Toad Heaven by Morris Gleitzman Read Free Book Online

to catch.

L impy crouched in the grass next to the train tracks and smeared sticky sap onto his knees and tummy and forehead.
    “That won't make much difference,” said a nearby centipede.
    Limpy didn't answer.
    He thought the centipede was probably right, but when you were going to fling yourself at a train moving faster than a stampeding goanna, you needed all the help you could get.
    A loud whistle shrieked in the distance.
    The centipede put quite a few hands over its ears.
    Limpy tensed.
    As the light on the front of the train hurtled toward him out of the darkness, he tried to think of positive things.
    How the train would almost certainly slow down as it went over the highway crossing.
    How his back wasn't hurting so much now, more sort of itching. And that might just have been from when he'd stretched the skin trying to pull himself away from the sticky sap tree.
    Then the mud under Limpy's feet started to tremble and the metal tracks hummed and suddenly the train was thundering through the crossing and past Limpy.
    Not slowing down at all.
    “Jump!” screamed the centipede.
    Limpy jumped.
    For a while he thought he was dead. Arms and legs ripped off and head bouncing into the centipede's front yard.
    When he realized he was still in one piece, he knew that at the very least he must be completely flat, with his face peering out of his own bottom and his brains leaking out of his ears.
    So he was pretty surprised when he discovered he wasn't.
    Stack me, thought Limpy. I'm still toad-shaped.
    Gradually he realized the deafening noise wasn't broken bones rattling around inside him, it was thewheels of the train clattering along the tracks just below his head.
    He was clinging, he saw in the moonlight flickering through the train above him, to a rusty metal beam at the bottom of one of the carriages.
    But not for long.
    As he and the train hurtled forward, the rush of air was tearing him off the beam. Even though he was clinging on as hard as he could with both arms and his good leg, he could feel himself sliding painfully across the rust.
    The sticky sap was useless. The wind had already turned it into a dry, flaky film on his chest. It was crumbling faster than the rust.
    I've got to get off this beam, thought Limpy desperately.
    He looked around. Above him and a bit behind him was a gap between the floorboards of the carriage.
    It wasn't a big gap.
    It was more of an Uncle Nick–sized gap.
    But it was all there was.
    Limpy let go of the beam, flinging his arms upward.
    The wind slammed him backward.
    As he became airborne, he rammed his hands through the gap and grabbed the edge of a floorboard.Slowly, painfully, he dragged himself up into the carriage. He could feel the wind tearing at his legs and lower body. As he wriggled through the gap, the rough wood scraped flakes of sap off his skin. Then it scraped off flakes of skin.
    Finally he was inside, lying trembling and exhausted on the floor of the carriage.
    Safe.
    Limpy gave a weary sigh of relief.
    And saw, above him, about a hundred pairs of eyes, white and unblinking in the darkness.
    Limpy froze. Even his trembling bits stopped moving.
    Too late. The eyes were all looking at him.
    “Hmmm,” said a voice. “We seem to have a traveling companion.”
    I'm done for, thought Limpy. It's a packed tourist train. There's nothing humans on holiday like more than practicing their golf or tennis on a cane toad.
    He waited for the swish of a club or a racquet, or a trail bike if the human was into motorcross.
    It didn't come.
    The only thing that struck Limpy was a thought.
    Wait a minute! he said to himself. I understood the voice, so these can't be humans.
    At that moment the train swung round a curve and moonlight spilled into the carriage.
    Limpy looked around nervously.
    Staring down at him were a large number of sheep.
    “G'day,” said Limpy, desperately trying to remember if he'd ever heard stories of sheep savaging cane toads.
    He didn't think he had. Not