Mission Dragon by Bear Grylls

Author:Bear Grylls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books

Chapter 19

Breakfast was equipped with a barb – a long, pointed spine, which could cause a nasty injury. It came swimming lazily along the rocky gully of the inlet where Beck had caught last night’s dinner, and he knew with one glance that it could kill him if he wasn’t careful.

“Whoah,” he murmured to himself.

Survivors shouldn’t take unnecessary risks – but at the same time, they shouldn’t pass opportunities up. He could have waited for something less dangerous. On the other hand, he was hungry.

It was a ray. It had a flat, diamond shaped body about half a metre across, and it moved through the water by gently flapping its two pointed wings. Its eye sockets were a pair of bumps on its top and they reminded Beck of twin gun turrets, panning slowly from side to side.

The barb trailed behind it and it was the ray’s main defence. If a predator came too close, it could whip the barb up and stab its attacker, delivering a shot of venom into the bargain. The naturalist Steve Irwin, some years ago, had been killed by a creature like this, Beck remembered. He had swum up behind it and the ray had probably mistaken him for a predator, so it had flipped its sting up and speared him right in the chest.

But Beck’s spear was longer than the barb.

So, if I attack from the front, and get it right first time, I should be fine…

He paused, shifted his feet on the rocks to get the right balance, poised – and dived.

Once again, he was blind, guiding himself by sense of direction and gravity. Like the last time, he drove the spear ahead of him with all the weight of his body. He felt the shudder in his arms and shoulders as it grounded against something solid. Had he pinned the ray down? He couldn’t see anything and he was aware that somewhere out in that rush of bubbles and blinding salt water, there was a poisonous spine whipping around.

But when he lifted the spear up, he could feel there was something on the end of it, and it wasn’t moving. He kicked up to the surface, holding the spear at arm’s length, and shook the water from his eyes. And there it was – the ray, draped over the triple prongs, not moving. Its wings and barb hung limply.

“Nice!” he said happily, to no one in particular. “Breakfast is served!”

He headed back to the beach, letting the sun dry him off naturally, with the ray still skewered on the end of the spear.

“Jian?” he asked, looking about when he got there. The other boy was conspicuously not there. Ju-Long had just finished gathering wood for a new fire. There was no sign of dragons.

“I helped him up to the signal point,” she said. “He said he is happy to take the watch permanently. He said it is about all he feels able to do, and he does want to be helpful so much.

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