امتحان سخت نهایی

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Last Ordeals

When he woke again, Bond slowly turned over onto his back. He saw that there was another window in the ceiling of the shaft, just above his head. He saw a face behind the glass. Another of Doctor No’s men was studying him. The man wasn’t interested in Bond’s injuries. He was only interested in how much pain Bond could endure. He was only interested in how long Bond was going to live.

For a moment, Bond was angry. Then, as he felt the pain from the burns on his knees and feet and hands move through his body, he made a noise like an animal.

Bond turned over once again. Again, he began to move forward slowly along the shaft. At first, he moved without thinking. But after a while, there was a little less pain. Soon, he was able to think again.

It was nearly an hour before Bond came to the next obstacle on Doctor No’s course. Bond knew that the obstacle was there before he understood what it was. Ahead of him, Bond saw tiny, sparkling, red lights. They were moving about. And when he stopped moving himself, he could hear a sound. It was a soft, tapping sound.

As he crawled forward again, the tiny red lights came closer and the tapping sound grew louder. What was waiting for him now? Bond lit his cigarette lighter, held it up, and found the answer to his question.

Three feet in front of Bond there was a metal grille. The grille was like a curtain made from very thin metal wires. Behind the grille, there were about twenty, large hairy spiders. This was a cage of giant tarantulas! The little red lights that Bond had seen in the dark were the spiders’ eyes. The tapping sound was made by their soft hairy feet on the metal wires of the cage.

Bond tried to remember everything he knew about tarantulas. These poisonous spiders were the largest in the world. Their bodies were about four inches long and their legs were five inches long. Their bodies and their legs were covered in long hairs. Their teeth were sharp and full of poison. If one spider bit a man, he would be ill and in great pain for a while. He probably wouldn’t die. But Bond had to crawl through this cage with twenty tarantulas in it. If more than one bit him, he probably would die.

Bond looked at the spiders, and remembered the centipede in his hotel room. Again, he felt cold with fear and disgust. But that was what Doctor No wanted, Bond knew that.

‘If I think about these spiders on my body and in my hair, I won’t be able to go on,’ he said to himself. ‘If I think about them biting me, I won’t be able to go on. But I must go on. I’m going to rescue Honey. Perhaps Doctor No thinks that this is the ordeal that’ll kill me. But he doesn’t know about my three weapons!’

Bond carefully took the spear from inside his trouser leg. He unbent the wire and pulled the spear to its full length. Then he turned a little wheel on his cigarette lighter, which made the flame bigger. Finally, he cut a large hole in the grille with his knife, and crawled into the cage.

The spiders started to run towards him, but when they saw the flame from the lighter they stopped. They were afraid of the fire. They didn’t know what to do. And while the spiders were standing still, Bond began to stab his spear into their soft, hairy bodies. After he had killed several of them, the other spiders started to move forward again. But they wouldn’t come near the flame from the lighter. They started to bite the dead and dying spiders that Bond had stabbed.

And while they were doing this, Bond killed more of them.

When at last all the spiders were dead, Bond pushed their bodies to one side of the cage. He quickly crawled towards the grille at the back of the cage, cut a hole in it with his knife, and climbed through. When Bond left the cage, he bent the spear in half again. Then he pushed it down inside one leg of his jeans. He put the lighter back in his pocket, and he put the knife between his teeth again.

A light came on above his head. Bond looked up and saw what he expected to see. Another of Doctor No’s watchers was looking at him. But this man moved his head slowly from side to side. Then he looked very, very sad. Finally, he held up his hand, with the thumb pointing downwards.

‘He’s telling me that this is the end,’ Bond thought. ‘He’s saying, “The next ordeal will kill you.’”

There was nothing Bond could do. He had to move forward. Soon he realized that the shaft was sloping downwards. And he realized that the metal walls were more slippery than before. After a few minutes, the weight of his own body was moving him along. Bond didn’t have to crawl any more. He didn’t have to move his arms and legs at all. For a while, this felt pleasant. He was able to rest and move at the same time. But then the slope became steeper, and Bond realized that he was moving faster and faster. He pressed his hands and feet against the sides of the shaft, but the metal tore his skin. He couldn’t stop now, even if he wanted to.

And then suddenly, he could see bright sunshine ahead of him. As he got closer to the sunlight, he could smell the sea. In a moment, he came to the end of the shaft and fell out into the air beyond it. A hundred feet below him, Bond saw the blue-grey water of the Caribbean Sea. He had just enough time to remove the knife from his mouth and stretch his arms out in front of him before he entered the water.

As he hit the water, Bond fell unconscious for a few moments. But by the time that his body had come up to the surface of the water, he was conscious again. He started to swim, and as he swam he looked around him.

Bond was swimming in a small inlet that had the shape of a triangle - it had three sides. On two sides of the inlet there were tall cliffs of rock. But the third side of the inlet was a tall fence. The inlet was separated from the open sea by this fence which was made of very thick, strong wire. The fence stood ten feet above the surface of the water. And as he swam up to the fence, Bond could see that it went down many feet beneath the surface too.

