Six Meet Prehistoric Man

By Stenton Garvald

Sophie wasn't at all sure about Sundays, and this one was worse than most. She met her strange friend Eric, his strange (and imaginary) friend Roy, their even stranger friend The Professor, a collection of dangerous Cats and a Caveman - and to top all of that, there were The Men from the Ministry ...
Hoorah!

'Queer looking sort,' Stinky observed as the caveman crawled out and stood up.
'He's my cousin,' Jack improvised. 'From out of town.'
'How d'you do,' Stinky shot out his right hand. The caveman retreated from it nervously, and grunted.
'He doesn't speak any English,' Jack added.
'Oh bad luck, old man,' Stinky sympathised. 'Foreign national?'
'I should say so, yes.'
'Heir to a distant throne, I'll be bound.'
'More than likely,' Jack conceded.
A second curious and surreal romp through the world of six deluded and at times borderline psychotic children - welcome to the world of The Splendid Six.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asquith Publishing
• Release date: Nov 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909420199

Book preview

Stenton Garvald

SIX MEET PREHISTORIC MAN

An Adventure of the Splendid Six

SIX MEET PREHISTORIC MAN

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-1-909420-19-9 (EPUB format)

Copyright 2013 Stenton Garvald.

All rights reserved.

Published by Asquith Publishing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter One – Sophie Meets the Professor

Chapter Two – Six Together Again

Chapter Three – Land of the Cavemen

Chapter Four – The Men from the Ministry

Chapter Five – Where The Dinosaur Play

Chapter Six – Invasion of the Cat People

Chapter Seven – The Monkey People Fight Back

Chapter Eight – The Course of History

Chapter Nine – Some Explaining To Do

Chapter Ten – Where Man Is Not Meant To Meddle

Chapter One – Sophie Meets the Professor

Sundays always surprised Sophie.

Even though most people didn’t have to get up and go to work, there were normally lots of people out and about early on Sunday mornings – early in the sense of before midday. Why didn’t they just stay in bed? After all, wasn’t that the whole point of Sundays? Deep down, she thought that most people were probably stupid. She smiled and said hello to everyone she passed, though: just in case she was wrong.

The absolute worst thing about Sunday was that there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. All the interesting places were closed and, since no-one was at work or at school, the boring places were packed full of people.

There were times when she wished she was back home with her parents, instead of stuck away at boarding school. But those times were only when she forgot how boring home was as well. She normally remembered how boring home was about two hours after getting there. And that meant the hols usually weren’t much better than term-time. During the hols, she had to play with girls who she didn’t really know: like that dreadful Alice Worthington.

This year had been different, though: she had had an adventure. Not a proper adventure with ponies and hockey, but a boys’ adventure with smugglers and pirates and onions and diamonds [See Six Canoe to France]. And she had met Jack and Eric and Jo and Martin and Roy. Well, she hadn’t really met Roy – at least, not properly. Roy was Eric’s imaginary friend, which was like an invisible friend but not quite the same. She wasn’t totally clear on the details, but suspected it had something to do with Eric being so beastly.

She did so hope that it hadn’t all been a dream. Sophie had quite a lot of strange dreams, especially now she was getting older. She was beginning to wish she’d kept some of the diamonds – just to remind her of the adventure, of course.

Since they all came from the same town, Jack had decided that they should be secret friends and that they would be called the Splendid Six. It had sounded very exciting at the time, but now Sophie wasn’t so sure. Their friendship seemed to be so secret that they didn’t do things together.

Just as she was thinking that you couldn’t really call someone a friend if you never even saw them, she spotted a familiar figure on the other side of the street.

It was Eric, the rather beastly boy from her adventure. He was carrying a large cat in both arms, which struck Sophie as rather odd. She wouldn’t have thought Eric was the type to like cats – more the type to tie firecrackers to their tails to see how fast they could run.

‘Eric!’ she called, and walked over to him.

‘Gosh, hello Sophie,’ he said. ‘Roy says hello as well.’

‘Hello, Roy,’ she said, vaguely.

‘How are you?’ Eric asked.

‘Fine, fine,’ she smiled. ‘Not at all bored,’ she added.

‘No, neither am I. But what are you doing out at this time?’ he asked. Eric remembered that Sophie wasn’t terribly good at getting up early, especially at weekends.

‘I’m walking the puppy,’ she explained.

Eric looked around. ‘But you haven’t got a puppy.’

‘Not yet, no,’ she admitted. ‘I’m practicing. You’ve got a cat, though. Are you walking it?’

‘No, I’m carrying it,’ Eric said. ‘Anyway, it’s not mine: it’s for a friend – the Professor.’

‘What Professor?’ Sophie asked. Eric, she thought, was the kind of boy who might make things up in order to sound exciting. And The Professor sounded very much like Eric’s idea of exciting.

‘I don’t know what his last name is, but he’s got one of those funny first names: you know, the type other people use as last names. Like Forbes, or Harrison.’

‘Why are you taking him a cat? Is he a cat professor?’ she asked, stroking the cat with her free hand: she hoped it wasn’t going to hiss or spit at her. Sometimes they did, but at least Eric was holding this one: if it decided to put its claws out then she probably wouldn’t get scratched.

‘No, but he collects cats. Old cats, mostly, so some of them are normally dying. I like to take one round every so often, to keep the numbers up.’

‘Where do you find them?’

‘Just wandering around,’ Eric shrugged.

‘But what if they belong to someone else? Look – this one’s got a little blue collar on.’

‘I’m sure they’ll be able to find their own way home if they have one. Would you like to come along?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Sophie quite liked the idea of meeting the Professor: it sounded much more fun than just going back to the boarding house and doing her French homework. Also, she quite liked the sound of someone who collected cats, even if they were mostly old and dying cats. For no good reason, Sophie was firmly attached to the opinion that people who were kind to animals were probably nice people.

On the way, Eric told her about the Professor. Apparently he sometimes did things for the government, which was how Eric’s father knew him. Eric didn’t have any normal friends, since he had tutors instead of going to school: instead, he made friends with