The Lake of Souls by Darren Shan

Author:Darren Shan [Shan, Darren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, General, Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9780316016650
Google: 9aK1bZ_ZsIgC
Amazon: 0316016659
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Published: 2006-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ITHOUGHTSpits would have a sore head when he awoke, but he was in fine form — he said he never suffered from hangovers. He spent the day tidying up the shack, putting everything in order in case he ever returned. He stashed a jug of poteen away in a corner and packed the rest in a large sack he planned to carry slung over his shoulder, along with spare clothes, his fishing net, some potatoes and dried fish slices. Harkat and I had almost nothing to carry — apart from the panthers teeth and gelatinous globes, most of which we'd managed to hang on to — so we offered to divide Spits's load between us, but he wouldn't hear of it. "Every man to a cross of his own," he muttered.

We took it easy during the day. I hacked my hair back from my eyes with one of Spits's rusty blades.

We'd replaced our handmade knives, most of which we'd lost in the lake, with real knives that Spits had lying around.

Harkat stitched together holes in his robes with bits of old string.

When night fell, we set off, heading due southeast towards a mountain range in the distance. Spits was surprisingly morose to be leaving his shack — "'Tis the closest thing to a home I've had since running away t' sea when I was twelve," he sighed — but several swigs of poteen improved his mood and by midnight he was singing and joking.

I was worried that Spits would collapse — his legs were wobbling worse than the jelly-like globes we

were carting — but as drunk as he got, his pace never wavered, though he did stop quite often to "bail out the bilge water". When we made camp beneath a bushy tree in the morning, he fell straight asleep and snored loudly all day long. He woke shortly before sunset, licked his lips and reached for the poteen.

The weather worsened over the next few nights, as we left the lowlands and scaled the mountains. It rained almost constantly, harder than before, soaking our clothes and leaving us wet, cold and miserable

— except Spits, whose poteen warmed and cheered him up whatever the conditions. I decided to try some of Spits's home-brewed concoction, to see if it would combat the gloom. One swallow later, I was rolling on the ground, gasping for breath, eyes bulging. Spits laughed while Harkat poured water down my throat, then urged me to try it again. "The first dram's the worst," he chuckled. Through wheezing coughs, I firmly declined.

It was difficult to know what to make of Spits Abrams. A lot of the time he came across as a funny old sailor, crude and coarse, but with a soft centre. But as I spent more time with him, I thought that a lot of his speech patterns seemed deliberately theatrical — he spoke with a broad accent on purpose, to give the impression he was scatterbrained. And there were times when his mood darkened and he'd mutter ominously about people who'd betrayed him in one way or another.

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