The Silver Casket by Chris Mould

Author:Chris Mould
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 2011-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

She sat and watched him lurch down the barnacled side of the rotting ship. He wasn’t far from the water before he stopped and dug his hand into a rotted hole. He tore at it fiercely until it was big enough for him to sneak through. Bits of splintered wood plopped into the waves.

Daisy cringed, clenching her sweating hands into fists. She did not know what she would do if someone appeared. She watched until the soles of Stanley’s shoes were the last thing to drop through the hole.

Inside, Stanley crept around in the dark. He had stumbled into the crew’s quarters, and knew that he had to scramble his way down to the stores at the bottom of the ship without being found by any of the spirits that lurked on board.

He felt his way along the slime and grease that seemed to coat the ship’s sides. Voices grew nearer. Too near.

Stanley hurried as much as he could. He had decided to place the Ibis in the ballast at the bottom of the ship. Here it would be concealed, and no one would stumble on it. He was sure that we would be able to make it back to the ship to reclaim it when this was all over.

Something opened up to reveal a lower level. He stepped down carefully and felt for the floor beneath him. A layer of cold hard stones. This was it, the ballast. The stones were used as a weight to stabilize the frame of the ship.

In the far corner, he found a memorable spot. Bilge rats scurried over his hands and around his feet as he burrowed his fingers through the hard rugged surface that cut at his knuckles. He buried the Ibis right there, wrapped in its cloth protection.

And then he made his way back through the blackness the way he had come.

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