Perfumed Pirates of Perfidy

by Charlie Small

  ‘Give up while you still can!’ shouted the chief guard, and a dozen pikes came sailing towards us, clattering onto the walkway around our feet. Captain Cut-throat fired again and I heard her bullet ping off the chief guard's helmet. Then I had an idea.

  ‘Keep them at bay,’ I said as I opened my rucksack and unfolded the giant leaf I had kept from my days in the jungle. I laid one of the pikes across its width and hacked the pole to the correct length with my hunting knife. I did the same with another pike for the length of the leaf, and then, using the string I kept in my explorer's kit, quickly bound the two poles together to make a cross. All the time Captain Cut-throat was firing and loading her pistols as fast as she could. The guards were gradually moving closer, while those on the turrets were busy firing and reloading their muskets. Luckily for us they were lousy shots!

  ‘Whatever you're doing, hurry up,’ cried the captain.

  ‘They'll be on us in a minute.’ I cut four slots into the leathery leaf and poked the ends of the poles through them.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ I asked the captain as I stepped between two of the outer wall's crenellations.

  ‘With my life, Charlie, with my life.’

  That's good, I thought, because that's just what you're about to do. I stood my contraption on its end, grabbed the cross-pole and shouted to the captain. ‘Hold on around my waist. Quick!’

  The captain let off one more shot and grabbed me around my middle.

  ‘Geronimo!’ I yelled and we jumped out into the black night.

  Captain Cut-throat was heavy and we dropped like a stone as pikes whizzed over our heads and bullets peppered holes in the leaf! It was all I could do to hold onto my homemade kite as it flapped wildly above us.

  ‘Do something, Charlie!’ cried the captain.

  I fought against the power of the rushing wind and levelled the kite. Immediately we caught an up-draught, the leaf filled with air and then we were gliding out over the cliff top as the sky flooded yellow with the rising sun.

  We'd better hurry, I thought, or the Betty Mae will leave us behind. I tipped the kite and we swooped across the golden water towards the ship.

  Captain Cut-throat slipped from my waist and grabbed me round my knees. ‘Hurry up, Charlie. I'm slipping!’

  We drifted lower and lower as we got closer to the Betty Mae. Soon Captain Cut-throat was running along the top of the waves, holding onto my trainers for dear life! And the Betty Mae was on the move! We called to them. We yelled and we hollered!

  ‘Over here, you numbskulls,’ bellowed the captain as we swooped in like a drunken albatross. ‘Don't you recognize an order when you— Glug, glug, glug.’ The captain's yells were cut short as she slowly disappeared under the waves. Then I hit the water, too, and the kite collapsed on top of us. We clung to the floating leaf until Lizzie rowed out to pick us up.

  Now we're coursing through the waves at top speed, the sun ahead of us, an action-packed night behind. But we're not out of trouble yet. Not far behind us, and going like the clappers, is Craik in a galleon bristling with guns. It won't be long before he's upon us again and I have to fight for my life. My little barrel-boat is hidden down here in my cabin, waiting for a clear chance to escape, but now is definitely not the right time to use it – I'd be a sitting duck! I know I'll have to go back on deck soon and prepare to fight, but without any of Jakeman's special inventions I don't know what chance we'll have. Craik's ship has more cannon than ours, and the Betty Mae still hasn't been repaired from our last battle.

  Oh well, at least things can't get any worse. Can they … ?

  ‘Ship ahoy!‘ called Rawcliffe Annie from up in the rigging.

  We know that, you blithering idiot!’ yelled Cut-throat. ‘Craik's been on our tail since sunrise.’

  ‘No, another ship ahoy!’ cried Annie, pointing off our starboard side.

  I rushed over, peered through my telescope and knew things had just got a lot, lot worse! Hurtling towards us was a phantom boat as white as ivory, the morning sun tinting her sails yellow. Her bows were carved into the mask of a grinning skull, whose eyes were windows that glowed dull red from lanterns swinging inside. On deck stood her crew, also dressed in white.

