Rescue On Nim's Island by Orr Wendy Read Free Book Online Page B

Leonora. ‘I’ve got a very good feeling about this.’ They waited a few more minutes, and then crept carefully up the path to the cave. For a long, long time, they sat outside, taking turns to stick their heads through the door hole and listen.

Chapter 8

    T IFFANY WAS BORED. She’d taken Ollie down to the water, and they’d waded and splashed. It was hot enough to swim, but Ollie couldn’t swim and Tiff couldn’t leave him alone while she swam. She didn’t find wading and splashing nearly as exciting as the three-year-old did.
    When Ollie was tired they went back to the tent; Tiffany tucked her little brother into his sleeping sheet, and lay down on hers. There was nothing else to do. All the batteries were flat; she couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t send messages, couldn’t read.
    Maybe she should have gone with Tris and the others, she thought. But she didn’t like caves, and she really was afraid of bats. She kept imagining them dropping off the ceiling in the darkness, landing on her head, tangling in her hair. She shuddered just thinking about it.
    Finally she found a book her mum had been reading. It was about the life span of coral, and it was mostly charts and graphs. It was better than thinking about bats, but there were so many Latin words and the sentences were so long that Tiffany had to close her eyes between each paragraph. After a while it was too much trouble to open them again. Tiffany dropped the book and slept.
    Through a dream, she heard voices, and the rustle of a tent flap.
    ‘It was lucky I spotted that bratty twin going with them,’ Lance was saying. ‘They might have got suspicious if they’d seen us heading off again with all our gear.’
    Suddenly Tiffany was wide awake. She lay still as stone, hardly breathing. Her ears stretched and strained to catch every word.
    ‘We’d have just had to deal with them here,’ said Leonora. ‘If the kids are right about what they’ve got in that cave, this could be the find of the century!’
    ‘We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it’s yours,’ Lance agreed. ‘And if we can’t get the fossil out whole, we’ll have a big pile of opal to sell.’
    ‘As long as they know what they’re talking about … we should have gone all the way into the tunnel and seen it for ourselves. I’ll be very annoyed if we haul these tools all the way up there for nothing.’
    ‘It’s better this way. Kids get bored easily – they’re probably gone by now. If not, it’ll be much easier to deal with them when we’ve got our ropes.’
    Tiffany’s body was still frozen, but her mind was racing. Deal with them? With ropes? She was suddenly very afraid. She didn’t care what Nim had found in that bat cave, she didn’t care what fossils or opals Leonora wanted, but she cared, more than she’d ever known she could, when someone threatened her brother.
    Now she was even angrier than she was afraid.
    As silently as she could, she got up from her mat. She put on her sneakers, shoved her mini torch into her pocket, her sunhat onto her head, and a water bottle into a pouch on her belt. Ollie was still sound asleep in his sheet. Tiffany slid her arms under it and very gently picked up her little brother.
    ‘What are we doing?’ Ollie murmured, without opening his eyes.
    ‘Shh,’ Tiffany whispered. ‘We’re playing a game. You’re the baby koala and I’m the mummy. You have to be sound asleep riding on my back.’
    The noises from the other tent sounded as if Lance and Leonora were packing. There were thumps and rustles, and mutters of, ‘We’ll have to get away fast if we use it, but it’ll be worth it,’ and, ‘We’ll need the net to lower it off the cliff’.
    Tiffany wiggled Ollie in his sheet around to her back. She knotted the bottom of the sheet around her waist, and the top around her shoulders. Even with the sling, Ollie was heavy.
    ‘Hang on, Baby Koala,’ she whispered.
    She tiptoed to the tent door. Her heart was beating