“Now what do we do with you guys?” Shorty asked no one in particular. One person has won both tasks.
“I think we should take the boy to dormitory ‘A’ to join the water- boys” , Clunky suggested. That lad finished the diving teams.”
The lad who came second on the logic task will to be taken to dormitory ‘B’ to join the surface-boys. He didn’t do too well on the swimming one,” martins heard shorty say.
He was delighted as he was separated from the group and asked to stand with the guys going to dorm’B’. Martins would later get to see and talk to Zel again about whatever plan or observations he had made concerning escaping from this place.
Then it dawned on Zell who was among those watching the boy perform the tasks, philp and him were being separated, that wasn’t a good idea, he figured it was time to let the instructors know what Philip’s condition was .
Gathering all the courage he could, he walked up to Clunky because he was the nicer of the pair.
The two men looked at him strangely as he approached.
“My-my-my brother is the who won both task’s” he stuttered.
The two instructors looked at zell as if he had just dropped in from the planet mars. How could this light-skinned boy with curly hair be brothers another who was probably the darkest boy in complex?
“He has a disability and l ‘m. only one he can communicate with”, Zell continued.
“Are you serious or have the boys put you up to play a prank? ” Clunky asked.
Zell went on to inform them that he had to be close to Dusty to translate instructions to him.
He also explained to them that he would not be able to hear any orders given over the megaphone during the night shifts .
And because the water- boys worked only at night , he would not be able to read anyone’s lips because there wasn’t much lighting around the lake area.
The only lights there, the spotlights , were for lighting the surface of the lake, rhis was to enable the team see the floating red objects that he knew both martins and Philip had spotted earlier, he had earlier learned the red object were called buoys.
The buoys were attached to long ropes at one end and the ropes to lobster traps at the other, for the thousands of buoys he had seen floating on the lake.
Martins and Philip who had now seen Zell who was explaining to the other two men began to understand what Zel had said when he had compared the work to slave labour.
Harvesting six hundred lobster every night in the dark, underwater, was no joke, he began to appreciate the risk of injury and drowning.
Clunky tapped zell on the shoulder. ” We’ve decided what you just told us make sense,” he said
“You will therefore be allowed to join your brother in dormitory ‘A’ with the water-_boys, however, both of you are way better at doing we want you to do than the rest of the other lads…”
“Thank you very much sir,” Zell almost cried out before clunky had even finished speaking .
” Young man, can I finish ? ” clunky insisted, a bit displeased, the two of you will work the night shift for a month, you will then be moved to dormitory ‘B’ to work the day shift for the next month… ”
Zell couldn’t hold himself back any longer, he leap forward and gave the man a big bear hug, and martins would get to see him again too !
Clunky stood in shock unable to decide whether to hug the boy back or shove him off, it was too obvious that he was a man not used to being showed any affection by the children he was involved in enslaving.
” Calm down young man, ” he finally manage to say .” you will take turns between the two dormitories till management decides otherwise
Zell finally let go of the stunned man and dashed off to find Philip who was sitting with his group of the twenty-four boys who had been brought in, sixteen of them were made ‘ water- boys’ and eight’ surface- boys ‘ .
Unfortunately, they were being separated from kenny and martins for now, he had made it back into dorm ‘ B ‘ , having done much better on the logic task, they hugged and said their goodbyes.
Martins had wanted to get a message over to Zel to tell him that we would be back in a month but decided against it.
He didn’t want anyone to have any hint of a link between the two of them..