Why not? - English

12-09 Escape from Dinosaur Island

"I'm glad the day is almost over," I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck as I craned my head once to the left and then to the right. I suddenly felt completely tense.

"Why is that? You always have so much fun shooting at targets?" Sam asked me in surprise.

"Something was strange today. Ben was really eager to prove to us that he and Elvis were better than we are," I confessed to him about how I had felt about Ben's cocky demeanor during our practice with Titan today.

"But they weren't. Don't forget that Elvis hit only one of the targets," Sam said with a grin and nudged my arm with his elbow, winking. I thought back to the second half of our exercise, after we rescued Derek from the cliff on Pontypandy Island. Professor Pickles was happy to give us the pterodactyl kite as a thank you for the quick rescue. It was so much fun. At least to me.

"And he didn't even hit the pterodactyl kite, just like you," I told him with a grin. To my surprise, he just shrugged his shoulders.

"You're unbeatable," he said calmly. A little too relaxed.

"What? Are you still mad because I beat you at Scissors, paper, stone?" I continued to tease him.

"Mad? I could never be mad at you, especially not for something like that," he waved. "Where is Elvis?"

"He'll be there soon. The zipper on his life jacket is probably stuck again," I said with a smile and he rolled his eyes with a smile.

A whistle broke the silence on the quay and we looked around in surprise until I looked over the edge and spotted Padrig on Charlie's cutter.

"Still on the engine, Mr. Jones?" I called out to him, amused. It obviously did bother him that I had talked about the engine so bad. Since then, he and Charlie have done almost nothing other than maintain and clean it.

“Come on board with me!” he said seriously and turned to a lobster trap. I looked at Sam questioningly, but he just shrugged his shoulders and followed me down the stairs. "No, just your colleague, Samuel!" Padrig grumbled tonelessly when Sam wanted to follow me onto Charlie's boat and he froze. I saw the skepticism and concern on his face and gave him an encouraging smile before he relented and told me that he would be waiting for Elvis upstairs. I nodded at him again, smiling, but I would swear he was terribly nervous.

"I saw you coming back the quay. So you drive all these rescueboats?" Padrig asked me as soon as I caught up with him. He handed me one end of a rope that was completely tangled in the lobster trap and I understood and helped him untangle it.

"Each of us can drive it. But yes, I discovered my love for the sea when I came here. It started with sailing and now I'm a boat captain and rescue diver," I told him in a nutshell about my career in sea rescue.

"I'm impressed," was all he said and I wondered for a moment what he actually wanted from me. My eyes fell on the open hatch where the engine was located and saw that it was sparkling clean. They had done a good job.

"That looks much better. Sam will certainly be able to sleep more peacefully if his brother's engine is so perfectly maintained," I said with a smile and Padrig took a look at it as he took the untangled rope from me and put it away. My goodness, it was so hard to have a normal conversation with this man. Otherwise Jenni was always there. She always kept the conversation going with her exuberant good humor. Only now did I really realize how difficult Sam's father was and how much Sam really had to suffer because of it.

“Have you ever been fishing?” he then pulled me out of my thoughts and I looked at him confused. I wasn't expecting this change of subject at all.

"What? Um, no?!" I stammered, confused.