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003 - My Father Finds the Island · My Fathers Dragon

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  Speaker 1: Chapter three in My Father's Dragon. This LibriVox recording is
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  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Recording by Gregory Holdsworth. My Father's
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  Speaker 1: Dragon by Rude Style's Gannet, Chapter three, My father finds
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  Speaker 1: the island. My father hid in the hold for six
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  Speaker 1: days and nights. Twice he was nearly caught when the
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  Speaker 1: ships stopped to take on more cargo. But at last
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  Speaker 1: he heard a sailor say that the next port would
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  Speaker 1: be Cranberry and that they'd be unloading the wheat there.
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  Speaker 1: My father knew that the sailors would send him home
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  Speaker 1: if they caught him, so he looked in his knapsack
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  Speaker 1: and took out a rubber band and the empty green
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  Speaker 1: bag with the label saying Cranberry. At the last moment,
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  Speaker 1: my father got inside the bag knapsack and all folded
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  Speaker 1: the top of the bag inside and put the rabber
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  Speaker 1: band around the top. He didn't looked just exactly like
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  Speaker 1: the other bags, but it was the best he could do.
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  Speaker 1: Soon the sailors came to unload. They lowered a big
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  Speaker 1: net into the hold and began moving the bags of wheat. Suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: one sailor yelled, Great Scott, this is the queerest bag
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  Speaker 1: of wheat i've ever seen. It's all lumpy like, but
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  Speaker 1: the label says this go to Cranberry. The other sailors
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  Speaker 1: looked at the bag too, and my father, who was
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  Speaker 1: in the bag, of course, tried even harder to look
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  Speaker 1: like a bag of wheat. Then the other sailor felt
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  Speaker 1: the bag and he just happened to get hold of
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  Speaker 1: my father's elbow. I know what this is, he said,
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  Speaker 1: It's a bag of dried corn on the cob. He
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  Speaker 1: dumbed my father into the big net along with the
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  Speaker 1: bags of wheat. This all happened in the late afternoon,
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  Speaker 1: so late that the merchant in Cranberry, who had ordered
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  Speaker 1: the wet, didn't count his bags until the next morning.
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  Speaker 1: He was a very punctual man and never late for dinner.
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  Speaker 1: The sailors told the captain, and the captain wrote down
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  Speaker 1: on a piece of paper that they had delivered one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty bags of wheat and one bag of
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  Speaker 1: dried corn on the cob. They left a piece of
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  Speaker 1: paper for the merchant and sailed away that evening. My
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  Speaker 1: father heard later that the merchant spent the whole next
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  Speaker 1: day counting and recounting the bags of failing each one
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  Speaker 1: and trying to find the bag of dried corn on
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  Speaker 1: the cob. He never found it, because as soon as
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  Speaker 1: it was dark, my father climbed out of the bag.
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  Speaker 1: He folded it up and put it back in his knapsack.
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  Speaker 1: He walked along the shore to a nice sandy place
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  Speaker 1: and lay down to sleep. My father was very hungry
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  Speaker 1: when he woke up the next morning. Just as he
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  Speaker 1: was looking to see if he had anything left to eat,
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  Speaker 1: something hit him on the head. It was a tangerine.
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  Speaker 1: He had been sleeping right under a tree full of big,
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  Speaker 1: fat tangerines, and then he remembered that this was the
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  Speaker 1: island of Tangerina. Tangerine trees grew wild everywhere. My father
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  Speaker 1: picked as many as he had room for, which was
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  Speaker 1: thirty one, and started off to find Wild Island. He
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  Speaker 1: walked and walked and walked along the shore, looking for
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  Speaker 1: the rocks that joined the two islands. He walked all day,
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  Speaker 1: and once he met a fisherman and asked him about
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  Speaker 1: Wild Island. The fishermen began to shake and couldn't talk
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  Speaker 1: for a long while. It scared him that much just
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  Speaker 1: thinking about it. Finally, he said, many people have tried
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  Speaker 1: to explore wild island, but no one has come back alive.
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  Speaker 1: We think they were eaten by the wild animals. This
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  Speaker 1: didn't bother my father. He kept walking and slept on
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  Speaker 1: the beach again that night. It was beautifully clear next day,
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  Speaker 1: and way down to the shore my father could see
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  Speaker 1: a long line of rocks leading out into the ocean,
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  Speaker 1: and way way out at the end he could just
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  Speaker 1: see a tiny patch of green. He quickly ate seven
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  Speaker 1: tangerines and started down the beach. It was almost dark
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  Speaker 1: when he came to the rocks, but there, way out
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  Speaker 1: in the ocean, was the patch of green. He sat
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  Speaker 1: down and rested for a while, remembering that the cat
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  Speaker 1: had said, if you can go out to the island
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  Speaker 1: that night, because then the wild animals won't see you
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  Speaker 1: coming along the rocks, you can hide when you get there.
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  Speaker 1: So my father picked seven more tangerines, put on his
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  Speaker 1: black rubber boots, and waited for dark. It was a
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  Speaker 1: very black night, and my father could hardly see the
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  Speaker 1: rocks ahead of him. Sometimes they were quite high, and
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  Speaker 1: sometimes the waves almost covered them, and they were slippering
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  Speaker 1: and hard to w walk on. Sometimes the rocks were
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  Speaker 1: far apart, and my father had to get a running
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  Speaker 1: start and leap from one to the next. After a while,
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  Speaker 1: he began to hear a rumbling noise. It grew louder
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  Speaker 1: and louder as he got nearer to the island. At
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  Speaker 1: last it seemed as if he was right on top
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  Speaker 1: of the noise, and he was. He had jumped from
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  Speaker 1: a rock onto the back of a small whale who
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  Speaker 1: was fast asleep and cuddled up between two rocks. The
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  Speaker 1: whale was snoring and making more noise than a steam shovel.
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  Speaker 1: So I had never heard my father say, oh, I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know that was you, and I never knew my
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  Speaker 1: father had jumped on his back by mistake. For seven hours,
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  Speaker 1: my father climbed and slipped and leapt from rock to rock,
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  Speaker 1: But while it was still dark, he finally reached the
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  Speaker 1: very last rock and stepped off onto Wild Island. End
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter three