted him off her shoulder and held him close to her heart to warm him.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked him.

She opened her hands, and Fred scuttled down her legs to the mouth of the shaft.

Nim’s breath was stuck in her throat. There were no more cords to tie onto him.

Ollie started to whimper again. Nim wondered how long Tiffany could go on holding him. She swallowed hard.

‘Fred’s on his way!’ she called. ‘Hold the sheet out in case he falls!’

Fred slid down the side of the tunnel, his claws gripping where he could. Nim could hardly bear to watch, but she couldn’t shut her eyes either.

‘Fred!’ Ollie and Tiffany shouted together.

Then Fred was on Ollie’s shoulder, sneezing with relief.

‘Yuck!’ said Ollie, and stopped crying.

Tiffany untied the cord from Nim’s pocketknife and shoved the knife back in her pocket. She tied one end of the cord around the loose end of the sheet, and the other end around Fred’s shoulders.

‘Is that too tight?’ she asked.

Fred tried. He could slide down Tiffany’s arm, but when he tried to scramble up the walls of the tunnel, the thick cord rubbed against his armpits and made his front legs clumsy. He slipped, and Tiffany caught him just in time.

Nim could hardly breathe. Watching and doing nothing was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

‘I need your tail, Ollie,’ said Tiffany. She lifted the necklace over the boy’s head and undid the clasp. The amber scorpion plummeted to the bottom of the shaft. But that wasn’t the part that Tiffany wanted. Untying Fred’s cord, she knotted the golden chain into a harness around the iguana’s shoulders. Now the cord was tied to the loop right in the middle of his back, lying smoothly between his spikes.

Fred raced across to the wall and started climbing back up to Nim, trailing the cord behind him. She dangled right down into the hole again, with the boys holding her ankles, because they all knew that Fred needed to see Nim to make him as brave and strong as he could be.

‘You can do it, Fred,’ Nim whispered.

Fred scuttled and scrambled, and pulled himself up those smooth funnel walls. His claws found every tiny crack and crevice that the water hadn’t smoothed away. Sometimes he slipped down a little, but every time he started back up again and found a claw-hold that he’d missed before, and every time he ended up a bit higher than he’d been.

Finally he was close enough that Nim could touch his cool spiky back, then he crept up another lizard-length, and she could hold him in both hands. The boys dragged her back until she could sit up and untie Fred’s golden harness.

Tristan grabbed the cord and started pulling the sheet up.

‘Wait!’ said Edmund. ‘The cord’s too thin – it’ll slip right out of our hands once we’re pulling Ollie. We need to wind it around something thicker.’

He dumped out his backpack and looked doubtfully at his paintbrush.

‘My bottle!’ said Nim. Her drinker was a thick piece of bamboo stem; it was strong and easy to hang onto. Tristan knotted the cord around the middle, threw himself back down on the floor and started hauling, winding the cord around the bamboo. Nim and Edmund held onto his feet.

‘It’s pulling!’ Ollie screamed. ‘I don’t like it!’

Tristan had pulled in all the cord now; his hands were on the sheet.

‘Kick off from the walls, Ollie!’ he called, panting.

But Ollie was too terrified to push. His arms and legs were thrashing and waving like a fish trying to get free from a hook.

‘Tris isn’t going to be able to pull him in by himself,’ Nim said.

Edmund nodded. It was as if they’d worked together forever. With a few smooth tugs, they hauled Tristan backwards.

‘I can hold him myself now,’ said Edmund.

Nim threw herself down on the floor beside Tristan and reached for the sheet. Ollie was close to the top. Another few hauls together and they’d be able to reach him.

There was a sharp ripping noise.

The terrified toddler was kicking and fighting so hard that he was tearing the knot in the sheet.

Tristan dived further into the shaft and grabbed his little brother’s wrist. Then Edmund hauled Tristan, Nim hauled the sheet and Tristan hauled Ollie, and all four of them tumbled onto the floor like exhausted tug-of-war winners.

‘Your turn, Tiff!’ Tristan called when he could breathe again, untying Ollie from his sheet and dropping it back down to her.

‘I can’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘My foot’s stuck in the rock.’

Chapter 11

T
IFFANY’S WORDS EXPLODED
over them. Time froze.

Then Tristan shouted, ‘Of course you can get out! You have to.’ Ollie started to sob, and Edmund pointed to a thin stream of water trickling down the tunnel towards them.

The rain that had started when Tiffany got to the cave was flowing all the way through from the entrance hole. There was already water below Tiffany. If more flowed in …

Don’t go down the shaft!
Nim wished at the stream, but of course it did.

