Authors Library
The Discovery by Jim Eldridge (April 2012)
The entrance to the cave was hidden by a mis-shapen tree, and long grasses hanging down, intertwined with savage bramble and long tendrils of escape vines. Was the book hidden inside? wondered Jake.
Local legend said that something was in there, but those same legends said that something had sharp claws and teeth, scaly arms and legs. That it was blind from living in the dark deep below ground, but it had ears that could hear a moth’s wings flutter.
A tale to stop people from venturing into the cave’s depths, thought Jake. He pushed his way through the foliage, feeling the bramble tearing at his clothes, at his skin, and then he was inside the cave.
It was immediately dark, the mouth of the cave barely lit by the thin light filtering through the screen of vegetation outside. Jake let his eyes adjust to the dark. As he did so, a smell attacked his nostrils. It wasn’t just a musty smell, he’d expected that with the damp earth. This was something more.
Then he heard it. A slithering sound. It could have been anything: a sleepy animal that had sought refuge in the cave and was stirring, but Jake knew that it wasn’t. There was something else. A hissing sound from something large.
Jake stood stock still, listening for the sounds again: the hissing and the slithering. It was here, somewhere, here in the darkness.
And then he knew where it was.
It was behind him!
The Ship (March 2012)
Billy ran up the stairs two at a time, the clanging of his boots echoing off the ship’s metal walls. The utility stairwells were the quickest way for the crew to get round the great vessel, a secret labyrinth most of the passengers knew nothing about. But Billy had come to know them like the streets of home.
He emerged onto the first-class deck and was briefly dazzled by the sunlight. It was a bright day, a few majestic white clouds motionless in the blue sky, although the wind was sharp and carried the promise of icy cold. Billy ran on, past the passengers at the ship’s rail looking out at the sparkling green waves as if they owned them. But then they were toffs, unlike Billy’s family back in Belfast, or the second and third-class passengers, the poor people.
‘Ah, Billy,’ said Mr McElroy, the ship’s purser, when Billy arrived at the bellboy station. ‘Take this message to the engine room for me, will you?’
Billy set off again, but stopped by the rail himself for a moment to breathe in the salt tang of the sea air. Mr McElroy worked all the bellboys hard , but Billy had no complaints. This could be the beginning of a great life for him.
Three weeks ago he’d been a lowly apprentice at the Harland and Wolff shipyard. Now he was a bellboy on the most famous ship in the world.
The incredible, the unsinkable Titanic…
By Tony Bradman