  I focused my telescope on their captain's face and gasped in fear. For I was looking into the hollow eyes of a sun-bleached, bone-white skull! The ivory ship was crewed by skeletons!

  ‘Friend or foe?’ asked Captain Cut-throat.

  I didn't say a word; I just handed her my telescope.

  ‘Foe!’ she replied, without even looking. ‘I've just remembered – we don't have any friends! Man the cannon and sharpen your cutlasses!’ she roared. ‘And prepare to dance the Waltz of Death!’

  Captain Cut-throat turned the Betty Mae in a wide sweeping curve away from the other galleons and then doubled back, straight towards Craik's ship. Craik had turned to follow the phantom ship, which was following us, and we were now all sailing in a circle in the famous Waltz of Death. Each ship had its cannons trained on the other two. If one fired, the other two would direct all their fire at the attacker. So it was a stalemate. No one dared shoot first!

  Round and round and round we sailed as the sun rose high into the sky. The sea had become very calm and not even the cry of a seagull disturbed the silence, only the creaking of the rigging and the occasional crack of wind in a sail. Slowly we all came to a standstill in a classic face-off. Would anybody fire first?

  The seconds grew into long, silent minutes until the tension became unbearable.

  Then Craik's cannons erupted into life and I had to dive for cover.

  ‘Let ‘em have it!’ hollered Captain Cut-throat in return. ‘Fire at will!’

  Our cannons roared in answer and were joined by those of the ivory galleon. The air was filled with a terrifying thunderous sound and great billows of smoke rolled across the surface of the sea until we could see nothing at all.

  When the cannons finally fell silent and the smoke cleared, all that remained of Craik's ship was a mass of floating driftwood. Sailors were clinging to the wreckage and clambering into the lifeboats. Craik himself was straddling a length of broken mast; he was screaming at us and shaking his fist. We'd beaten him again!

  ‘Brilliant!’ I cried. ‘It's all over!’

  ‘Not quite, sonny,’ said Cut-throat. ‘Look!’ And she pointed towards the other great galleon, which was heading straight for us like some terrible ghostly apparition. Her skeletal captain stood at the bows, pistol at the ready.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked, my heart beating fast.

  ‘The ghosts of dirty, stinking pirates, I'll be bound,’ replied Captain Cut-throat. ‘Best say your prayers, boy.’

  The approaching galleon looked like a huge, sinister wedding cake, decorated from top to bottom with intricate carvings of decapitated heads and skulls. She fired, and the Betty Mae's cannons spat back.

  Splinters of wood whipped through the air all around us. Smoke filled our lungs and stung our eyes as we stumbled around the deck. I was in the middle of a major battle and it was complete confusion. But there was no time to be scared: I was too busy carrying out Cutthroat's orders – trimming the sails and hauling on ropes – while the pirates fired shot after shot from the gun deck.

  Gradually we manoeuvred the Betty Mae alongside the foe. ‘Prepare to board!’ yelled Captain Cut-throat. ‘Take no prisoners!’

  But as I grabbed my cutlass and prepared to fight for my life, a horde of ghost pirates came swinging through the smoke, their cutlasses singing in the air. They dropped onto the deck of the Betty Mae, led by the ferocious skeleton warrior. A mass of wild hair sprouted from beneath his hat, his skull grinned and his hollow eyes stared. He raised his sword, ready to slice Captain Cutthroat in two.

  And then he stopped!

  ‘Ivy?’ he gasped, and pulled and pulled at his face until it came off in his hand …

  It was a mask – a skull mask – and underneath was a rather ordinary-looking man.

  �
��Ted?’ she replied, and they fell into each other's arms. It was Captain Cut-throat's husband and his gang.

  Soon all the pirates were hugging, their old quarrels forgotten, and I'd never been so relieved in my life!

