by Nette Hilton
Did they wear swimmers? Pyro hadn’t seen pictures of pirates with swimmers on but that didn’t mean they didn’t own them.
San Simeon looked at the pirates. They were splashing and jumping in and out of the waves that lapped the sandy shore of the Caribbean Island. Their clothes were scattered in untidy piles all over the beach. Boots and shoes were left where they’d been dropped. They’d be in trouble if sand crabs decided to make a home of them. It gave San Simeon an idea.
Quickly he searched around the mangroves that grew on the other side of the sandhill. It was lucky it was late in the day and the tide was low, as thousands of blue-backed sand crabs huddled around, making sand-crab patties as they hollowed out new homes.
Simeon swooped. ‘Grab as many as you can, me hearties!’ he called to his crew who’d crept along the beach in search of their brave captain. ‘There’ll be one less pirate ship on the high seas tonight!’
Using their hats and moving as quickly as possible, because sand crabs are fast little creatures that dart off in every direction when you least expect it, the crew of the good ship Olga rounded up as many as possible.
‘Now,’ whispered Simeon as they lay, belly down, on the crest of the hill. ‘You and you and you, me brave hearties, are going to grab their clothes and run to the south. You and you, me scurrilous lads, are going to tip these crabs around their boots.’
The pirate fighters laughed.
It was a good plan. When the pirates ran up the beach to retrieve their clothes the sand crabs would scuttle up their legs and give them a scare into the bargain.
‘That’ll teach ‘em to take fair maidens as hostages!’
It was a nasty habit of pirates to take maidens and children and just about anybody as hostages to work for them. Then they’d sell them for slaves to people who were probably not too fussy about buying second-hand stock. It was a cruel habit and San Simeon and his crew were kept busy rescuing all sorts of unfortunate hostages, not always just fair maidens.
‘What if they don’t pull their boots on?’ one newer member of the Olga asked. He’d not been there long enough to know how very devious their captain was.
‘Oh, they’ll pull ‘em on all right,’ Simeon answered. ‘Feel how hot that sand is!’
It was true. The pirate fighters were clad in all their pirate-fighting finery and the sand was merely warm as it pressed against their velvet trews and floral vests.
‘Yo ho ho!’ laughed the crew.
They laughed even louder when the pirates, with their clothes and their wet undies and their bare feet, were all lined up in chains along the shore.
‘One less pirate ship to darken the waters!’ smiled San Simeon as he sailed off to the horizon.
A cloud, small and dark, blocked his vision. ‘Of course,’ he added in a serious voice, ‘the Dreaded Roaring Roy is still at large …’
‘You’ll turn into a prune if you don’t get out of that puddle soon,’ Auntie Mor was saying as she picked up towels and shirts and thongs. ‘What d’you reckon? Ready for some lunch?’
Pyro hauled himself out of the sandy pool. The tide was coming in and filling up all the hidey places under the casuarina trees that lined the inlet. They’d have been great places to hide treasure if it wasn’t for the tide.
‘Always check above the high water mark!’ San Simeon reminded his men when they were on a mission to find stolen treasures.
‘What’s wrong with under those trees?’ a newcomer asked.
‘Aha! There’s many a pirate’s been left on a desert island with naught but a bottle of water for company who’d made that mistake. The tide, boy, the tide! Always remember the tide!’
‘It’s quicker if we cross over there,’ Auntie Mor was saying as she set off down a small embankment. ‘It’ll save us walking all the way around the top.’
‘There’s some stairs over this way.’ Pyro pointed to a steep stairway that had been built a little further along.
Waves were already lapping against the rocks and sending long, silent surges into the bank. ‘You’ll get wet,’ Pyro called. ‘And it’s all boggy over there.’
‘Nonsense.’ Auntie Mor headed off.
So did Mr Stig.
Pyro didn’t like the look of the bog that was quickly forming around the deeper rocks. It looked very sucky and he had a sneaking suspicion that underneath that sand would be black ooky mud.
