River Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

the lost fish was ‘one of those things’, something I could have done nothing about even though a
camera light had been blinding me at the time, obscuring the direction of the line. But later I realised I was kidding myself. If, after hooking the fish, I had moved out of the corner where I was
fishing, I would have been in a strategically stronger position. The fish escaped by swimming into a gully in the cliff, but if I had repositioned myself, this wouldn’t have taken the line
round a corner and I could have pulled it straight out. This was a painful relearning of a basic lesson. Before you fish, you must have a plan that takes account of all eventualities. Because it
may be the only chance you get. Not until our post-monsoon return was I able to make some amends. The sixty-pounder I caught was an impressive fish, but nowhere near the size of the lost
monster.
    Back at the pool now, these memories returned. Two boys fishing with a thick washing line from a big rock upstream looked on as Rick and I peered down into the water, where it pushed into the
pool and then kicked ninety degrees on impact with the cliff. I had promised him clear water, but Rick was not impressed. We could see the bottom near the side, where baby mahseer darted into an
eddy, but Rick reckoned horizontal visibility would be only six feet. As we pulled on our wetsuits I tried to still my nerves. Rick and I had free-dived a cold, murky English lake before coming
here, but I felt unprepared for this. Without Rick, I wouldn’t have dreamed of venturing into that fearful underwater landscape, but his matter-of-fact approach was reassuring.
    As he rubbed liquid soap on to the inside of his mask and rinsed it with water, he said, ‘What I tell everyone to remember is this: when you find yourself wanting to breathe, you’ve
still got plenty of oxygen left.’ With that, he took hold of his camera housing and pushed out into the current. The sun was high, but soon it would swing behind the cliff and plunge the
water at its base into gloom. There was nothing to do but follow.
    I tried to relax my body and let the water take me. With four pounds of lead on my quick-release weight belt to counteract the lift of my thin wetsuit, my buoyancy felt about right. I dipped my
head under and felt the water on my face, the one part of me that wasn’t enclosed in neoprene. Looking down, I could see my gloved hand, but beyond that, a cloudy green atmosphere thickened
to obscure everything else. I lifted back up and saw the cliff approaching fast. Okay, what next? Breathing. Slow and unforced, the rubber weight belt yielding as I took air deep into my abdomen.
And long, slow exhalations to quieten the pulse. In the training tank I had closed my eyes and shut off my mind, leaving just a slender sensory thread connected to the outside world. But here I
needed to stay aware. The current was now bumping me against rock. Further along I saw Rick’s fins flip up and sink from sight as he tucked and duck-dived. Now in his sixties, he told me he
didn’t have the lung capacity that he had as a young man, but he still seemed underwater for an age. I thought about loop lines and anglers’ lines snagged on the rocks down there, some
with hooks. We both had knives strapped to our ankles, but we didn’t have the luxury of air tanks – only our internal supply, which would last one or two minutes at the most. So we had
to watch out for each other, diving alternately. This was hugely reassuring when it was my turn to descend, but it was a huge responsibility when I was the one on the surface.
    An object with a Perspex dome on the front broke the surface, followed by a camo-patterned wetsuit and a jet of water from a snorkel. Rick hadn’t seen anything. I squeezed the air from my
lungs and pulled in a full fresh charge, my diaphragm working like a piston, then I pinched my nose, popped my ears, pulled my body into a tuck, and followed my outstretched arms