  ‘Tonight we'll have a party to end all parties,’ roared Ted – or Captain Bones, as he preferred to be called. ‘You're all invited aboard the Saracen's Skull at eight o'clock sharp. Bring a barrel!’

  Now, as the pirates sit around chatting and laughing, I've crept off to my room to write up these latest adventures and to check on my barrel-boat before I finally make my escape.

  Yes, I'm finally going to do it! Tonight, during the party, I'm determined to slip away. Even if I have to pedal for days! I've had enough of pirates and thief-takers and I want to go home!

  I've done it! I've escaped and I'm floating through the sky by the strangest means of transport ever! It's a bit hard to write dangling like this, but I can't wait any longer to explain what happened …

  I waited until the party was in full swing on the Saracen's Skull Then, as the pirates sang their bawdy sea shanties and danced the hornpipe, I crept back aboard the Betty Mae. Heart beating fast, I sneaked into the captain's empty cabin and, by the light of my torch, found the dress she had worn on the raid, still damp from her ducking in the sea. Hung with it was the little matching handbag and I snapped open the clasp and felt inside. There they were, my mobile and the wind-up charger! I pocketed them and scuttled back out of the door and down to my room. Here I uncovered my barrel-boat and then, rather awkwardly, dragged it along the deserted corridors and up the steep wooden steps that led onto the main deck.

  The noise from the party on the Saracen's Skull covered the splash as I dropped my barrel-boat over the Betty Mae's side. With my rucksack on my back, packed with all my explorer's stuff, a slab of smoked whale blubber for the journey and a large bag of gold, I climbed down the rope ladder into the floating barrel.

  Whoa! It sank very low in the water, and only my head and shoulders showed above the waves. I found the pedals with my feet and, crossing my fingers that the contraption would work, pushed against them with all my might. Slowly they started to turn and the paddles inched the barrel forwards. Then, as I built up speed, they began to turn with ease: the paddles churned the water and I stuttered away from the ship. It worked!

  So long, suckers, I thought. But I hadn't gone more than a hundred metres when I was spotted. It was Bobo, of course.

  ‘Deserter!’ she screamed from the rigging, bringing the pirates swarming to the ship's rails.

  ‘Traitor!’ shouted Captain Cut-throat.

  ‘Come back, you dog!’ growled her husband. ‘I'll skin you alive.’

  Go back? No fear! I paddled as fast as I could, but was soon under attack. A musket ball struck the barrel a glancing blow and water started to seep through the cracked side.

  I started to sink.

  ‘Help!’ I cried.

  ‘So long, shrimp!’ the pirates shouted. ‘Say hello to Davy Jones's locker!’

  And while Bobo screamed with delight, they went back to their celebrations.

  But I didn't sink. Not quite, anyway.

  As my barrel-boat broke up in the water, I managed to grab a couple of boards and wedge them through the netting containing the coconuts. By lying flat across the boards and kicking my legs, I managed to doggy-paddle through the waves and away into the night.

  It was a cold, lonely night, and I shivered as I paddled onwards. I had no idea which direction to go, so I just let the currents take me where they would. I had left the pirates and Thief-taker Craik far behind and that was good enough for me. Then, when the sun finally rose, I found myself completely alone on a wide, flat sea. But it looked nothing like the one I had sailed on in the Betty Mae. The green-grey sea had been replaced by one that shone as bright as silver, and columns of rock dotted the seascape – home to flocks of albino cormorants that watched me like silent ghosts.

  The sea was perfectly still, and I floated through the crags and rocks for hour after hour, amazed by the weirdness of the place, and only slowly realizing that my tiny raft was sinking lower and lower in the water.

  The wooden planks had become waterlogged and I had to get rid of some weight, or I would be dragged down to the bottom of the ocean.

  I opened my rucksack and reached inside for the heaviest thing – the fat bag of gold I'd brought from the pirates’ ship. ‘Goodbye, life of riches,’ I sighed as I upended the bag and watched every last doubloon disappear below the waves.

