Nearly Caught

• Daniel Clarke, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2010

Billy, Aiden and I were heading out on a trip into the African savannah; the track was getting really rough thanks to the downpour last night. Luckily the tour guide knew a short cut across to where we were heading but little did we know we were heading of a steep cliff face! All of a sudden we were in the air, we had driven right of the edge of the cliff! Then ‘bang’ we had hit the ground. All of our tyres had popped we had no transport. ‘WE WERE STUCK!’ Our tour guide had taken a nasty blow to the head and he was out cold. We had to leave him behind as he would slow us down. We would try to get help for him as soon as we could. We left him in the car and partly shut the windows and put the sleeping bags over the window to give him shade. We left the car and started walking.

We needed to get back to our Hotel, but how were we going to do that? We knew that we had to get to some sort of track where hopefully a ranger would come along in his car and pick us up. We started walking across the African plain, not knowing what dangers lay ahead. We had some supplies, but not many. We knew that time was of the essence, as we had to get help for the Guide and we wanted to get out of there as soon as possible! Lions, hippos, crocodiles and snakes were but a few of the animals which we knew inhabited these areas. As we walked through the long grass we heard a sound, a fierce sound. We popped up our heads out of the long grasses and saw in the distance a pack of lions! We saw that they were eying a pack of wildebeest nearby. We had two choices, wait there in the grass for the lions to smell us out for a meal or to go to the nearby river and cross the small inlet to the other side. We decided to take our chances with the river.

As we were walking towards the river, I looked around my shoulder and saw one of the lions approaching with its blood shot eyes staring right at me. I told the others to run as fast as we could to the river. Our hearts were racing and I could not stop shaking. We reached the river inlet and turned around. The lion was closing in. Even though the river was filled with its own dangers, what choice did we have?

All of a sudden we heard a deafening gunshot sound nearby. We turned around and saw a group of rangers. They had realized that we were missing, as we had been hours! We saw our Tour Guide in the car and were so relieved that he had been found – and for that matter, that we had been rescued too!