Rescue On Nim's Island Read Online Free Page B

Nim filled her bamboo drinker from the waterfall.
    ‘Wait!’ Nim called. ‘We’re going to the cave.’
    Selkie snorted a disapproving sort of humph. ‘Not the Emergency Cave,’ Nim added quickly. ‘I think I’ve found a new one.’
    Selkie humphed again . She didn’t care which cave it was: she didn’t like any of the caverns and tunnels on the cliffs above the Black Rocks.
    ‘We’ll meet you there,’ said Nim.
    Selkie sighed a deep, sea lion sigh, and galumphed on down the hill to the sea. Nim and Fred followed the creek deeper into the rainforest.
    They passed the side-trail to Alex Rover’s writing studio. Alex liked having her studio away from the house so that she had to go outside twice a day, because when she was in the middle of writing a book, she forgot about things like going for a walk, or even eating. Sometimes Nim had to go and knock on the door and remind her that it was time for dinner, just like she had to remind Jack when he was busy with science experiments.
    Luckily Nim always had Selkie and Fred to remind her when it was time to eat. They never forgot.
    After Alex’s studio, the rocks beside the creek got bigger. The trail got skinnier and the rainforest got thicker. Vines dangled down from the trees and across the ground, ghostly and shadowed in the bobbing light of Nim’s headlamp. It was hard to tell if they were vines or snakes.
    Nim liked watching snakes, and she liked stroking their sun-warmed, gleaming skin, but she didn’t like accidentally bumping into them. They mightn’t mean to hurt, but if they were frightened and bit her, she could die anyway.
    It was hard to believe that something so beautiful could kill you.
    Fred believed it. Every big vine reminded him of the python that had wanted to eat him for lunch. Pythons aren’t venomous, but you’ll still end up dead if they swallow you. Nim had grabbed Fred just in time, and they’d both felt shivery for a long time.
    He snuggled close into her neck now. Nim tickled his chin.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll never let anyone hurt you.’ Fred sneezed gratefully. He was glad when the blackness faded to a grey dawn light, and it was easier to see if the snakes lying across the trail were real hissing, biting ones, or just vines pretending.
    Now Nim could hear the waterfall rumbling off the cliffs, and the creek rushing as the water spilled into it from the pond at the bottom.

    Through the shadows, she could see the dark shape of the rock bridge arching over the pond to the cliff.
    The cliff looked high from here, but it had seemed even higher when she’d climbed it with Edmund. Especially when he’d fallen off into the pond, and she’d jumped in after him. That was what they hadn’t wanted to tell Tristan and Tiffany yesterday.
    But falling into the pond was how they’d found the cave at the bottom of the cliff – and the bats. They were big brown fruit bats, and there was only one other colony of this species in the whole world. They were just about as rare as anything could be without being extinct.
    The bats were one of the reasons that the World Organisation of Scientists had classified Nim’s island as a wildlife sanctuary. It was like a circle, Nim thought: finding the bats had helped keep her island safe, because the world wanted the island to keep the bats safe.
    Then the sun rose behind Fire Mountain. Nim turned off her headlamp; Fred swallowed one last bug and fell asleep on her shoulder. Pink light trickled through the trees, glinting off the waterfall, pond and creek. But Nim hurried on the other way, across the creek and around the side of the hill. It was time to find out if she really had discovered another new cave.
    S ELKIE WAS WAITING at the top of the Black Rocks, whuffling reproachfully.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Nim, ‘but this will be worth it.’
    They followed the path to the tree where she’d felt the cool breeze, and there it was: a hole in the rock, like a door into adventure. It was