The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More(5)

        The tug-of-war pullers remained motionless, still holding the rope with the gigantic turtle on the end of it. Everyone stood silent and surprised, staring at the boy. They were all a bit off-balance now. They had the slightly hangdog air of people who had been caught doing something that was not entirely honourable.

        ‘Come on now, David,’ the father said, pulling against the boy. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel and leave these people alone.’

        ‘I’m not going back!’ the boy shouted. ‘I don’t want to go back! I want them to let it go!’

        ‘Now, David,’ the mother said.

        ‘Beat it, kid,’ the hairy-chested man told the boy.

        ‘You’re horrible and cruel!’ the boy shouted. ‘All of you are horrible and cruel!’ He threw the words high and shrill at the forty or fifty adults standing there on the beach, and nobody, not even the hairy-chested man, answered him this time. ‘Why don’t you put him back in the sea?’ the boy shouted. ‘He hasn’t done anything to you! Let him go!’

        The father was embarrassed by his son, but he was not ashamed of him. ‘He’s crazy about animals,’ he said, addressing the crowd. ‘Back home he’s got every kind of animal under the sun. He talks with them.’

        ‘He loves them,’ the mother said.

        Several people began shuffling their feet around in the sand. Here and there in the crowd it was possible to sense a slight change of mood, a feeling of uneasiness, a touch even of shame. The boy, who could have been no more than eight or nine years old, had stopped struggling with his father now. The father still held him by the wrist, but he was no longer restraining him.

        ‘Go on!’ the boy called out. ‘Let him go! Undo the rope and let him go!’ He stood very small and erect, facing the crowd, his eyes shining like two stars and the wind blowing in his hair. He was magnificent.

        ‘There’s nothing we can do, David,’ the father said gently. ‘Let’s go on back.’

        ‘No!’ the boy cried out, and at that moment he suddenly gave a twist and wrenched his wrist free from the father’s grip. He was away like a streak, running across the sand towards the giant upturned turtle.

        ‘David!’ the father yelled, starting after him. ‘Stop! Come back!’

        The boy dodged and swerved through the crowd like a player running with the ball, and the only person who sprang forward to intercept him was the fisherman. ‘Don’t you go near that turtle, boy!’ he shouted as he made a lunge for the swiftly running figure. But the boy dodged round him and kept going. ‘He’ll bite you to pieces!’ yelled the fisherman. ‘Stop, boy! Stop!’

        But it was too late to stop him now, and as he came running straight at the turtle’s head, the turtle saw him, and the huge upside-down head turned quickly to face him.

        The voice of the boy’s mother, the stricken, agonized wail of the mother’s voice rose up into the evening sky. ‘David!’ it cried. ‘Oh, David!’ And a moment later, the boy was throwing himself on to his knees in the sand and flinging his arms around the wrinkled old neck and hugging the creature to his chest. The boy’s cheek was pressing against the turtle’s head, and his lips were moving, whispering soft words that nobody else could hear. The turtle became absolutely still. Even the giant flippers stopped waving in the air.

        A great sigh, a long soft sigh of relief, went up from the crowd. Many people took a pace or two backward, as though trying perhaps to get a little further away from something that was beyond their understanding. But the father and mother came forward together and stood about ten feet away from their son.

        ‘Daddy!’ the boy cried out, still caressing the old brown head. ‘Please do something, Daddy! Please make them let him go!’

        ‘Can I be of any help here?’ said a man in a white suit who had just come down from the hotel. This, as everyone knew, was Mr Edwards, the manager. He was a tall, beak-nosed Englishman with a long pink face. ‘What an extraordinary thing!’ he said, looking at the boy and the turtle. ‘He’s lucky he hasn’t had his head bitten off.’ And to the boy he said, ‘You’d better come away from there now, sonny. That thing’s dangerous.’