Davina Dupree Puzzles a Pirate (4 page)

‘Arrrrrr,’ one of them cried, striding towards Mr Snap. ‘Where’s me booty, you ‘orrible snivellin’ scallywag?’

‘Shhh,’ Mr Snap hissed back, dropping his heavy sack in front of the pirate. ‘The whole camp’s asleep and we don’t want to wake them up now, do we? Look, here’s your loot. I’ve fleeced them posh idiots of as much as I can and now I want me payment.’ His well-spoken accent was slipping even more than usual, I noticed from my frozen position.

The pirate, who was probably the head pirate as he was doing all the communicating, clicked his fingers and the other pirates crowded round immediately, getting down on their knees to inspect the contents of Mr Snap’s sack.

‘Arrr,’ one roared, holding up an object that I couldn’t quite make out. ‘I’ve been wantin’ a new TV since mine broke when we was swashbucklin’ last month.’

‘So Mr Snap
is
the thief,’ I whispered. ‘But how did he do it when he was with Mr Fossil all that afternoon?’

‘I don’t know,’ Arabella muttered. ‘But this is very serious. Shall we go and tell Mrs Faichild and Mrs Pumpernickle what’s going on?’

‘Their tents are right on the other side of the camp,’ I whispered, thinking it through. ‘I think we’d put ourselves in too much danger if we started crawling about now. Let’s just watch carefully so we can tell her
exactly
what happened when this is over.’ She nodded and we settled down to stare.

‘Arr, it’s not a bad haul,’ the head pirate said, clapping Mr Snap so hard on the shoulder that he half fell over. ‘A deal’s a deal. Jaw-Thumper, where’s Mr Snap’s payment?’

‘’Ere,’ one of the pirates said, lifting a bag out of the rowing boat. Even from where we were crouching I could tell there was something alive in the bag, something that was wriggling around and desperately wanted to get out.

‘Take it,’ the head pirate said. ‘There’s two more in there and if you look after ‘em properly they’ll bring you a lot more and each one will sell on the black market for millions, what with ‘em being ‘orribly endangered. But mark my words, if you EVER tell anyone where you got ‘em from, you’ll never live to see the light of the next day. Understand?’

Mr Snap took the bag, nodding vigourously. Without another word, the six pirates hopped back in their boat and rowed back to their ship. Arabella and I stayed rooted to the spot until long after the pirate ship had sailed away into the night and Mr Snap had taken his wriggling bag away. We watching him walk off, not in the direction of his tent – which was a plain white one set apart from our luxury ones – but towards a group of wild shrubs and trees. He was nearly there when Arabella, who’d been struggling to contain a sneeze for what seemed like ages, lost her battle and let out the most ENORMOUS,

‘AAATISHOOOO!’

Mr Snap stopped and turned round.

We immediately lay down flat on the sand, sandwiched between two tents, hoping against hope that he’d think it came from
inside
a tent.

‘Who’s there?’ Mr Snap called softly, his moody face looking extremely unattractive in the moonlight as he walked back towards the tents. ‘That was an outdoor sneeze, not an indoor sneeze, I know the difference and I know someone’s there. Stand up and make yourself known at once.’

‘Sorry!’ Arabella mouthed as we flattened ourselves further. I was so scared I think I’d stopped breathing altogether. I could hear his footsteps getting nearer and nearer...this is it, I thought...he’s going to find us...

Then the soft crunchy footsteps went past us and circled a different group of tents further away.

‘Now!’ Arabella whispered, and we both sprang up like Olympic runners and literally bolted the other way towards our own tent. My head was spinning so much I have no idea how I actually made it back without passing out, but I did and so did Arabella. We catapulted through the door, tied it up and jumped onto our hammocks, pretending to be asleep at once in case Mr Snap went round peering into tents looking for movement. Thorny, I noticed through my panic, was still sleeping soundly under my hammock, curled up in a cosy ball. At least
he’d
had a relaxing night.

GOODNESS knows how long we stayed like that, frozen in uncomfortable shapes, getting hotter and hotter because we still had all our outdoor gear on, but eventually Mr Snap called out softly,

‘I know someone was watching me just then and I know you’re listening now. If you tell even a single soul what you just saw, I’ll find out and send you to live with the pirates. Do you understand? This is not a joke. Do. Not. Tell. Anyone. What. You. Just. Saw. Or else!’

Then we heard his soft, crunching footsteps getting further and further away.

