The War of Jenkins' Ear: Part 1

By MICHAEL MORPURGO

BENEDICAT NOBIS OMNIPOTENS DEUS ....' The first grace of a new term. Henry Stagg, Headmaster and lord of all he surveyed, intoned with fresh vigour, his fingers flexing ominously as he gripped the back of his chair at High Table.

Standing behind his bench at the window Toby Jenkins dared to life his eyes. Mr Stagg looked thinner than he remembered, his neck longer somehow, more craggy. But the voice was the same, sonorous and terrifying - 'Rudolph' they called him, when they were quite sure he couldn't hear them.

Beside Rudolph, stiff in her grey-green suit with a butterfly brooch, stood Mrs Stagg, a head taller with straight dark hair and blood-red lips. Prunella he called her - 'Cruella' to the boys.

Toby caught her eye and looked away quickly. The dying daddy-longlegs were still sidling clumsily along the window-ledge, clambering over each other in a vain effort to find a way out.

There's no escape, thought Toby, not for you, not for me. Thirteen weeks and five days -- ninety-six days until the Christmas holidays.

There was half term, four days beginning November the sixth, but that was seven long weeks away.

Price: $14.95

Publisher: Mammoth

Age group: 10+ years