Mission Jaguar, page 8
There was even a small rocky lodge where they could get out of the water altogether.
But as for the river?
It took the only available exit, tumbling over a hidden edge, into the frothing, curdling depths below.
Chapter Thirty-One
The pull on her body suddenly felt ten times stronger, like it wanted to yank her over that drop and send her tumbling into the abyss.
She jammed both hands hard against the ceiling and stepped back.
Beck put the glow stick into his mouth, holding it between his teeth, and waded over to the ledge with both hands hard against the top of the tunnel until he could lever himself out of the water altogether. Then he wriggled round and held a hand out to her.
She declined it.
“I don’t want to pull you back in,” she shouted. She pushed her own way to the ledge, keeping herself braced like he had while he held the glow-stick up to light the way for her. “It’s like climbing — you have two hands and two feet, so you only ever move one at a time, right?”
She put her hands on the ledge together and lifted herself up to sit beside him. It was rough and hard, riddled with small crevices, but they could sit on it, soaked and cold. In the chemical glow of the glow stick, his teeth flashed green as he smiled, which was kind of weird.He put the glow stick down between them and started to shrug off his backpack.
“Well, it’s no more than I expected.”
She stared at him.
“You expected all this, and we still came this way?”
“Sure. On the photos you can see where the river comes out of the cliff, and it’s lower than where it goes in. So it must drop down while it’s underground. I was kind of hoping it might do it in stages, you know, like rapids — something we could climb down bit by bit. But looking at the height of that thing — what would you say, ten metres? — I’d guess it does most of it here, all in one big drop.”
She craned her neck as far as she could to look at the sheer walls, reflecting green from the glow stick and polished smooth by centuries of running water.
“So, are we going to jump?”
“No. There could be rocks at the bottom. Bad place to end up with a broken back.”
He dumped what looked like a loose coil of rope on the ledge between them, but unlike rope it immediately began to expand under its own pressure. Then she saw the leaves attached to it.
“That’s — vine?”
“Sure. That’s what I went to get when I left you at the entrance. Hey — careful.” She had picked it up and was flexing it experimentally. “It could easily snap if you bend it too far — unlike rope. You want it about as thick as your thumb to take your weight. And remember, until very recently this was climbing up a tree, so was still alive. That’s good for us. Means it is strong.” He had half pulled her old jeans out of his pack as well. “I need a bit of fabric. Mind if I cut some off this?”
This was like some weird dream — stuck underground, with a boy she had never met before but who acted like they were best friends, who wanted to climb down a waterfall with a vine, and who was now asking permission to cut up her clothes.
“Sure,” she said faintly.
He took the machete from his belt and sliced off a square of denim fabric from the end of one of the legs. Then he felt around the washed-up piles of grit and gravel with them on the ledge, and came up with a pebble the size of a golf ball.
“You might have noticed,” he said conversationally, as he started to wrap the fabric around the pebble, “that we’re missing something important if we’re going to climb down.”
Apart from a decent rope, helmets, climbing gear … she thought. Then she had it.
“Somewhere to tie the end of the rope … the vine to?”
“Yup.”
The pebble was firmly wrapped up now. Beck then removed his survival bracelet that was made of paracord wound tightly together. He started swiftly to untie it and unravel a length of the strong parachute cord. Thin, but strong enough to support a grown man at least. He tied a clove hitch tight around the denim material, trapping the pebble inside, and then tied the other end of the cord to the vine itself.
Then he twisted round and felt across the ragged surface of the ledge with his hands, delving his fingers into the many little cracks and fissures.
“Okay, this one will do.”
It was a small crack in a section of rock. He took the pebble and pushed it in, and then he tugged the vine horizontally so that the pebble jammed itself within the crack.
“And now, we have an anchor for our vine.”
He chucked the rest of the vine down into the darkness. It unlooped itself as it fell and hung down next to the torrent of water.
“Shall we go?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
She risked another look down.
“What, now?”
“Well, we could sit here and sing ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ to motivate us first, but personally I’m getting cold so I’d rather keep moving.”
And he put words into actions by clutching the vine, slowly lowering his weight onto it to test that it was holding ok, and then swinging himself out over the drop.
She bit back a gasp as he seemed to hang in mid-air. His feet were braced against the wall of the drop, he held onto the vine with both hands, and his body was cantilevered out over the fall.
“Do you know how to do this?”
Despite his calm tone she suddenly realised what he was doing — trying to make this feel normal and easy for her, the beginner. She could feel the underlying seriousness in his voice.
“Tell me.”
“We only move one bit at a time. Just hang onto the vine for all you’re worth with both hands until you’re absolutely sure you’ve got somewhere to put your feet. Feel your way down with your toes, one step at a time, and I’ll be below to guide you. You can do this. I know you can.” He paused and smiled. “And remember to bring that.”
He nodded at the glow-stick on the ledge beside her, and she suddenly realised something.
