Oscar's Lion by Adam Baron

Author:Adam Baron [Baron, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2023-09-30T17:00:00+00:00

Oscar pushed his way through the small crowd and dropped to his knees. For a second, he couldn’t see any reason for all the blood – but then he saw the hole. It was in the shoulder of the man’s coat. He’d been shot. It must have happened from above, the bullet going right down inside his body. Oscar flinched, and shivered, but he had no time to feel sorry or sick. Using his one good arm, the man pushed himself up, before staring into Oscar’s eyes again.

‘Well?’ he said, the hope and the desperation still written on his face.

‘She’s dead, Sir.’

‘Dead?’

Oscar took a breath. ‘The Bucentaure. We’ve done for her. Sir, the Temeraire shot her mast out.’

‘Thank God!’ the man said. ‘And thank you! Your …?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Name, lad.’

‘I’m Oscar,’ said Oscar.

‘Then, Oscar,’ the man whispered, ‘you have done your duty.’

And Oscar rather felt that he had, though there was more to do. He fetched bags of bullets and gunpowder. He carried buckets of water and tore bandages into strips. When asked to mend rigging, he grabbed a section of rope and was about to do so – but something crawled on to his hand.

An insect.

A big insect.

A stag beetle, in fact, with a shiny dark body and long red antlers, which twitched.

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