Read Online The Nine Lives of Montezuma by Michael Morpurgo - Free Book Online

his time, judging all the while the speed of the cars as they approached. For several minutes he watched, his head turning this way and that like an irregular metronome until he was sure that the nearest car was far enough for the attempt to be made. His mind now made up, he sprang out into the road and skipped across, the tarmac hot under his paws.He reached the island with only seconds to spare, springing up from the road into the sanctuary of the dusty grass. It was as he landed that he cut himself. As his back legs came down under him he felt a sharp stabbing pain in one of his rear paws. On three legs he hobbled into the shadow of a thorn bush and lay down to assess the damage. Cautious licking revealed a long gash right across the central pad of his paw. He cleaned it thoroughly and then lay back in the shade to wait for the bleeding to stop.
    By late afternoon he was ready to move on, but the expedition into the unknown lands on the other side of the road had had to be abandoned. His one thought now was to get home to the safety of his farmhouse. He limped back through the grass to the edge of the road carrying his injured paw well off the ground and began the long wait for a sufficient pausein the flow of the traffic. The pauses came and went, but the cat was unable to move. Each time he decided to wait for the next opportunity, and then the next and the next. His confidence was disappearing. With only three legs at his disposal his ability to calculate the risk had been upset. Once he did start out to make the crossing but he found he could not gather up enough speed to make it in time. Half way across, his nerve failed him and he turned and scampered back to the island. There he lay down again, dejected, and nursed his throbbing foot. On either side of him the cars and lorries thundered by in an interminable, unbroken procession; and as the evening came on the traffic seemed to intensify. Montezuma lay besieged on his island, hunger, fear and the loss of blood combining to make him tremble from head to foot. He was now totally confused and disorientated. He needed help, so he calledout for it; but his yowling was obliterated by the roar of the engines and the continuous swish of the tyres on the soft tarmac.
    Sergeant-Major Sydney Shannon hated roads and avoided them whenever he could, but this one lay across his path and had to be crossed. ‘Old Syd’ as he was known whenever he went in this part of the country, was a country tramp. He had long since given up on the world of people and rarely spoke to anyone unless he had to. His life was spent in the woods and fields deep in the countryside where men had not yet overrun the land completely. Here there was still the quiet to listen to and the space to wander. But even here the roads had come slicing through his fields. He regarded them as an intrusion, an invasion of his privacy, and the people who used them as marauding lemmings. He viewed them with adegree of detached pity and considerable contempt.
    Holding up his hand like a policeman he strode out towards the island in the middle of the road, his kitbag over his shoulder. For hundreds of yards back the cars squealed to a halt and set up an indignant honking of horns that Old Syd ignored completely. As he approached the island at his regular unhurried pace, he spied a cat in the grass not more than a few yards from him. Oblivious to the abuse of the drivers behind him, Old Syd unloaded the kit bag from his shoulder and held out his hand towards the cat.
    Montezuma’s first instinct was to run, for it was a strange looking being that confronted him. Old Syd was a tall man with a craggy, pitted face and a shock of completely white hair that fell down over his forehead. He wore what he always wore, summer or winter, hisold heavy khaki trousers over a pair of high black boots, and a drill khaki shirt done up at the neck. His greatcoat was in his pack along with his billycan and his