“You’ll be climbing into the dark?!”
“I’ll be doing it by feel. See you in a moment.”
And without warning, he had dropped down out of sight.
She crawled to the edge and leaned over, holding the glow-stick out to shed as much light as possible into the vertical tunnel. Below she could see the top of his head receding, but it wasn’t long before he was just an indistinct shape amongst the other shapes of foaming water and tumbled boulders at the bottom.
“Okay! Your turn!” His voice sounded hollow as it boomed up from the depths. “There’s plenty of footholds. Just take it easy — but really, really hold on. There’s no splash pool down here, just rocks.”
In other words, nothing to break her fall apart from boulders, she thought. Not that she needed any added incentive.
“Here I come.”
She put the glow-stick into her mouth, but it felt awkward. One more thing to worry about holding onto, so instead she tucked it half into her chest pocket.
Then came the hardest part of all. Turning her back onto the drop, seizing hold of the vine. A plant! I’m trusting my life to the breaking strength of a plant, she thought.
And with that, she started letting herself down into the gloomy half-light.
Chapter Thirty-Three
He was right — there were footholds. She found two almost immediately.
Then she had to move one foot from its nice, secure location and quest unseeingly into the dark with it until she found another.
On second thoughts, I could just stand here like, you know, forever …
She had to wrench her foot away from the stable foothold like it was glued to the rock face, to make herself start looking for the next one lower down. Which meant all her weight was on her hands clutching the vine, and the one leg that was still holding her steady.
She noticed it was starting to tremble at the knee.
Her free foot found some resistance. She wiggled her toes against it, and decided it would do.
Now to repeat with the other foot …
And so she forced herself to unpeel the foot again, bend her knee, and probe for a lower foothold, while the waterfall thundered next to her, drawing down the air in a cold downdraught that felt like the breath of the rock wanting to blow her off the face.
She found a tiny foothold that hardly felt large enough for her to poke the toes of her boot into. Her foot was trembling like crazy now with nerves. Then suddenly she felt this fear rising inside her. The instinct to release with both hands and feet was almost overpowering.
She had to fight this fear.
Slowly she closed her eyes and started to breathe deeply. Keep calm. Keep calm. You can do this, girl!
Then she started to move. Hand by hand, foot by foot.
And repeat.
Beck was keeping quiet. Maybe there wasn’t enough light for him to see, maybe he didn’t want to distract her. Either way, this was her battle to win now — she was the one stuck to a rock face, and she was determined to work it out for herself. When he eventually did speak out of the dark, she almost let go because she hadn’t realised he would be so close or how far down she had got.
“Fantastic. You’re doing great. Your right foot — just lower it a bit more …”
She kept moving down.
“I knew you could do it …”
She risked a look down. Pulverised spray from the waterfall drifted up from the rocks and floated like moving stars in the glow-stick light. Beyond the bottom of the fall, the tunnel now sloped at an angle, so the water rushed off in a smooth sheet into the darkness beyond the glow. Beck had been patiently waiting, wedged against a boulder.
As soon as she was standing on her own two feet again, Beck reached up and gave the vine a sudden, hard yank. Somewhere along its length it snapped and the bottom half fell towards them. He measured it out between outstretched hands.
“About five metres,” he said thoughtfully. “Okay, could be worse.” He coiled it up and put it back in his pack.
“So it wasn’t that strong then?” she added, wide-eyed.
“Well, hopefully we’re not going to have to trust our weight to it again, but it could come in handy in other ways. You don’t throw anything away unless you have to.”
“How did you know?” she asked suddenly. He looked at her, puzzled. “You said you knew I could do it. You don’t know me from squat, so how did you know?”
For the first time, this strange boy who had casually brought her down into this subterranean place, where a wrong step could kill both of them, looked awkward. Different responses seemed to chase themselves across his face.
“Long story,” he muttered.
“Well, tell me,” she said. “This long story. Because — okay, you’re Beck Granger, you do this kind of stuff, but not for kicks and I never read anything about you randomly coming to people’s rescue …”
He held his hands up, palms out.
“I’ll tell you, I promise. But there’s a time and a place?”
She could see his point, and she believed his word.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The tunnel was narrower now, which meant the flow was faster. But at least there were no more ultra-low ceilings and the water never came higher than their shoulders. The only big stalactites they had seen were back in the waterfall cavern. Everywhere else the roof was smoother, lined with ridges like a giant model of the top of her mouth ...
Up ahead a stream of drops poured through a crack in the ceiling, like there was a burst pipe up above. Beck put out a hand and cupped some of it, then took a sip.
“Filtered absolutely clean by the rock. Better than any processing plant could ever manage.”
“You know, Mayans thought their rain god lived in caves for just that reason?” she told him. “They saw this pure, clean water just appearing, so they put two and two together.”
Beck nodded. “Well water is life, I guess.”
