Harry the Poisonous Centipede Goes to Sea by Lynne Reid Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

it could before falling back. Then it chased Harry, who had retreated under the sink. There was a curtainhanging there, and the animal got tangled up in it. In its struggles, it knocked over the waste-bucket, which fell with a crash, scattering rubbish, some of it on Josie who was trying to get to the door.
    It lost sight of Harry for the moment and saw George sliding back down the wall. It leapt towards him. Then it saw a movement and turned. Josie was crawling out from under the garbage. The predatormade a wild rush at her. She, too, shot up the wall, but fell back – straight into its mouth.
    You’d think that was just what it wanted, but it happened so unexpectedly that it got a fright. It jerked its head, spitting her out, and swiped her with its paw, lifting her off the ground. She clung to the paw and got in one good bite to its hairless pad before dropping off.
    The cat – well, you’ve obviously guessed by now – let out a sort of cat-shriek and threw itself backwards, and then started frantically looking for a way of escape. It seemed to have lost its sense of direction completely and kept bouncingoff walls. At last, almost by accident, it found the door, and fled, yowling.
    The centeens flung themselves together and collapsed in a heap of feelers and legs (and heads and bodies).
    “What WAS that?” gasped George.
    “It was a hairy-yowler,” said Josie, who, despite her close encounter, was calmer than the others. “They make a terrible noise. They chase you, but they don’t like it when they catch you. I know because the Hoo-Min nest where I lived had one. I should have remembered those puddle-things where the hairy-yowlers keep their food and drink.”
    “You’ve been chased before by a hairy-yowler?”
    “Oh yes. You see, Hoo-Mins sleep in the dark-time, but hairy-yowlers don’t. That’s when they go hunting. So I had to be extra careful when I went foraging in the Hoo-Min nest. At first. But after one bite – mine to it, I mean, it never bit me – it left me alone, in fact it was terrified of me.”
    “So when you saw this one, I suppose you weren’t very scared?” asked Harry.
    “Of course I was! This one didn’t know me.”
    “It seemed to go completely crazy when it saw us.”
    “Oh, they do. If you’re in their space, they do.”
    There was a pause while they caught their breath. (As we would say. Actually they were renewing their oxygen.) Then George stood up.
    “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
    They crept cautiously around the half-open door and across a big open space. “Ugh! What’s this? Are we walking on a stopped hairy-biter?” asked George, picking up his feet.
    In the tropics people don’t often cover their floors with carpets, so this was one thing about Hoo-Mins that Josie didn’t know. It made running quite difficult and slowed them down, but after a while they made it to the door on the other side of the room.
    It was closed. And the carpet filled up the crack under it.
    “We’re can’t-get-outed! We’re Dried-Out!” said George. (This centipedish expression, may I remind you, is slang for ‘done for’.)
    “No, we’re not!”
    Josie turned and ran up something softand bunchy (it was an armchair) and from the top of it she could get on to a ledge. She ran along it till she came to an opening.
    “Come on! I’ve found a way to the no-top-world!” she signalled to the others.
    They followed her, and one by one they crept through a small space where the window hadn’t been properly closed and ran down a rough wall with easy footholds to the welcoming ground below.
    It felt wonderful to be free and to have earth underfoot and the no-top-world above them. True, the earth smelt different from at home – everything smelt different – and the air in their breathing-holes was very cold. But soon they would be underground in a safe, warm tunnel. Kindly darkness covered them as they ran away from the Hoo-Min nest, looking for a safe place to dig.

12. A Hard