Book Two Letter Fifty-One

My dearest nephew,

I must apologize for the sand and drakes’ teeth in the envelope of this letter; they must have slipped in by accident. I shall explain later.

            It appears as though the keepers of your uncle Scaligar’s prison have been in s0me way alerted to my plans to free him, as we here on the beach were suddenly attacked earlier on today in the midst of a game of beach ball our planning your uncles escape from prison by a band of angry drakes.

            It appears as though the prison pulled out all the stops for this attack, sending in its crack troops and all. Either that or a gang of drakes got bored and decided to make another of their frequent forays on our mainland beaches (they attack quite often thanks to a genetic addiction to coconuts). You decide.

            Anyway we chased off the drakes with difficulty at first due to the fact that we were all in bathing suits which made for an inevitably chafing fight we were caught in the middle of our planning phase and therefore totally unprepared. Still we rose to the challenge and taking up the large turtle which we had been using for a ball earlier and duct taping its legs and head inside its shell we transformed the stolid creature into a makeshift anti-drake missile.

            The next few hours were spent in rapturous enjoyment on our part as we systematically shot down drakes with our hard shelled missile friend.

            Today we learned two things; firstly that wardens of the prison will stop at nothing in their attempts to keep me from rescuing your uncle, and secondly that our friend the turtle is virtually indestructible.

Armed with these two facts and with an industrial sized roll of duct tape, and of course our firm friend the turtle I and my friends went out to free your uncles on our own.

The mercenaries I had hired a few days ago we decided not to use after all. We have a turtle, we don’t need mercenaries.

Your humble servant, mentor and uncle,

Semithino