On the two sides of the inlet which were cliffs, the water was against the very steep walls of rock. There were no beaches, and there were no paths up the cliffs. Bond was very tired and his body was full of pain. But he knew that he had to climb the fence.

The fence was like a huge metal net. There were lots of places where he could put his feet and hands when he started to climb. Bond pulled himself out of the water and up onto the fence. He stopped with his feet on a horizontal wire which was about three feet above the surface of the water. For a moment, he looked out to the sea through the holes in the fence. Then he turned round to look at the inlet behind him.

He pushed his knife into the belt of his jeans. With both his hands, he grasped the vertical wires above his head. He looked down at the hundreds of small fish swimming in the water beneath him.

‘I’m safe here for a while,’ Bond thought. ‘I’ll rest until I feel stronger.’ But then he asked himself these questions.

‘Why is this inlet here? And why is this inlet separated from the open sea? Doctor No must have made this fence.

But I don’t believe that the last ordeal on this obstacle course is a wire fence. Climbing over it will be much too easy. Doctor No isn’t interested in easy obstacles.’

Then Bond looked again at the inlet behind the fence.

‘Perhaps this is the place where Doctor No wants me to die,’ he told himself. ‘The inlet is like a big cage. Perhaps it is a cage. But what kind of animal does Doctor No keep in it?’

He soon had an answer to his question. First, all the small fish disappeared. They swam quickly away from the fence. Then a moment later, the shape of an enormous grey creature appeared in the water just beneath the place where Bond was standing. It was a giant squid.

At first, the creature had been deep down in the water. But now it was coming nearer and nearer to the surface. Bond just had time to remember Quarrel’s story about the giant octopus which had attacked his friend, Pus-Feller, near Crab Key. As he remembered the story, a huge tentacle came up out of the water. The tentacle was as broad as the top part of Bond’s arm. It touched the fence below Bond’s feet.

‘So, this is my final ordeal,’ Bond thought.

He tried to climb a little higher on the fence, but he was weak and in pain. He climbed very slowly. He looked down again and he saw two eyes looking up through the water at him. The eyes were as large as footballs. They looked calm and almost friendly.

For a moment, Bond thought that the squid wasn’t interested in him. But then it moved its tentacle and touched one of Bond’s legs. The tentacle moved over Bond’s leg, then grasped it, pressing it hard.

‘It’s asking itself if I’m good to eat,’ Bond told himself.

A moment later, the squid attacked. A second long tentacle came up out of the water and grabbed Bond’s left arm. Bond pulled his knife from his jeans with his right hand. He stabbed and cut the tentacle with the knife. But now there were more tentacles moving up the wire fence. They held Bond’s body, pulling him down towards the water. And they were terribly strong.

Then the creature’s enormous head appeared. And now Bond thought that its eyes looked angry. The squid’s huge sharp beak was opening and closing near Bond’s feet. In a moment, the creature was going to start eating him.

There was only one thing to do. Bond pulled the wire spear from his trouser leg and stabbed it deep into one of the terrible creature’s eyes. He stabbed the eye again and again. The last time, he left the spear there.

For a few seconds, the surface of the sea looked like water boiling in a cooking pan. Then suddenly, the colour of the water changed. The sea around Bond was no longer blue - it was black! When Bond had stabbed the squid, it had released ink from its body. Bond and the fence were covered in the stinking black liquid.

Suddenly, Bond felt the squid’s tentacles falling away from his body. In a moment, the creature had swum away and the water became calm again.

After the giant squid had gone, Bond rested on the fence for a while. Then he slowly climbed over the top of the fence and dropped down into the sea on the other side. He swam towards the shore of the rocky headland on the south side of the fence. Soon he could see a path in the rocks of the headland. He thought that the path must lead up to Doctor No’s headquarters.

All night, there had been two thoughts in Bond’s mind. He wanted to live long enough to kill Doctor No, and he wanted to save Honey from the black crabs. But it was many hours now since Bond had started his ordeal. It had been late evening when Doctor No’s servant had locked him in the stone room with the ventilation grille. And now it was morning.

The girl must be dead. The only thing to do now was to find Doctor No.

‘I still have the knife,’ Bond told himself.

As Bond pulled himself out of the sea, he had a surprise. He heard a loud sound. It was the sound of a ship’s siren. It was coming from somewhere close to where Bond was standing.

The path in front of him led along the bottom of the cliff and went around the end of the headland.

‘There must be a quay on the other side of this headland,’ Bond thought. ‘It must be the place where guano is loaded into the ships.’

As he walked towards the end of the headland, Bond heard another sound. But he couldn’t guess what was making this noise. It sounded like lots of pieces of metal crashing together.

At the end of the headland there was a large rock. Bond stopped behind it. He would have to look very carefully round this rock before he went any further. There might be guards with guns on the other side!

Bond moved very slowly and looked carefully round the corner. For ten seconds, he looked at what was beyond it. Then he moved back and hid behind the rock again.