Always remember the tide! ‘The tide’s coming in!’ Pyro yelled.
It didn’t take long to get to the top of the stairway. There was time for Pyro to hurry around to the other end of the beach where Mr Stig and Mor were trying to scrape the mud off their legs.
‘You’d reckon someone’d put a sign up telling you not to cut across that bit of swamp!’ Auntie Mor said.
Mr Stig pointed out the stairway that was built into the side of the bank.
‘I think we were supposed to use that,’ he said.
Auntie Mor told him nobody loved a smartie pants and if he was so clever about deciding which way they should have gone, perhaps he’d speak up sooner next time.
Pyro went with them to the camper and helped with lunch. Afterwards Mr Stig sat with the paper and studied the form while Mor took some photos and then found her book.
San Simeon wandered alone across the dunes. It was lonely when his lads were away. The time, he decided, should be put to good use. You never knew when it might be necessary to find a hiding place or a lookout, and this part of the world was quite unknown to him.
He set off.
As he went he thought a parrot would be a nice thing to have. It could sit on his shoulder and he could teach it all sorts of famous sayings. He would think further about it while he searched out the hidden secrets of this strange land.
There were some excellent hiding places and even a tree with a rope attached that would let you swing across the narrow channel instead of wading through the muddy part. A rowing boat was lolling around in the little waves and the bridge further along would be great for leaping off, if that was something you needed to do. Which Pyro didn’t.
The town was beyond the bridge and, back the other way, some picnic tables and benches and barbecues perched on the escarpment that led down to the inlet and the ocean.
And Pyro had explored all of it and it was still only two o’clock.
Auntie Mor had given him a postcard and suggested he write a letter to his mum. She said it mightn’t be a good idea to mention getting stuck in the bog as she knew Deirdre wasn’t too fond of dirt.
‘And she especially wouldn’t like to think I was dragging you into quicksand! Just give her my love and tell her to give Nan a kiss from me and fill up the rest with the swim we had this morning.’
Pyro did.
And then he took out his pirate book. He liked treasure maps and the way little lines ran all over islands and around palm trees with an ‘X’ marking the spot where the treasure was hidden.
He checked out the side window of the camper. The ocean was on the right. He looked across to the little swimming cove where the waves slapped sweetly on the shore. That was round the corner and to the left. How many paces would that be? And then, further back where the boggy beach was, how far back there? And what were the landmarks?
He craned up.
‘See something interesting?’ Mr Stig looked out.
‘Not really.’ Pyro thought about mentioning the pirate map but was worried that it might disappear from his head if he spent too long talking about it. That sometimes happened with drawings, he’d discovered. One minute they were there in your brain, the next … gone, leaving a pencil with a line that had nowhere to go.
‘Keep looking,’ Mr Stig said. ‘You’re bound to find something sooner or later.’
Pyro had already found something. He was studying the map he was going to draw in his head. He was busy deciding on the way it would have a skull and crossbones at the top corner. And compass points that had twirly lines all over the place like they do in pirat
e books.
And he had almost decided how the bravest Pirate Chaser of them all was going to find the map and save the treasure.
Sweet Calamity Belle had been captured. She was the granddaughter of the richest merchant who’d ever sailed the Caribbean. He had amassed his fortune and then, as he’d sailed home with his ship filled to the rigging with gold and silver from the Aztecs, spices and jams from the East Indies and glorious silks from the silkworms of China, the most dreaded thing happened. His ship struck stormy seas and, as she foundered on the cruel rocks, Captain Ricketty Belle had hidden her wares.
‘Never fear, me fair ship Freydra, I’ll be back for ye!’ And he set off across land, armed with one long sword and pushing a wheelbarrow in which he’d stacked his most precious cargo.
He did go back and he did float Freydra off the rocks. He did mend her sides and fill her again with spices and sweet jams, then he set sail to fetch the treasure he’d hidden ashore.
