Worse Things Happen at Sea!

by Alan Snow

  “It looks like a cheese, boss!”

  The nose then reported back. “I can smell it. Ripe smelly cheese.”

  “Don’t seem quite right. Hold on, boys!”

  The thought of cheese was too much for his mob. No way were they going to hang about if there was a chance of eating cheese.

  “Legs full ahead! Let’s get some cheese!” screamed Gristle.

  “No! NO!” shouted Snatcher. “It’s probably a trap.” But even he was salivating.

  Arthur was getting worried as he saw the monster turn toward him. He spun round toward the town and was about to start running in that direction when a mob started to pour from the town gate.

  “CHEESE! CHEESE! IT’S A CHEESE!”

  He was not sure which way to turn.

  “Stay calm! I have to stay calm . . . and act like a cheese.”

  He decided to run in circles around the hole. If he did that, he could get to it at any moment.

  He decided to run in circles around the hole.

  The monster and the mob grew closer. Arthur thought it looked as if the monster would reach him first. He was not sure this was a good thing. It might scare off the mob, so he stopped and waggled his cheese body at the mob.

  The cries of “CHEESE” grew louder.

  Arthur turned to check and was horrified. Powered by the lust for cheese, the monster was striding rapidly toward him, much faster than he had imagined. It was almost time to run . . . NO! He mustn’t run. He just had to jump in the hole.

  The urge to turn and run was huge, but he resisted it. So he stood right over the hole with one leg on either side.

  “Please let the jaws not miss me . . .”

  The monster was striding rapidly toward him.

  The monster was now only yards from him.

  Even Snatcher was caught up in the frenzy and was screaming commands. “We have to get the cheese before those others get it! Open the jaws, drop the head, and CHOMP!”

  Arthur watched as the monster lunged for him.

  “Time for the hole!”

  He breathed out, brought his legs together, and put his arms straight up in the air. Arthur felt the cheese loosen around him as he dropped, and then the bottom of the cheese hit the ground around the edge of the hole. There was a jerk as he fell free and continued down.

  The jaws snapped down on the cheese. In the approaching mob, the cheese lust turned to rage. “It’s got our cheese!”

  “Get it before it swallows!”

  The cheese-crazed mob fell upon the monster and started to tear it apart. Driven wild with desire, they were fearless.

  Snatcher and his crew knew that the fight was on. It was every man for himself.

  Arthur’s friends watched the mayhem with anxiety, uncertain exactly what was happening.

  “Let us pray he managed to drop into the hole. I should never have allowed this,” Willbury said in horror.

  The others kept quiet, and most of them had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

  It looked as if Arthur would be very lucky to survive. The mob were crawling over the monster like ants. Bits of the huge creature were torn away in the struggle. Then the “cheese” appeared, held above the heads of the mob, and the fighting grew more intense as figures jumped from the carcass of the wrecked monster to try to get to the cheese.

  The mob were crawling over the monster like ants.

  “I can’t bear to watch,” Willbury muttered as he turned away. The others strained their eyes in the hope of getting a glimpse of an uninjured Arthur.

  It was becoming a vicious battle, and in the melee the cheese hit the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces. The mob screamed and fell upon the fragments, kicking and fighting for every crumb.

  “They look like a herd of starved pigs,” said a very worried Tom.

  “Let’s just hope they only eat the cheese,” replied Kipper.

  As they watched, the mob seemed to slow as it searched for the last tiny fragments. Then an eerie calm settled on the whole scene.

  “We’d better go and rescue Arthur,” cried Kipper. This triggered a rush from the ship as Arthur’s friends headed toward the hole, where they hoped he was still hidden.

  As they got closer, they had to push past the cheese maniacs to get to the hole.

  Fish reached it first and looked down into the darkness. All he could see was mud and earth. Then the mud moved and a head emerged and blinked.

  “Hello, Fish!”

  “I missed you so much.”

  chapter 44

  THE WIND-UP . . .

  The friends all let out their breath with relief that Arthur was all right. Then smiles crossed their faces.

  “Thank heavens!” intoned Willbury.

  Kipper joined Fish in pulling Arthur from the hole, and what emerged was a very muddy and worried-looking hero. Arthur looked about frantically. He saw what he was looking for near the edge of the now-quiet mob.

  “Grandfather!”

  His grandfather looked rather blankly back at him. “Arthur?”

  Arthur ran to him and hugged him. “I missed you so much. How do you feel? Are you all right?”

  Grandfather thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. Where am I?”

  All around them the once-crazed mob were sitting around looking bewildered.

  Marjorie watched and then spoke. “I think the antidote has taken effect. But it has left them a bit bamboozled.”

  The mania was gone.

  Then Bert sprang to life. “We have to round up Snatcher and his mob. Let’s be quick before they get their wits back.”

  The pirates and rats quickly gathered up Snatcher and his men from amid the monster’s wreckage and the confused huddles of now-cured cheese fiends, and tied them up.

