Free The Spuddy by Lillian Beckwith Page A

out in a last long moan.
    Man and dog were still lying together when the search party found them. Gently they moved the body of the Spuddy aside while they lifted Jake on to a makeshift stretcher and carried him away. When they had gone Andy, accompanied by his father who, having been greeted on his arrival in Gaymal by news of the wreck, had hitched a lift on the first boat out to Rhuna, reached the place where the Spuddy lay. Andy’s father let the boy go down to the shore alone and as he watched he saw Andy bend down and tenderly stroke the dog’s wet body. He saw him go then to where the shattered bow of the ‘Silver Crest’ lay where it had been washed ashore; saw him run his hand down the curving stem as he might have run it along the neck of a favourite horse; saw him return to the Spuddy and kneel beside him on the sand. He turned away then so as not to witness his son’s grief and crouching behind a rock he gave his attention to the gulls as they circled low over the shore, listening to the laughter-like mutterings of a couple of black-backs; the loud harsh screams of the herring gulls until, thinking he heard a human shout he looked about him to see who might be coming. He stood up. The shout seemed to be coming from the direction of the shore but he knew there was only Andy down there. Andy and a dead dog. He looked more intently. The shout was unmistakably coming from the shore. ‘No! No! No!’ it was saying over and over again and as Andy, his son, was shaking his fists at the low swooping gulls his mouth was forming the word No! and the sound was without doubt coming from it. He stood in dazed unbelief while he watched Andy pull some string from his pocket, tie one end of it round a boulder and the other end round the Spuddy’s neck. He saw him drag the dog down and into the water and fearful of what might happen he started bounding down to the shore calling ‘Andy! Andy!’ But Andy paid no attention. He knew he had to do this last service for his friend. He must get the Spuddy out to deep-water; deep enough to be out of the way of the gulls and where the boulder would ensure his being carried out to sea by the next die. As his father splashed through the water to his side Andy let go the boulder and the Spuddy. He grasped the hand his father was holding out to him.
    â€˜Andy!’ rejoiced his father as they waded ashore. ‘You spoke. Did you know?’
    Andy’s hand went to his throat. ‘No!’ he said but he was not answering his father’s question he was still shouting at the gulls.
    â€˜But you spoke again then. You really did,’ his father insisted.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Andy experimentally and feeling the strange throbbing that had begun in his throat he said ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, over and over again as together he and his father climbed out of the bay and tramped back across the snowy moors.

Copyright
    First published in 1974 by Hutchinson & Co.
    This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
    www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello
www.curtisbrown.co.uk
    ISBN 978-1-4472-1691-9 EPUB
ISBN 978-1-4472-1690-2 POD
    Copyright © Lillian Beckwith, 1974
    The right of Lillian Beckwith to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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