Level 2

CHAPTER 4 – LION

Soon, we were far from the land. I pretended that I couldn’t catch fish. Then we went further from the land. Our boss said that we could catch fish there.

At one moment our boss went to the front of the boat. I quickly pushed him into the sea. He tried to swim back. I took a gun. When he saw the gun, he swam away.

After he swam away, I turned to the boy. I wanted to know if he was on my side. I saw that he was on my side.

After two years I was finally free. We tried to go as fast as possible.

The wind was good. We were far from the pirate land the next day. But I was still scared of the pirates. I didn’t want to be caught again. I was so scared that I didn’t let the boy stop the boat for five days.

On the sixth day, I felt safer. We took the boat close to the land. We saw a little river.

I didn’t know where we were. We had to stop somewhere because we needed fresh water.

We waited for the dark. We wanted to go up the river where the water wasn’t mixed with the sea water. But we started to hear horrible noises. The boy didn’t want to continue. He was scared.

We stayed on the boat near the river. But we couldn’t sleep. Some animals came to wash in the water. They made horrible noises.

The boy was very scared. I was also scared. We heard that one animal started to swim to us. The boy asked me to go away. But I didn’t want to go. I took one gun. I shot at the animal. The animal turned. Then the animal swam to the land. The other animals heard the gun. They went away too. We stayed on the boat until the morning.

We ate bread in the morning. Then the boy said, “I would like to go to the beach.”

I decided to go with him. We had two big bottles for water. We took some fresh water from the river.

The boy wanted to go inside the land. I didn’t want to go very far. I still wanted to see the boat. So I stayed on the beach. The boy went inside the land alone.

He returned after some time. He had an animal in his hand. It looked like a chicken. He was very happy. I was happy too. We had good meat and fresh water.

I didn’t know where exactly we were. I only knew that we went around the coast of Africa. I hoped that we met an English ship when we went around the coast. I thought that we were in a land where nobody lived. We didn’t see any people on the land. We only heard wild animals sometimes.

One morning, when we went for fresh water, we saw a lion on the beach. He was very big. He was only 20 metres from us. The boy was scared. When the lion saw us, he started to run to us. We didn’t have much time. I had to shoot at him. I had three guns. The first bullet hit its leg. The second bullet hit its head. He was seriously injured. The third bullet finished the animal.

We couldn’t eat the meat because it wasn’t good. But I wanted to take the skin. We put the skin on top of the boat. The skin was dry soon.

WORDS FROM CHAPTER 4