<Jimmy>
The 'Princess Andromeda' was sailing to the Canary Islands. I should know-being the cabin boy. This was a fine ship for my 1st voyage. Life on the sea was hard, every day I was up at 6am!! I had to run errands for the captain. He was a brute, a monster and a bully. He had a brown chipped wooden leg and a black eye patch over his left eye with a scar running underneath. I had puzzled about that scar ever since I boarded, how did he get it and why? I often went into daydreams about big battles on decks. His heart was as cold as ice-that is if he had a heart at all- I often thought he carried on living just to give others misery and grief. It was an adventure to live on a ship, I would often go exploring and find new nooks and crannies. I once found a spider as big as my hand that was sitting on an egg sack! When I wasn't running around for the captain and exploring I was helping cook. Cook was my only friend on board. He was a plump jolly old sailor with amazing strength. He could chop a carrot in 3 seconds flat. Before working on the P.A (the P.A is what everyone calls the ship) he worked in the army cooking half the time, training the rest. I never did find out why he had to leave!!!
One night a storm raged. Wind whistled around my ears like a maddened ghost and felt like sharp poisoned daggers against my cheeks. The rain hammered down drenching us- we were so wet that we would be drier if we fell overboard!! The waves grew higher and higher every second some of which I was afraid would sink us. I glanced towards the captain. Standing on the rigging with lightning flashing behind him he looked like the most evil man in the world. "Bring up the sails!!" He cried. I ran to the side and leaned over seeing if I could spot anything. Then up ahead I saw some jagged rocks as sharp as shark's teeth and we were heading right for them. I screamed and people turned to stare "The rocks up ahead!!" I cried "We are going to hit them!!" Soon more people joined me at the side peering over. The captain turned to see what we were staring at and almost fell off the rigging in shock. Up on the top deck two men were turning the wheel as hard as they could until, to my horror, it broke!!!!!!! I ran to find cook - he was at the side.
"Ahh, Young Jimmy. I take it you've seen the rocks." He said as calmly as is if he was making conversation at dinner. Suddenly I felt a massive lurch as the ship hit. I stumbled back and it was whilst sitting on deck when I thought of my idea.
"We need to climb onto the rocks," I said to everybody "Then somebody can come and help."
Everybody stared at me- apparently people don't expect cabin boys to have good ideas! Then cook shouted "Well, what are we waiting for- come on!" and everybody listens to cook because if they don't they don't get food! We sat there stranded waiting for our rescuers and hoping they wouldn't be too late.