‘Phew,’ Arabella whispered after a while. ‘I’m so sorry about the sneeze. I totally couldn’t help it, it just burst its way out.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, trying to breathe more slowly. ‘It wasn’t your fault, it’s impossible to stop sneezes. He didn’t know it was us, did he?’

‘No,’ Arabella replied in the darkness. ‘He would have come straight to our tent if he’d known. The only thing is, after his threat, are we still going to risk telling Mrs Fairchild what we saw just now? I mean, would it be better to wait until we’re safely off Ni Island and back at Egmont? It’s just that there are only three other grown ups here with us and none of them would exactly be a match for those pirates.’

‘I see what you mean,’ I said slowly, thinking it through. ‘So you think we should just bide our time until the school trip is over, then explain what we saw to Mrs Fairchild as soon as we’re back in the safety of our school and she can phone the police and have him dealt with?’

‘Yes,’ Arabella muttered. ‘I’d just feel so bad if the pirates or Mr Snap put anyone in danger.’

‘I agree,’ I whispered. ‘It’s only a few days away. Now let’s see if we can get some sleep or we’ll be really tired tomorrow.’

Arabella and I have spent most of today trying to look innocent and keep out of Mr Snap’s way. I have to go now as Melody’s just popped round to say he’s just cooked sausages for dinner but for some reason, Diary, I seem to have lost my appetite...

Tuesday, 13
^th
January

Help, Diary!!

You’ll SERIOUSLY never guess what’s happened...

Arabella and I both woke up with stinking colds this morning, which probably resulted from sitting outside in freezing temperatures the other night.

After breakfast, Mrs Fairchild called a meeting to say she’d organised a one day trip to a nearby deserted island so we could all study the rare trees there. Apparently they have unusually shaped purple leaves or something.

But Mrs Pumpernickle took one look at me and Arabella and said we weren’t fit to get out of our hammocks today and that we’d have to stay in our tent until we felt better. She fussed us all the way back, making sure we got into our hammocks, tucking our duvets in around us like a mother hen. Mr Fossil came by just as she was leaving, to say he’d be happy to stay and look after us if Mrs Pumpernickle wanted to go on the trip.

‘Well if you don’t mind that would be very kind, Stanley,’ we heard her reply. ‘I’d been really looking forward to seeing those purple leaves, they sound so beautiful.’

So Mr Snap sailed off in the yacht with most of our teachers and class mates and Arabella and I dozed off, feeling fuzzy headed and awful but safe because Mr Snap had gone. Thorny, bless him, wandered around for a while then fell asleep at the end of Arabella’s hammock.

But we were soon woken up by Mr Fossil sticking his head round the door and saying that if we were OK to look after ourselves for a bit, he might go and have a quick hunt for any Kapatoo birds.

‘Fine,’ I croaked, soon nodding off again.

So I can tell you it gave me the BIGGEST SHOCK OF MY LIFE when a while later, two pirates burst into our tent and woke me and Arabella up by shouting, ‘Arrrrrr,’ very loudly.

‘Oh for goodness sake, what’s going on?’ Arabella snuffled, hardly able to open her eyes.

‘Pirates are here,’ I said, struggling to sit up. Act bravely, I told myself. ‘Go away this instant,’ I said loudly, wishing my cold didn’t make everything I said sound so muffled. ‘You’ve no business being in the tent of two school girls.’

‘Arr, sorry about this,’ said the tallest one cheerfully. ‘Just followin’ the captain’s orders.’

‘And what exactly are those orders?’ I snapped, sounding much braver than I felt.

‘Er, to kidnap both of youz,’ the pirate said. The other nodded in agreement. I stared at them, puzzled. How on EARTH could they have known it was us watching them and Mr Snap last night.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Why do you want to kidnap us?’

‘Does this belong to one of you, by any chance?’ The shorter pirate brandished an object in the air. I leaned forwards and looked at it closely.

‘Oh,’ I said. It was unmistakably a button from my faux fur coat, the one I’d been wearing last night. No one else had a button like it – huge, furry and sea-shell pink. ‘Whoops.’ I hadn’t noticed it coming off, but then we were rather busy trying to remain undiscovered at the time.

‘Mr Snap thought someone had watched him talk to us last night,’ the smaller pirate said, his earrings jangling. ‘Don’t bother us whose watchin’ us as we aint got nothin’ to hide, but it bothered him for some reason, so he said he went and had another look round the tents as soon as the sun came up, hopin’ to find a clue. When he came across this button and recognised it as yours he phoned the captain and said you needed kidnappin’ as you’d seen too much and would probably snitch on him. Couldn’t believe his luck when you two turned out to have snivellin’ colds and had to stay here by yerselves all day.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ the bigger pirate grinned, showing a set of gold teeth. ‘Come on, get packin’, we’ve got to make a soft farewell before the rest of your class comes back.’

