The Monster Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page A

squinting eyes upon the youth before him as he took the envelope, opened it briskly and read.
    â€˜Well, young Ben, seems you’re on a one-way trip to Blighty. You can dispense with calling me Sir. I’m your employer now and you shall call me Captain Dante as is fitting for a crew member. I dare say you have no place to stay this evening, so you can erect a hammock in the galley. It won’t be a comfortable journey – the sea is already turning – and it won’t be a quick one neither.’ Captain Dante started to limp back up the gangplank. ‘But it will be full of good cheer, fine songs and hard work that’ll toughen those scrawny arms of yours. Come on board, Master Gaul – your adventure awaits.’
    And with these words Benjamin Jackson Gaul boarded the tea clipper Hallowe’en and said goodbye to the port of Colombo and fair Ceylon as a new chapter of his life unfolded.

The Long Journey
    I t would be fair to say that, for the first few days, most sailors would have found the voyage calm, but it still took Ben a good week to find his sea legs. He wasn’t sick as he had always had a good constitution and he ate only what he needed to feed his hunger. The ship was a moving platform, however, and the sudden lifts or dips would have him, landlubber that he was, stumbling around and grabbing for support. It earned him the nickname of ‘Master Fall’ among some of the younger, less friendly crew members. Captain Dante was very against bullying on his ship as he felt it led to insubordination, so, if he ever caught the name being bandied about, his fury against the offending sailor was swift. It didn’t stop the bullying, however, but simply drove it below decks, making Ben careful to watch who he was left alone with.
    Ben, in fact, made no friends at all on the journey, though he did have allies he would spend time with. The ship’s cook was Samuel Silver, who swore blind that Long John Silver of TreasureIsland fame was named after him, after he had cooked a special meal for the ailing Mr Stevenson who had taken passage on a boat he was cook upon – the meal having settled the author’s stomach he had promised to immortalise Silver in print and the proud cook now carried a copy of the book about with him at all times. Ben was never sure whether there was any truth to the tale but he liked that Able Seaman Silver, ship’s cook, was more than happy to lend the book out to any who wanted to read it. Every chance Ben had, his nose was in a book, as it allowed him to spend time alone in his own world. The books he brought from Ceylon were comforting, as he always heard his mother’s voice as he read them. The swashbuckling tale of Stevenson’s pirates, however, he read in his own voice, giving the characters accents and personalities beyond what was written on the page. There were no monsters in the book, if you looked beyond the men, and so Ben enjoyed it purely for the fun of a good tale.
    The fun, however, ended when, one evening, Silver asked the boy to read the book to him. He admitted that he was not a learned man and words confused him so. Ben was happy to read the book, in chapters, aloud of an evening, after they had finished work, and was happy; too, to see how Silver enjoyed the many voices Ben gave to the characters. When it turned out, however, that the Silver of the book was not actually the hero but the villain, the real Silver, who had been listening nightly with glowing pride, actually spluttered out his cocoa and flew into an ungodly rage. He tore the book from Ben’s young hands and scoured the pages he could make no sense of, before throwing it out into the sea, never to be seen again. Then, grabbing a jug of rum, he went off to fume on deck, loudly cursing Robert Louis Stevenson’s name to the waves and beyond.

    Ben was tidying the galley when Captain Dante appeared, demanding to know why his normally sober cook was a