He never claimed it. Captured he was, by the wicked pirates of the South Seas. He had time only to draw the map of his treasure on the tummy of his tiny granddaughter as he set her adrift. He knew a paper map would be damaged forever in the waves that lapped at the tiny boat he used for her escape.
‘Go safely, little lady!’ he called. Then he cried ‘Take me!’ and gave himself up to the Wicked Pirates of the South Seas.
Little Calamity was saved by the women of the Illiam tribes of the Itchum islands. The Illiams of Itchum didn’t wash very often so the map on the baby’s tum became etched there for all time. Of course, the Itchum Islanders knew about it.
But they didn’t tell anyone.
It was going to be the best map. Already there were palm trees and a place where the tide would come in and make a quicksand bog. There’d be a hill, and a graveyard and a little town and there’d be a long fence that separated the town from the cruel ocean. And it was all going to be small enough to fit on a baby’s tum.
But it could be done bigger and then shrunk on the photocopier when he got home.
San Simeon looked in horror at Sweet Calamity. She was wrapped around with rope and was, at that very moment, being hung out over the deep, dark ocean.
Shark fins circled. Great open jaws full of razor-sharp teeth snapped at the maiden’s slipper-clad feet as she was dangled, closer and closer and closer, to her doom.
‘Save me!’ she cried. ‘Help!’
The pirates laughed. ‘HA HA HAHAHAHA HAAAH!’ They leaned over the gunnels and dunked her just low enough to let the waves splash at her. ‘Give up the map, me lovely!’ they shouted. They didn’t know where it was but they bellowed and brayed just the same. ‘Or it’s shark bait you’ll be!’
Simeon saw her sweet hands clutched tightly to her heart. He saw her eyes, wide open and full of fear. He saw the dreadful circle of hungry sharks.
‘Never!’ she cried. ‘I’ll never tell where it is!’
‘Bring her up, you fools!’ Simeon roared as, with one mighty blow, he sent the miserable Roaring Roy Bistro skidding along the deck. Before Bistro could find his feet, Simeon was on him, wrapped around him like an octopus holding a clam. ‘Tell them, Bistro!’
Bistro didn’t.
Simeon squeezed tighter. ‘If you don’t, she’ll disappear under the waves and so will the treasure map! It will be gone forever!’
The pirates stopped laughing. One of them scratched his head and the other his jaw while they tried to think hard about the map that was down there, snugly tucked inside the maiden’s brain.
‘He’s got a point, Cap’n,’ said one.
‘Yeahs,’ said another. ‘It’s like she’ll be in the shark’s belly and so will the map.’
Another pirate stepped back from the side and said, ‘Somebody’ll have to go over and make her tell us where it is, won’t they, Cap’n?’
Roaring Roy Bistro twisted around. ‘It’ll be you …’ he cried as he hauled himself and Simeon to the railing. ‘Over you go, Simeon!’
And with a quick, slick, two-steppy step Simeon found himself hanging by his heels above the ocean, the maiden and the ship-slapping waves.
‘You’ll never win!’ he cried. ‘I’ll get you for this!’
One heel started to slip. One heel and then the other.
San Simeon glanced around him. Sharks to the left, sharks to the right, pirates armed to the teeth above him and a fair maiden with a map below him.
A fair maiden swinging on a rope.
A glint appeared in Simeon’s eye. ‘Aha,’ he muttered. ‘San Simeon lives to fight another day!’
First, though, he had to make his plan work.
Pyro was beginning to think he’d need a map of the camper before he could get started. At home he would simply have opened the drawer of his desk and everything would have been there. His drawing pencils, from 2H all the way up to 8B, lived in a metal tin and his coloured pencils lived in a circular plastic tube. Gel pens, which were not his favourite because they often left giant blobs very unexpectedly, were kept at the back of the drawer, and markers, the non-fluoro ones, lived on the left-hand side of the shelf. Pyro’s dad once brought home a giant-sized pencil case from one of his trips away, but Pyro preferred to keep things as they were when they were first bought.
‘All my mates had pencil cases full to the brim when I was at school,’ his dad had said.
