Dog Diaries #11 by Kate Klimo

Author:Kate Klimo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

I buried my face in Dickens’s shoulder and whimpered.

Having satisfied his curiosity, we turned around and slipped back down through the cinders and ashes to the ledge below.

Georgy pointed at me and gasped.

The next thing I knew, Dickens was slapping me all over.

Ouch! I yelped.

At first, I thought I had displeased him. Then I realized my fur had caught fire! Dickens, too, was singed, his suit and coat smoking in places. But the teeth in his face shone white as he grinned and said, “I would not have missed this for the world!”

Me? I would have preferred to stay behind at the inn with the children and the nurses. No matter how badly they trifled with me it could not possibly have compared to this torture.

Normally, it is easier to go downhill than up. But going down Mount Vesuvius was ever so much more difficult than going up. The guides recommended that we slide down. That way, the ashes and snow would gather beneath our feet and break our fall. Instead, we found ourselves in a headlong free fall, tumbling down the steep mountainside without any control.

I looked on in terror as one of the guides, a basket on his head, slid off the mountain and disappeared, screaming into the darkness.

I ran over and stood on the ledge, barking to call him back. But only a stark and gloomy silence greeted me. Sometime later, the lead guide himself plunged head forward into the black night.

Somehow, around midnight, we made it down to the foot of the mountain. The ladies were soot-smudged and weary. Dickens was as pleased as Christmas punch.

When I saw that the two guides had survived their fall down the mountain, I barked to bring this happy fact to Dickens’s attention. He, too, was relieved.

“Thank you, my good man,” he said to the head guide. “I’d love the pleasure of doing that again someday.”

The Poor Dear rolled her eyes. She was thinking exactly what I was thinking:

If you do, you’ll be doing it without me, Charles Dickens!

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