Free Two in the Bush by Gerald Durrell

an hour or so and then, through the spray-distorted windows of the wheelhouse, we could see two humps of rock on the horizon, rather resembling the large and small
humps of a camel. I went out on deck and peered at our destination through the binoculars: the smaller of the two humps appeared to be nothing more than a desolate lump of rock, unrelieved by
anything except the white frill of breakers it wore round its base; the larger of the two humps, however, appeared to have some vegetation on it, and at one end stood the tall shape of the
lighthouse. These, then, were the Brothers, and it was here (depending on whether we could get ashore) that I hoped to see the reptile that rejoiced in the name of Sphenodan punctatus, or
the tuatara. Brian had sent a telegram to Alan Wright who, together with two companions, ran the lighthouse, asking him if they would (a) put us up for a couple of days, and (b) whether he could
catch a couple of tuataras for us. The reason for the last request was that now our time was growing short in New Zealand, and as we could only afford to spend a couple of days on the Brothers, we
did not want to spend the time chasing elusive tuataras to try and film them. In due course we had received a laconic reply saying that Alan Wright could put us up, would see what he could
do about tuataras, and would Brian please put ten bob each way on a horse called High Jinks, which was due to come romping home at about a hundred to one in some race or other. Brian had been
pleased with the telegram but I had felt that the frivolous tone of the whole missive boded ill for us. However, we were there now and all we could do was to wait and see what happened.
    As we got nearer to the larger of the Brothers we could see that it rose sheer out of the sea, the cliffs being some two hundred feet high. On top of a flat area at the edge of the cliff
crouched what appeared to be a baby crane looking, as cranes always do, like a surrealistic giraffe. The launch headed for the cliffs below the crane and we could see a group of three people
standing around its base; they waved vaguely at us and we waved back.
    ‘I suppose,’ I asked Brian, ‘that that crane’s the way they get supplies on to the island?’
    ‘It’s the way they get everything on to the island,’ said Brian.
    ‘Everything?’ asked Jim, ‘What d’you mean by everything?’
    ‘Well, if you want to get on to the island you’ve got to go by crane. There is a path up the cliffs, but you could never land on the rocks in this sort of weather. No, they’ll
lower the net down in a minute and have you up there in a jiffy.’
    ‘D’you mean to say they’re thinking of hauling us up that cliff in a net?’ asked Jim.
    ‘Yes,’ said Brian.
    Just at that moment the skipper of the launch cut the engines down, and we drifted under the cliff, rising and falling on the blue‑green swell and watching the breakers cream and suck at
the jagged cliff some twenty-five feet away. The nose of the crane appeared high above, and from it dangled – at the end of an extremely fragile-looking hawser – something closely
resembling a gigantic pig net. The crane uttered a series of clankings, groans and shrieks that were quite audible, even above the noise of the wind and the sea, and the pig net started to descend.
Jim gave me a mute look of anguish and I must say that I sympathised with him. I have no head for heights at all and I did not relish, any more than he did, being hauled up that cliff in a pig net
slung on the end of a crane that, from the sound of it, was a very frail octogenarian who had been without the benefit of oil for a considerable number of years. Chris, wrapped up in his duffle
coat and looking more like a disgruntled Duke of Wellington than ever, started Organising with the same fanatical gleam in his eye that Brian always had in similar situations.
    ‘Now I want you to go up first, Jim, and get the camera set up by the crane so that you