Pyro could have said that they still did. ‘I like them to stay in their own special packets,’ he said instead. ‘They get broken and the drawing pencils make black marks on the others.’
‘Perhaps he could use your pencil case for something else,’ his mum said. ‘You know how particular he is.’
Pyro’s dad said a few words about boys who were particular and it was high time Pyro joined the Limpton Raiders Junior Team and got out a bit more.
‘We can’t all be famous footy players, can we?’ his mum had said.
Pyro hadn’t said anything but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be any sort of a footy player let alone a famous one.
He was pretty sure his dad thought so, too.
‘How’s it going, Pyro?’ Mr Stig appeared in the doorway of the camper. He was all pink and shiny from his shower. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
Pyro held up a chewed stump of green pencil and a short red one that had bingo written down the side. ‘I just need something to sharpen them,’ he said. ‘Mum doesn’t like me to use the sharp knives.’
‘Sensible.’ Mr Stig huffed to the back end of the camper and dug around in the pile of clothes at the side of the bed. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘use this.’
It was a pocket knife, a tiny one, made of mother-of-pearl shell. It had a silver loop at one end so it could be joined to a chain and hung from a belt. And the blade was hidden away inside.
‘Let me show you how to use it so you don’t cut your fingers.’ Mr Stig carefully opened it up, showing Pyro how to hold it so it wouldn’t slip and, if it did, would only fall to the ground and not cut anyone.
Before he knew it the pencils were sharpened. A quick search in the bottom of the storage seat next to the table revealed a drawing pad with hardly any pages used at all.
‘Fancy that,’ said Auntie Mor when she saw it. ‘I wondered what happened to that. Just as well I can’t draw.’
Mr Stig looked at Pyro. ‘If you can’t draw, why did you buy a drawing book, Mor?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘just have a look at it. There’s all these lovely trees and birds on the cover, and the writing’s all fancy. And the paper’s all smooth and ready.’ She sniffed the book. ‘Even smells good. Why wouldn’t I buy it?’ She handed it to Pyro. ‘Get stuck into it, kiddo! Draw up a storm.’
‘What about you?’ It was a really nice drawing book. And it was begging to be filled with colours and pictures.
Auntie Mor looked at her book a second longer. ‘Nope. Probably just spoil it for you. You take it and … hey!’ She spun around and pointed one finger at a little cupboard tucked up aga
inst the ceiling. ‘I think I’ve even got some proper pencils.’
There were proper pencils and some modelling clay and even a bit of lino that was going to be a lino cut.
‘Do you want to be an artist?’ Mr Stig said.
Auntie Mor blushed. ‘Too big and clumsy,’ she said. She held out her hands. ‘These hands are good for teaching people to swim. And for driving big old campers all over the place.’
Pyro sat down at the table. He had everything he needed to make the best map ever. Carefully he opened the book and held the bingo pencil ready.
‘You’re going to have to take it outside,’ Auntie Mor said. ‘I’m just about to start getting dinner underway. Go and sit at one of the picnic tables.’
As he clambered down the steps she handed him a tablecloth. ‘Be a shame to get gunk all over that cover, wouldn’t it?’
Pyro wrapped the book and the pencils in the cloth. He knew a special way of folding it so it was like a carry bag. He’d read it in his mother’s magazine and knew it would come in handy.
He strung it over his shoulder and set off. It was a little like an old-fashioned satchel and, for a second, Pyro imagined himself as a young explorer off to see the world with all his possessions at his side. He could have been Young Jim from Treasure Island who was dragged on board a pirate ship and made to work as a ship’s boy. San Simeon would never press-gang anyone.
‘We’re the bravest of the brave!’ he’d cried on his first adventure. ‘There’ll be no one on my good ship Olga who’s not wantin’ to be here, you can be sure of that! How can you fight a good fight if the stuffing’s been knocked out of you getting you to stay on board!’
All his brave crew had cheered then. They’d clapped each other on the back and vowed that they’d only have men who longed to stand up for goodness and right.