The Amber Cat by Hilary McKay

Author:Hilary McKay [McKay, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781444906127
Publisher: Hachette Children
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

At school Sun Dance was having an unexpectedly good time. He found his class all embarked upon a Treasure Island project, his class teacher’s antidote to Christmas. Already the classroom walls were decorated with painted sailing ships, palm trees and parrots. Even the reading corner had been turned into a log stockade. Arithmetic was done in gold bars and pieces of eight, unruly pirates were tipped the Black Spot, and, despite the awful weather, the entire class turned out and paced the playground, chalking Xs to mark the sites of hidden treasure. Sun Dance was enchanted and by the end of the afternoon his head was full of the glory of buried gold. As soon as he arrived home, he hurried upstairs to ransack his money box. It contained eight pound coins, some pyjama buttons (banked in a time of extreme poverty in order to create an encouraging rattle) and IOUs for several million pounds signed by Perry. Sun Dance replaced the buttons and IOUs, pocketed his eight pounds and descended the stairs in three jumps, one for each flight.

“No wonder all our ceilings are cracked!” complained his mother, appearing from the kitchen at the sound of the crashes. “Where are you going?”

“Beach,” said Sun Dance.

“Promise not to go out of sight of the house, then?”

“All right,” Sun Dance agreed.

“And don’t get cold. And don’t stay out long. It will be getting dark soon.”

“I shall only be a minute,” Sun Dance promised.

“Go on with you, then,” said his mother.

Sun Dance ran across the road and down to the beach. When he arrived he turned back to look at the house and saw, as he expected, that his mother was standing on the doorstep. Sun Dance waved cheerfully and she went back inside and a moment later the lights of the living room were switched on and he knew that she was keeping an eye on him.

In the playground at school he had learned how to hide treasure, but there the treasure had only been crosses chalked on the asphalt. A chalked cross was nothing. It would wash away with the rain. It didn’t matter if it was found or lost for ever. Only the sitting of it had been exciting.

“Pick a place to start!” the teacher had ordered.

Sun Dance had chosen the end of the bike sheds.

“Choose a direction, left or right or straight ahead and count the number of paces you take.”

Sun Dance had turned right and counted six paces.

“Stay where you are. Find a landmark and move towards it, counting your steps.”

Sun Dance had turned towards the lighted office windows, counted six more paces in that direction and then halted.

“Turn to your right. Take five steps backwards (backwards steps are smaller). Mark your crosses!”

That was how they had hidden their treasure at school.

Sun Dance found a largish, flattish stone on the sand, took six paces to his right, turned to face a distant light flashing from the lighthouse further down the coast, took six more steps in that direction, faced right and took five steps backwards.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.