‘Oh and bring that diary of yours,’ Small Pirate said.

‘Hang on a second, hang on a second,’ I said, feeling very strange. ‘How can you POSSIBLY know I keep a diary?’

‘Mr Snap told us yer always scribblin’ in it,’ Big Pirate said. ‘’E said we ‘ad to kidnap the diary as well as you two, because you’d most definitely ‘ave written about everythin’ you saw last night. So ‘and it over now, will you?’

‘She certainly will NOT,’ Arabella said, sounding REALLY annoyed. She flounced off her hammock and began to chuck clothes into a bag. ‘You can’t just come in here and order us around, it’s not right.’

‘I agree,’ I said, jumping off my hammock to pack a few essentials, wondering what one usually packed when being kidnapped, noticing poor Thorny who was still balanced on the end of Arabella’s hammock looking half asleep. ‘Not only have you barged into our tent uninvited when we’re feeling ill, you’ve announced you’re kidnapping us and then on top of all that you want to nick my diary. I’m sorry, but the last bit’s not happening. I’ll take my diary with me but I’M having it, not YOU.’ I threw a change of clothes into my bag together with my waterproof mobile phone, toothbrush, toothpaste, diary and pen, feeling really rattled.

The pirates went quiet for a moment.

‘Ahem,’ Big Pirate said, after a long, awkward pause during which me and Arabella finished packing, thumping things around slightly louder than we normally would. ‘Arrr. When you puts it like that, I can see yez point. I’m sorry we barged in like that and I’m sorry about the kidnappin’, but there’s no way round it I’m afraid. Yer gonna have to come with us.’

‘It probably won’t be for too long,’ Small Pirate said, smiling encouragingly. ‘I bet you’ll be rescued really soon.’

Minutes later, me, Arabella and Thorny found ourselves being ferried across to the large pirate ship in a small, wooden rowing boat that stank of rotten fish.

‘Up yez go,’ Big Pirate - who turned out to be called Skull Crusher – said as he hoisted me up towards a ladder that ran up the side of the ship. ‘Climb up there lass and you’ll be met by Scar Cheek at the top. He’s a nice lad.’

I did as he said - to be honest I didn’t have much choice - and as I reached the last rung, Thorny tucked inside my coat, a scarred face appeared and grinned at me, giving me such a shock I almost fell backwards into the frothy sea.

‘Gar! Ahoy there!’ Scar Cheek shouted, as he pulled me over the side of the ship and on to the deck. ‘Welcome aboard The Black Tide.’ I just stared at him, not knowing what to say, wishing I had a tissue because my nose was running. He grinned a sparkly grin then lunged to meet Arabella, who’d hiked up the ladder behind me.

‘I can climb over myself, thanks,’ Arabella snapped, pushing Scar Cheek away as he tried to haul her over. ‘What now?’ She went on, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Are you going to drink some grog, do some swash buckling then make us walk the plank?’

‘Nope,’ a heavily set pirate stepped out from behind a sail as Scar Cheek pulled up the anchor, The Black Tide creaking off over the water. I recognised him from last night as the head pirate who gave the orders. My annoying heart beat faster in case he threw us over board or did something else mean and piratey. ‘You’ll find none of that behaviour aboard The Black Tide. It’s nice to meet you my dears, my name’s Captain Bones and I’m genuinely sorry for any inconvenience caused. Personally I was thinking it was tea and cake time. Care to join me?’

I’ve got to go now Diary, Captain Bones has just finished arranging a selection of yummy cakes and drinks on his study table and he’s signalling for us to come over. To tell you the truth, I am feeling a bit peckish. I hope he’s got a few vegetables for Thorny...

Afternoon, Tuesday 13
^th
January

Arrr, Diary!

The last few hours have been very eye opening indeed.

Basically, after we’d polished off the UNBELIEVABLY SCRUMMY triple chocolate cake, raspberry meringues and homemade fudge that Captain Bones had kindly laid out for us together with several glasses of fizzy melon juice and a cup of tea each, Arabella and I had both decided that Captain Bones was a good sort of man, even if he
was
a pirate. He was delighted by Thorny and ordered Scar Cheek to find him some broccoli and cauliflower to eat at once.