Better on our own - English

Strange Rescue

A good 40 minutes passed, during which the cold slowly crept into my bones and I rubbed Cody's arms almost constantly while I held him so that he wouldn't get cold. How was Penny doing down there?

I jumped when I heard voices and footsteps somewhere in the distance.

"I hear someone. There are footsteps and voices," I called to Penny and Cody immediately jumped up and looked in the direction we had come from. There was no light to be seen in the hallway.

"Very good. Make yourself known," Penny called up to us.

"Help!" I immediately shouted loudly. "Here we are!" I repeated this three more times when I heard someone shouting and recognized Mr. Jones's voice.

"Dad! Here we are!" Cody shouted and took a few steps towards him before I could stop him, but then he stopped, as if he suddenly remembered what his mother had told him earlier .

"Cody! Are you okay?" Mr. Jones immediately asked concerned as he and Ellie rounded the corner and he fell to his knees in front of his son to put his hands on his shoulders. "Where is your Mum?"

"I'm down here, Sam," Penny called to him from below before Cody could answer and Ellie moved closer to the crack and shined a handheld spotlight into it.

"I saw something glittering and ran forward. Mum slipped in there because she had to stop me," Cody said sheepishly and I saw Mr. Jones' eyes soften.

"I'll get her out of there, don't worry, big boy!" he said gently to him before he gave me a look and I pulled Cody back to me so Mr. Jones could step to the edge of the crevice. "Are you okay?" he called down to Penny.

"Just a little cold and my ankle seems to be sprained so I can't get out of here on my own."

"I'm coming down," he stated immediately, grabbing the rope he had just dropped to look at Cody.

"Let me go, Sam. I'm narrower than you," Ellie noted as he secured his rope to the ground with an anchor.

"I'm going, Ellie! You set up the pulley!" he replied and Ellie rolled her eyes but grinned before turning to the bag she had brought with her. "I'm coming down now, Penny," called Mr. Jones and went down to her after positioning himself a short distance away from where she was stuck beneath us.

"You should really let Ellie go first. The gap has become narrower since the last time with Mandy," she replied skeptically, but he was already going.

"The mountain is always moving, so it wouldn't be surprising," he remarked on his way down and I leaned over the crevice again to give them a little more light with my flashlight. "There is, of course, another possibility why it seems to you as if..." he began and in the weak light of my flashlight I saw a smile at the corner of his mouth, which really surprised me in a situation like this, when Penny interrupted him.

"Watch your tongue, my friend! I don't have an ounce more on my hips than I did back then!" she reprimanded him and raised her head a little when a few smaller stones that Mr. Jones had loosened during the descent fell down next to her. "What are you actually doing? Just throw me a rope!" she then objected skeptically as Ellie came over to me and handed me the much more powerful hand lamp before she went back to the pulley, with a grin and a wink, that looked like a three-legged grill frame, which she now also began to secure with anchors. I put my lamp away and gave Mr. Jones and Penny more light with the hand lamp.

"That's not up to the rules Penny and you know it," Mr. Jones was just saying and was only two meters above her when I noticed that the gap was making it increasingly difficult for him to push off the wall because it became increasingly narrower at the bottom.