The Chronicles of Stinky Cove · Book 7

Hook

The Gull Who Owned the Wharf

Dell Marden is the funniest kid in Halftide. Ask anybody. Nobody will say they like him.

He is twelve, he is not in the wildlife club and never has been, and he can do a voice for every person in town, including the crying one he does when a younger kid reads his nature log to the club. The boys on the wall laugh every time.

Out on the last piling sits Hook, the biggest gull in the harbor, an old great black-back with an iron band and a beak like his name, who believes with his whole heart that when he calls, the flock comes because he called it. A young brown gull wants to know how he does it. The eider hen at the head of the cove would like him to go and stand somewhere else.

One summer, eleven Saturdays, a sternman’s seat on Ellis Trundy’s boat that Dell wants more than he will say, and a laugh with somebody standing at the end of it.