  Willbury watched as Snatcher was secured by Kipper and Tom.

  Snatcher was secured by Kipper and Tom.

  “Look in his pockets. He might have those contracts we signed.”

  Snatcher was in no state to protest, and Kipper searched him.

  “Is this what you want?” he said, pulling out a large wad of papers.

  Willbury took them and flicked through them. “Yes. I think it’s getting cold. Shall we light a fire?”

  Just as the ashes of the papers were being rubbed into the grass, the Squeakers arrived.

  “Right, then. What’s going on here?”

  “These are the men that are behind the awful cheese mania that has been plaguing the town,” Willbury replied. Then he turned to where the doctor was standing among the crowd, not as yet tied up. “And this ‘doctor’ will explain everything. You might also like to contact the Edinburgh police and inquire about unsolved hair-shaving crimes. I think you’ll find he was very involved.”

  The police had not had much luck recently, and as they were paid by the number of arrests they made, they were very happy to have Snatcher, all his crew, and the doctor.

  As the prisoners were led away to be locked up, they began to recover, and as they did, it dawned on them how bad a predicament they were in. They were not happy, and even though he was at the heart of it, Snatcher took every opportunity when the police had not got their eyes on him to kick any of his men that got within reach.

  “I don’t think with all the trouble they’ve caused the town that they are going to escape justice this time,” Willbury observed to Marjorie. They both smiled.

  Meanwhile, the still-recovering cheese maniacs wandered back home somewhat dazed and confused. This just left Arthur and all his friends among the broken wreckage of the monster.

  “I think we’ve all done rather well. Would anybody like to come back to the shop for a celebratory bucket of cocoa?” Willbury offered. “I at least could do with a sit-down.”

  Arthur took his grandfather’s hand and led him home. As they walked, Grandfather slowly regained his old self, but fortunately, not his old ills. Arthur told him of their adventures.

  “Seems to me that you can take care of yourself,
” said Grandfather.

  Willbury, who had been quietly walking alongside, looked rather bashful and spoke. “It’s not just himself he can look after. I don’t think any of us would have managed without him.”

  “Thank you,” Arthur said, smiling. “I did say I could be useful!”

  “I did say I could be useful!”

  Willbury just smiled back.

  The shop became so full with Arthur and all his friends that some had to sit on the stairs.

  Upstairs in Arthur’s bedroom sat a small group. The other boxtrolls and Titus were welcoming back their old friend Fish. Long into the night they asked him questions about the voyage, and as he told them, they shook their heads in wonder.

  Long into the night they asked him questions about the voyage.

  Below them in the shop the party got a little wild. Bucket after bucket of cocoa was passed around, until they could take no more, but still everybody talked about their adventures.

  Arthur sat by the fire close to Grandfather, and they listened to the others.

  “I wish I could have been there with you. I would have loved to have seen that island and the southern seas.”

  Arthur smiled. He felt lucky, despite all the troubles they had.

  “Next time!”

  “I hope that is not going to be for a few weeks,” said Willbury. “Unlike you, I need to recover.”

  Willbury then stood and held up one of the almost empty buckets of cocoa.

  “To Arthur. The finest, most courageous cheese there ever was.”

  “ARTHUR!” shouted his friends.

  “Next time!”

  THE HISTORY OF THE RATBRIDGE NAUTICAL LAUNDRY

  For a number of years before the Laundry arrived in Ratbridge, it had operated as a pirate ship around the English and European coasts. It was not a terribly profitable enterprise, but it did survive. The crew were not a brave bunch, and fighting was not really their thing. They liked the idea of being pirates and rather enjoyed dressing up and sailing, but going up against those who would not willingly part with their possessions seemed very disagreeable. It meant a lot of trouble and people getting hurt. No, they preferred trading in secondhand goods. These they would get from jumble sales in village halls in the various ports that they visited. As sailors most of them had learned to sew and mend, and this meant they were well equipped to recondition things.

  For a long time this raised an adequate income to live on, but jumble sales slowly became less frequent, and a new trend started for cart sales. These were sales where people would load up their carts with anything they wanted to get rid of, and assemble in a field. Other people would then come to the field and buy whatever they fancied. This was harder for the pirates, as the sales were usually held out of town and the pirates didn’t have transport to get about on land. Tension grew over the months and tempers frayed as the budget got tighter. This finally came to a head with the food. . . .

  The ship’s cook was a little brighter than most of those onboard and spent most of his energy trying to make extra money by embezzling the food fund. He did this by substituting ingredients in his preparation of the rations. His name was Pungent. Pungent had a great imagination, and he used this to create dishes that might (if good ingredients had been used) have been quite nice. But by cutting every corner in the making of them, he produced only the vilest of dishes. In fish pie he would substitute seaweed for fish. This he would cook until it no longer had any color and was so mushy that it could not be distinguished from fish that had also been boiled for as long. Instead of making a white sauce with butter, flour, and milk, he would boil sawdust until it produced thin milky glue. Then instead of a cheese and potato topping, he would boil socks down to make a flavoring that he added to recycled newspaper. The finished pie looked quite like a fish pie. It even had a vaguely cheesy smell, but it was certainly not fish pie and it tasted disgusting.