She looked at Edmund and could tell he was thinking the same thing.

‘I know Lance and Leonora want to steal the fossil,’ said Nim, ‘but they’d
have
to help if we ask – they’ve got ropes and stuff, and they know about rocks. I’m going back to find them.’

‘I’ll go the other way,’ Edmund said. ‘It’s definitely lighter ahead, and there are glow-worms again – we mustn’t be far from the end of the tunnel. If I can get out that way, I can get back to camp for tools.’

‘What if this fills up before you get back?’ Tiffany shouted. Which was exactly what they were all afraid of, and exactly what they didn’t want her to think.

There was a long moment of silence. Long enough to hear that the drops plinking into the water had become a steady stream.

‘We’ll get you out before it does,’ Tristan promised desperately.

Ollie started crying louder.

‘We’ll leave Tristan the backpacks,’ Nim said. ‘There might be something useful we’ve missed.’

Edmund took off his headlamp and gave that to Tristan too. Fred stopped hunting glow-worms and raced to Nim’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be back soon!’ she called. What she really wanted to say was,
I’m sorry I brought you here! I’m sorry I
found the fossil and I’m sorry you fell down the hole even
though I didn’t know it was there, because it’s my mountain
and my tunnel and so it’s my fault.
But that wouldn’t make anything better right now. Right now they couldn’t waste time worrying: they needed to act.

Because if that shaft filled up with water before they got Tiffany out, she would drown.

Ollie’s crying grew to a wail.

‘Take Ollie with you,’ Tiffany shouted.

‘No! Staying with Tris! Want Tiff to get out now!’

Edmund hesitated. The stream of water grew heavier. Ollie’s wail grew to a scream.

Tristan stood up. Even in the darkness his expression looked torn. ‘I’ll go for help if Edmund will stay. Ollie, you’re coming with me.’ He handed the headlamp back to Edmund.

‘Wait!’ Nim shouted. ‘If you can get out that way, follow the trail beside the creek. Alex Rover’s studio is in the rainforest on the way to the house. She can use the satellite phone to call Jack. And she might have some ideas on how to get Tiffany out.’

‘I need
real
help, not a storybook hero!’ Tiffany shrieked.

‘Alex Rover’s here now?’ asked Edmund.

‘She’s real and she’s here,’ said Nim. ‘I’ll explain later.’

She was pretty sure Alex would agree that keeping her secret wasn’t as important as saving Tiffany.

There was only a narrow strip of floor around the edge of the hole. Nim waited to see Tristan and Ollie sidle safely around it, and then she started back up the tunnel the other way.

Edmund dumped out the backpacks, searching all over again for anything that could possibly help Tiffany get her foot out of the crack in the rock.

Tiffany stayed exactly where she was, listening to the water run down the sides of the shaft into the pool below, and wondering how fast it would rise. It was already up to her left ankle.

L
EADING
O
LLIE BY
the hand, Tristan felt his way down the tunnel. It was true that there was a tinge of grey ahead in the blackness, and the dancing blue lights of glow-worms, but they weren’t enough to show him where the tunnel led, or if there was another giant hole ahead. So he slid his feet along the floor and patted his free hand along the walls, while part of him screamed,
Hurry up and save
your sister!
and another part – one that didn’t want to die falling down a hole inside a mountain – screamed,
Careful,
go slow!

The floor was smooth, but not wet-slippery: the water was all going down the shaft where Tiffany was stuck.

‘But it’s probably leaking out somewhere,’ he told himself. ‘And the rain’s probably stopped now anyway.’

The tunnel curved and the slope became steeper. The roof was lower and the light brighter. Tristan put Ollie on his lap and skidded on his bottom like a kid on a slippery slide, around a curve and out into fresh air and rain.

The rain was coming down in bucketfuls. It splashed off rocks and turned dirt to mud. It gathered up Tristan and his little brother and swooshed them down the hill on the wildest, craziest ride of their lives.

They landed with a jolt on an arch of rock beside a waterfall. Tristan’s heart slowed its thumping, and he rolled to his knees to look over the edge.

Far below was the pond Edmund had taken a picture of yesterday. ‘It looks much prettier when you’re not falling into it!’ Nim had said.

So now there were two worst things that could happen. His little brother could fall off the cliff and drown. And his sister could stay stuck deep inside the cliff and drown.

Because the other thing Nim had said was that a waterfall came out of the tunnel when it rained. Rain was pouring into the start of the tunnel now, but it wasn’t flowing out this end yet. First it had to fill in every hole along the way. Including the one Tiffany was stuck in.