  ‘Do you mind?’ snapped a strange little ball of a fish, breaking the surface of the waves. ‘You very nearly hit me.’

  ‘I'm sorry’ I gasped, surprised to find myself talking to a fish.

  ‘Well, you should be more careful where you dump your rubbish,’ he said, all puffed up.

  ‘I said I'm sorry’ I barked. ‘Who are you anyway, telling people what to do?’

  ‘Who am I?’ gasped the fish, gulping in a mouthful of air, doubling in size and bouncing on the surface of the sea. ‘Who am I? Why, I'm the famous purple puffer fish.’

  ‘Famous for what? I've never heard of you.’

  ‘Famous for holding my breath,’ boasted the puffer fish. ‘I am world champion, the best breath-holder in the known universe, the emperor of arrested exhalation, the …’

  But I had stopped listening to the puffer fish's bragging: an idea started to form in my mind.

  ‘Bet I can hold my breath longer than you,’ I said, reaching inside my rucksack for the ball of string.

  ‘I doubt that,’ bragged the puffer fish. ‘I can hold my breath for over a year.’

  ‘I don't believe you,’ I said.

  ‘Just watch me, then,’ said the puffer fish. He sucked in such a huge gulp of air that he blew up to the size of a garden shed and started to float up into the sky.

  I quickly threw two loops of string over his spiked back and tied them to my sinking platform.

  Slowly the puffer fish lifted us out of the waves.

  That was hours ago, and we're still going up. I can see for miles in every direction, but there's no sign of land. I'm sure this strange puffer fish can't really hold his breath for a year, but it looks like I might be flying for a while, so I'm going to tie myself to the plank and try to get some sleep.

  I'll write again when we land.

  Everything has changed again! I'm now sheltering behind a large rock on an almost featureless ice-field, the wind whipping up tiny shards to sting my face.

  The puffer fish and I drifted across that vast ocean for months and months, the scenery never ending and never changing. I lived on coconuts, whale blubber, rainwater, seaweed, and raw eggs that I managed to pinch from the cormorant nests as we drifted by. As the puffer fish was too busy holding his breath to hold a conversation, it was a very lonely trip. The most I ever got out of him was the occasional squeak of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

  On the dawning of the three hundred and sixty-fifth day, however, I woke to a completely different scene. At some time during the night we had left the ocean far behind and were now sailing above a patchwork of fields and hills, farmsteads and hamlets. Happily I waved at the people below. But when they saw me, they started to shout and wave me away.

  ‘What's wrong?’ I called, but we were too high to hear their reply, and anyway I had no way of changing the direction of the puffer-fish balloon. So we sailed on until the hills grew larger, the air became colder and the sky greyer. Soon we were floating above the icy tops of jiggedy-jaggedy mountains.

  I leaned down and snapped off a large ice stalagmite and licked it like a huge ice-pop. It tasted delicious and mysterious, like a wish or a dream, better than any lolly I had ever tried. I snapped off another, then another. I couldn't get enough! But soon I began to feel drowsy and my eyelids grew heavy As I drifted off to sleep, I heard the puffer fish squeak, splutter and, with a huge raspberry, collapse like a punctured party balloon.

  ‘World record!’ I heard h
im shout as we ricocheted across the mountain range and zoomed at a thousand miles an hour into a billowing, blinding snowstorm. But by then, I was sleeping like a baby …

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  Published by David Fickling Books

  an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Charlie Small

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of

  Random House Children's Books, in 2007.

  David Fickling Books and colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The perfumed pirates of Perfidy / by Charlie Small. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm. — (The amazing adventures of Charlie Small; notebook 2)

  Summary: A continuation of the purported journal of a young adventurer who is now trapped

  aboard a ship with a crew of frightening female pirates.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-49441-2

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Pirates—Fiction. 3. Diaries—Fiction.]

  PZ7.P4273 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007027612

  v3.0