Mission Jaguar by Bear Grylls

Author:Bear Grylls [Grylls, Bear]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books

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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.