They pushed on through the small waterfall.
“Check this,” Beck said suddenly. He held the glow-stick up to a protruding rock, and she peered close to see what had caught his attention.
“Whip scorpion?” she asked. The thing crawling across the rock face, probing its way with spindly front limbs that were both antennae and legs, was like a cross between a scorpion and a very large spider. It had a pear shaped body the size of her thumb. The rest of it was just legs, long and thin, wide enough that it could have stretched from one side of a dinner plate to the other. “You get them in crevices and caves. They’re not venomous.”
He glanced back at her, and though his face was shadowed she thought she detected respect in the look.
“Good knowledge. You have done your homework. And they don’t swim underwater,” he said, “so this guy has walked here, which means we’re near the exit. Or, an exit, anyway.”
He looked thoughtfully ahead down the tunnel, then stuck the glow-stick into his pocket. The light vanished, only leaving coloured marks in the backs of her eyes that slowly drifted off and faded away into the sheerest, darkest black.
Chapter Thirty-Five
She could only think of one reason why he would have extinguished the light.
“You think someone might be waiting for us at the other end?”
“Well, it’s occurred to us, so I’d be very surprised if it didn’t also occur to your stepdad.”
They began to make their way forward. Slowly. Together.
She had never known darkness as thick as this. She would have said it was like being wrapped in velvet, pressing down on them from every direction, except that velvet is warm and soft, and this was cold and harsh.
But then she saw light.
It was the slightest, tiniest glimmer, only visible if you didn’t look directly at it.
She had read that the human eye is better at picking out dim lights in the peripheral vision — something to do with the way the rods and cones are arranged.
Unfortunately, her rods and cones were telling her that the light was coming from underwater.
“Beck …”
“Yeah, I see it.” He had stopped too.
“That could be our way out,” he said.
It was tiny, though. A narrow, underwater crack …
She could hear noises which meant he was unzipping his backpack again. More rustling and splashing, and then—
“Hold your hand out?”
She did, and a moment later felt his hand grasping to find her. He pressed the end of the vine into her fingers.
“Hold onto this. I’m going to check it out. If I start tugging, that means I’ve got through and you can follow me, right? If I can’t then I’ll just follow it back to you.” He paused. “And when you follow after me, no matter what, just remember that I did it first, so you can too, right?”
“Right,” she said — very quietly.
“And now we’re going to do some deep breathing. Both of us, together. We need as much oxygen in our blood as we can get. Let your shoulders go up, stick your stomach out too — that expands your diaphragm, lets your lungs get as full as they can. Go. Breathe in … breathe out …”
They stood there for a whole minute, just drawing in air — inhaling, exhaling — while the water flowed around them and the light continued to glimmer.
“Going now,” he said quietly, and then there was just a plop in the water and silence where he had been.
Almost immediately there were jerks on the vine, but not real tugs — nothing to suggest he was trying to communicate. It was just the inevitable result of him unspooling the vine as he went and keeping a hold on the other end. After a while, the vibrations stopped.
How long does it take to drown?
Oh, thanks! she snapped at herself. Like I really needed to ask that …
No, but seriously …
How long? Did you just pass out and never wake up? Did you feel your lungs bursting? Did you just keep going until you had to breathe, even though all that came in was water? How much would it hurt?
The need to breathe comes because poisonous carbon dioxide is building up in your blood. It is more important to your body to breathe it out than to take in anything new to replace it. So maybe that was it. You breathed out the stuff making your lungs burst, and then you drew in water, and your body decided, okay, game over, and you died …
Suddenly the vine was jerking, so hard that she almost let go. That was a distinct tug. He’d made it.
So now it was her turn …
She took one final large gulp and didn’t hesitate. She ducked down under the water, hands outstretched ahead of her to where the light had been.
If she had thought the start of the tunnel was dark, this was darker. With water pressing against her eyeballs she didn’t have a chance of seeing the light — in fact it was easier just to close them and do it all by feel. Every noise was amplified: squeaks and gurgles and the click of stone against stone as she pulled her way along the base of the tunnel.
She had to cling onto whatever she could find on the cave floor, though her lungs were buoyant and her legs wanted to float upwards, so that she was permanently head-down. But all the time, she kept pulling herself along.
Chapter Thirty-Six
She remembered Beck’s words. ‘You can do it.’
It was narrow, but it would never be too narrow. If Beck had made it then she could make it.
But the sides were closing in too, as she found when her elbows banged against solid rock. Pressed in above, below, left and right … Added to all the noises now was the sound of her heart, a dull boom, boom, boom in her ribs, every pulse of blood sending a whoosh through her eardrums.
Her lungs felt like they wanted to claw their way out of her, hammering against her chest for release.
Oh, to be able to breathe out, breathe in again …
She risked opening her eyes again, just for a second, and there was the light just ahead now! It wasn’t far now, right in front of her, lancing down vertically.
