Read Online Harry the Poisonous Centipede Goes to Sea by Lynne Reid Banks - Free Book Online Page B

nice dark damp place, but the others had nowhere to hide from the light and they couldn’t have been more unhappy.
    After what seemed like for ever, the Hoo-Mins took themselves off.
    Harry promptly popped up out of the tunnel and ran up the tree-thing. He was soon slipping and sliding on the glass covering of his friends’ can’t-get-out.
    “Why didn’t you bite them?” was George’s first signal. Which was a bit unfair of him, after nobly urging Harry to save himself.
    “Because they weren’t taking you away,” said Harry, rather hurt. “If they try to take you away, I’ll tackle them all right! Both of them!” How he was going to bite two Hoo-Mins at once, he didn’t stop to ask himself.
    “Please don’t leave us!” pleaded Josie. So Harry lay down on the glass lid to be as near his friends as possible, and they all just had to wait to see what would happen.
    What happened was that in the middle of the dark-time, the door of the greenhouse quietly opened and the Hoo-Min came back in. Harry was getting ready to run, but suddenly a stream of light hit him. It was like something pinning him to the spot – he got dazzled and couldn’t move.
    The beam of light was of course a torch that the Hoo-Min had brought. When heshone it on the box, the first thing he saw was Centipede Number Three on top of the glass.
    “Sociable little fellows, aren’t you?” he said, as he dived for a flowerpot.
    Harry ran like mad, but the beam of light followed him, blinding his eye-clusters. He turned this way and that, not so much to escape the Hoo-Min as to escape the horrible blinding light. In no time, the flowerpot came down and he was trapped again. It was almost a relief to be in darkness.
    Before he knew it, he was in the box with the others.

17. Centi-heroes
    The Hoo-Min picked up the box and left the greenhouse.
    He carefully switched off the torch while crossing the garden and went into the house. There he took the box to a room that was his study, and put it on a big table. He closed the door quietly. Then he switched the top light on.
    Light flooded into the box and the poor centeens ran round and round trying to avoid it, but they couldn’t, and in the end they just huddled together in a corner.
    Where, you might ask, was Mrs Hoo-Min at this point? The same Mrs H who had forbidden her mate to bring centipedes into her home? Well, she was fast asleep in bed. The Hoo-Min was doing this behind her back. That was the reason he was being quiet.
    Now the Hoo-Min began to study his captives seriously. He had some big books with lots of pictures of centipedes and other creatures open in front of him. He had a large magnifying glass and a notebook in which he began making notes and drawings. His computer was switched on and he had called up a website all about giant centipedes. He was having a wonderful time.
    The trouble was he didn’t know where to stop. He didn’t think anyone would believe how big his centipedes were – unless he measured one.
    Of course, he wasn’t stupid enough to try to do this without taking precautions. He had a pair of very thick gardening gloves made of leather that he was pretty sure no centipede could pierce with his – ahem! – forcipules.
    But there was a problem. The gloves were so very thick that they made him clumsy, so he decided to use only one of them – the one for the left hand. He would hold a centipede down (gently) with his gloved hand, and measure it. He needed his right hand free to do the measuring, which was rather a delicate operation.
    He lifted the glass carefully off the box.
    “I’ll measure the biggest,” he muttered to himself. “When I write my article for a scientific journal, I want to make it as impressive as possible.” And he reached his gloved hand into the box.
    The centeens did exactly what theHoo-Min had expected. They cowered into the corner. “Small creatures run away,” thought the Hoo-Min. “They don’t attack unless they’re cornered.”