  One of the things that sailors tended to live on was ship’s biscuits. Most sailors had grown up with them, and it was to these that the pirates turned when they found everything else inedible. Ship’s biscuits were cheap to produce, but Pungent could not bear to let another opportunity for profit go by. The ingredients should be flour and salt. These were made into stiff dough, rolled out flat, baked, and then left to dry out until very, very hard. But even with so cheap a recipe, Pungent went to town. Over the months he reduced the amount of flour he used, replacing it with anything he could.

  Finally he went too far.

  Things had been bad on the jumble sale front for several weeks, and the crew were restless. Pungent was wandering the docks when he came across the remains of a piano. He had found that sawdust often worked very well as a replacement for flour in the biscuits—and here was something largely made of wood. Getting it onto the ship was no problem, and breaking it up in grindable bits was no problem, but it was covered in black lacquer. He decided that he would tell the pirates that he had used whole grain flour. That ought to satisfy them if they asked questions. He put the wood through the mincer, then decided to bulk it up by throwing in all the ivory keys. The mincer produced a large pile of “flour.” It had the faint odor of burning hair. Pungent added some seawater to the mix. After ten minutes of stirring he had produced a large gray ball. He squashed it out on the floor with his bare feet, then cut it up into slabs. After putting them in the stove, he turned up the heat and went to sleep in his hammock.

  As lunchtime approached, he took the biscuits out of the stove, retching at the appalling smell. He looked at them with pride—all gray and oily, with what looked like little teeth glinting in them. For the pirates’ lunch he knocked together a mixed grill from pieces of rubber boot and fried string. He placed the “food” on a large salver and put it on the dining table in the main cabin. As usual the pirates reluctantly wandered in and sat down. Each took a few pieces of the fry-up and tried to eat. Each, in turn, gave up. Then came the usual cry.

  “Where are the ship’s biscuits? I am not eating this!”

  Pungent went to the galley and brought out the new biscuits. Hands shot out and grabbed the biscuits. Then all was silent for a moment.

  “Oi! My biscuit has bitten me!”

  “So has mine!”

  “Me too!”

  “What has he done with our biscuits?”

  “It’s ornamentation! I just thought you would like something a bit different.”

  “I’ll give you something a bit different!”

  The pirates lost no time in avenging their truly awful supper. What followed was not pretty. Pungent received a large number of bruises from the flying biscuits and was then dragged on deck. It took a lot of persuasion by the captain to stop the crew from keelhauling Pungent. It was finally decided to maroon him.

  “Where we going to do that, then?”

  “The Isle of Wight is only about two hours away.”

  And so it was decided to leave him there. When he had been put in an open boat with his own mixed grill, he was set off and a party started. Over the course of the next few hours the pirates got very drunk and rather loud. Unlike many ships of its day, the May Lou had an engine, and into its boiler the biscuits were thrown.

  The party went on, and as the biscuits burned, the ship made good speed, unnoticed by the crew, on a path of its own choosing. The crew finally fell asleep, and still the ship steamed on. Then it stopped.

  The next morning a mast flying a skull and crossbones was seen rising from behind the Ratbridge Gristle works. Word spread about the town like wildfire, and soon more than half the town set off to find out more. A crowd had assembled on the canal bridge and along the towpath. For there—stuck under the bridge—was the front of a large ship.

  Before long the hubbub of the crowd woke the crew from their slumbers. Groggy from their deep sleep, it took them some time to understand what had happened to their ship.

  Optimistic at first, the crew set to and tried to free the ship, but to no avail. The crew then assembled on deck, and a m
eeting was held.

  “Well, it seems that we are stuck and broke!” said the captain.

  “What are we going to do, then?”

  “Well, it’s a Tuesday, and there won’t be any jumbles till Saturday, and we have to eat. I suggest that we put our thinking hats on and try to think of some way to get ourselves out of this mess.”

  “Well, let’s look at what we know we can do?”

  “We can plunder!”

  “No, we can’t! We are rubbish at that!”

  “We could offer boat trips!”

  “We’re stuck, stupid! Boat trips mean moving!”

  “We could open a laundry!”

  All fell silent again.

  “Yes,” said the captain. “We could open a laundry!”

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS • An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division • 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020www.SimonandSchuster.com • This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. • Copyright © 2010 by Alan Snow • Originally published in Great Britain in 2010 by Oxford University Press • All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. • ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. • The text for this book is set in Old Claude. • The illustrations for this book are rendered in pen and ink. • CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress. • ISBN 978-0-689-87049-1 • ISBN 978-1-4424-6823-8 (eBook)