The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More Read Free

shrill at the forty or
fifty adults standing there on the beach, and nobody, not even the hairy- chested man, answered him this time. "Why don't you
put him back in the sea?" the boy shouted. "He hasn't done anything
to you! Let him go!"

    The father was embarrassed by his son, but he was not ashamed of him.
"He's crazy about animals," he said, addressing the crowd. "Back
home he's got every kind of animal under the sun. He talks with them."

    "He loves them," the mother said.

    Several people began shuffling their feet around in the sand. Here and there in
the crowd it was possible to sense a slight change of mood, a feeling of
uneasiness, a touch even of shame. The boy, who could have been no more than
eight or nine years old, had stopped struggling with his father now. The father
still held him by the wrist, but he was no longer restraining him.

    "Go on!" the boy called out. "Let him go! Undo the rope and let
him go!" He stood very small and erect, facing the crowd, his eyes shining
like two stars and the wind blowing in his hair. He was magnificent.

    "There's nothing we can do, David," the father said gently.
"Let's go on back."

    "No!" the boy cried out. and at that moment
he suddenly gave a twist and wrenched his wrist free from the father's grip. He
was away like a streak, running across the sand towards the giant upturned
turtle.

    "David!" the father yelled, starting after him. "Stop! Come back!"

    The boy dodged and swerved through the crowd like a player running with the
ball, and the only person who sprang forward to intercept him was the fisherman.
"Don't you go near that turtle, boy!" he shouted as he made a lunge
for the swiftly running figure. But the boy dodged round him and kept going.
"He'll bite you to pieces!" yelled the fisherman. "Stop, boy! Stop!"

    But it was too late to stop him now, and as he came running straight at the
turtle's head, the turtle saw him, and the huge upside-down head turned quickly
to face him.

    The voice of the boy's mother, the stricken, agonized wail of the mother's
voice rose up into the evening sky. "David!" it cried "Oh, David!" And a moment later, the boy
was throwing himself on to his knees in the sand and flinging his arms around
the wrinkled old neck and hugging the creature to his chest. The boy's cheek
was pressing against the turtle's head, and his lips were moving, whispering
soft words that nobody else could hear. The turtle became absolutely still.
Even the giant flippers stopped waving in the air.

    A great sigh, a long soft sigh of relief, went up from the crowd. Many people
took a pace or two backward, as though trying perhaps to get a little further
away from something that was beyond their understanding. But the father and
mother came forward together and stood about ten feet away from their son.

    "Daddy!" the boy cried out, still caressing the old brown head.
"Please do something, Daddy! Please make them let him go!"

    "Can I be of any help here?" said a man in a
white suit who had just come down from the hotel. This, as everyone knew, was Mr Edwards, the manager. He was a tall, beak-nosed
Englishman with a long pink face. "What an extraordinary thing!" he
said, looking at the boy and the turtle. "He's lucky he hasn't had his
head bitten off." And to the boy he said, "You'd better come away
from there now, sonny. That thing's dangerous."

    "I want them to let him go!" cried the boy, still cradling the head
in his arms. "Tell them to let him go!"

    "You realize he could be killed any moment," the manager said to the
boy's father.

    "Leave him alone," the father said.

    "Rubbish," the manager said. "Go in and grab him. But be quick.
And be careful."

    "No," the father said.

    "What do you mean, no?" said the manager. "These things are
lethal! Don't you understand that?"

    "Yes," the father said.

    "Then for heaven's sake, man, get him away!" cried the manager.
"There's going to be a very nasty accident if you don't."

    "Who owns it?" the father said. "Who