tHe cLAsS pReSiDeNt
HeAvEnLy stArS oF jOy
tHe ShIp WoOd MoDeL mAkEr
There was once an area in the seas where there were many islands. One of the island was biggest of all islands and had 50 villages in it. Other islands alongside it had one or two villages each.
In the biggest island there was one village where lived the ship wood model maker who earned modestly through his work of making wood models of ships.
Ships used to come there from mainland and dock to their island to trade goods. Most of the goods consisted of grocery items.
Since unloading grocery items took time as it was all done manually through hand or wheelbarrow The ship wood model maker used to take advantage of this and used to enter ships with paper and pencil. He used to draw the interior and the exterior of the docked ships to perfection on his paper. It used to take him some time to do that but he had all the time in the world as ships used to be docked there for more than 12 hours usually docking there for whole night. So in the night he used to draw sketches of different ships and in the day he used to work on making their wood models. He used to sleep only for sometime and that too during the day.
His model making work was hard but he used to like doing it.
He used to love kids.
Once he puzzled the kids by showing that ship model was inside a glass bottle whose mouth was too small to fit in the ship. So the kids were dumbstruck! seeing this. He enjoyed seeing the weird and funny faces that kids were making while trying to understand how this happened. After having fun with this he told them secret of it that he did not put model of the ship in the bottle but first made the model ship and then asked a glass blower to make a bottle of glass around the ship. Children then understood the magic trick and felt happy.
He was a lover of kids. He used to receive great praises from the parents that their kids were very fond of him and liked him a lot. He used to be happy hearing that and carried on with his work.
The other reason why kids used to be happy with him was because he used to send kids special treats.
What these treats were is yet to know.
He used to also love the kids of the villages on neighbouring islands. To show this, what he used to do was make ship models having small coal engines in them. Now since there was no driver in the model ships he used to put the measured amount of coal in the coal tank which through gravity fell slowly into the burning chamber causing it to produce steam and run the engine thereby moving the ship model forward. In these models he attached candies, chocolates and some toy presents and sent to the kids of neighbouring islands. The kids knew that during Christmas they got presents from the ship wood model maker so they used to wait on the shores near their houses and used to see the model ships coming. They used to pick them up, take them, play with them and relish them.
The ship wood model maker was the talk of the town.
Wherever he went kids used to surround him and ask him to play with them which most of the times he did and enjoyed a lot.
So, sometimes there used to be storm in the seas but no harm used to happen.
It so happened once that 20 children had gone on a boat in the sea to just enjoy the sea. By that time the storm was building which they were unaware of.
This storm was something that nobody had seen before. Winds were gusting more than 100 miles an hour and no small boat could survive that so it was looking dangerous for the kids that had went on a ride on a small boat in the sea.
The wood ship model maker knew that today things can get out of hand so he started preparing for it. He picked up 50 wooden model ships and filled their in-built steam engines with coal.
Now he was worried that the kids had not returned to the island and it was time for them to be back. Also it was getting dark.
Then parents who were waiting alongside the shore for their kids, saw the boat on the horizon which was about 10 miles from the shore. All were hoping that the kids will make it back on their boat but suddenly in the storm there was a lightning bolt so strong that it hit the boat on which the children were coming back home. The boat suffered a crack. Parents got frightened! They did not know what to do. Some parents wanted to take boats themselves and get to their kids but it was too risky.
Suddenly the wood ship model maker came from behind. He shouted and said “I need help picking up my model ships to bring children back home safely” and people listened to him and helped.
What he did was this time he had overpowered the engines with more but tolerable amounts of coal to speed them up. He put calculated amount of coal in the model ships just enough to reach the kids who had got their boat sinking.
Since the model ships did not have cavity in them so they were just like logs of wood that would not sink even in the storm. Then he attached big orange flags on both sides of y axis of the model ships which were easily visible from distance.
He then started the engines up and put them in sea towards the children’s sinking boat direction. 50 ship models that he had got were put in the sea and directed towards the sinking boat direction hoping that at-least 20 would reach their destination and save kids.
Meanwhile the storm was loosing its strength. The rain had stopped but the winds were still very strong. Too dangerous still to go in water.
He then told the people to bring lots of wood from their home. The people did what they were told to do and brought lots of wood from their homes.
He then put a big fire alongside the shore with the woods he got, so that kids could see it. As it was night and it is difficult to navigate at night without a reference point.
So the kids that were on the sinking boat saw orange flags coming near them and when they came more closer they saw that they were model ships sent by the wooden ship model maker. They were rejoiced to see this. The boats were of sufficient length and buoyancy and that they could sit on them and float. Kids were overjoyed to see this and jumped quickly from their sinking lightning struck boat and sat on the model ships. Some model ships were far from their reach but all kids somehow managed to grab one each and sit on them.
But to row 10 miles through hand was difficult so the ship model maker who was smart had attached a water turbine to each of them and had attached a rotating crank arm to them which the kids had to rotate to propel ship forward. The kids found this out as they were meddling with the crank arm and they started turning it to propel their model ships. Then one of them saw the fire that the model maker had lit up and they all cranked the boat and steered it to the fire’s direction and in an hour all of them reached the shore safe and sound.
Everybody including the kids thanked the wood ship model maker and became more cautious to go to the sea next time.