by Nette Hilton
‘You can say that again,’ Pyro answered and this time they fell down and rolled about laughing so much that the old couple came out again and looked like they might even walk all the way over to really have a go.
‘Quick! This way!’ Pyro leapt ahead and down the track. ‘There’s a good place down here!’
Quickly he led the way to the bend and then stopped. ‘In here. Quick!’
Once they’d pushed through the tight brace of branches that clambered outwards trying to get a good place at the front, they found themselves in a tiny clearing.
‘It’s like a proper hide-out,’ said Min. ‘How’d you know it was here?’
‘Didn’t.’ Pyro tried hard not to look pleased with himself. ‘Just figured it out.’
‘You never!’
‘I did. It’s the way the track twists back over there.’ Pyro pointed out beyond the trees as if it was obvious.
Min looked a bit puzzled.
‘We can go further in.’ This time Pyro couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. ‘Look up there.’
It was a kingdom. The trees were growing out from a tiny ledge shielding a small, clear area that was perfect for looking out to sea.
But best of all, the absolute best, was the cave that was sheltered by the overhang of rock.
A realio-trulio cave.
‘There’ll be none creepin’ up on us now, me hearties!’ San Simeon said. ‘She’s a natural wonder, this lookout. And any who try … aha!’
The crew aha’d and ha-ha’d in their knowingest ways.
‘We’ll get ‘em, won’t we, Cap’n!’ they cried, although, truth be told, they weren’t sure exactly how they were going to get anyone, especially since they were hiding away hoping they wouldn’t be seen.
‘We won’t be gettin’ ‘em,‘ said San Simeon. ‘Black Bella will though.’
Lights lit up in those pirate fighters’ eyes. Old Black Bella, eh. She was the best cannon that ever was turned. They chuckled with glee as they thought of her launching her great cannonballs out, out, out over the ocean to blast holes in the tawdry bottoms of pirates’ ships.
‘Her cannonballs can’t miss from up here!’ they roared.
‘What?’ Min looked back. He was standing, hands on his hips, gazing out to sea from the opening formed by the rock ledge. ‘What’d you say?’
‘Just thinking.’ Pyro hoped he hadn’t said anything at all. ‘You could aim cannonballs out to sea from here … if you were a pirate.’
‘You could.’ Min picked up a small pebble. ‘We’re not pirates though.’ The pebble was tossed up and down and up and down in Min’s hand. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he said.
Pyro wasn’t sure. ‘Is it to do with that rock?’
‘It certainly is!’
‘Is it to do with that rock and this lookout?’
‘It certainly is!’
‘Is it to do with that rock and this lookout and pirates?’
‘YAY!!!!’ Min leapt about waving his arms. ‘Give the boy a prize! He’s guessed it.’
Pyro danced about too. He wasn’t quite sure why but it was beginning to sound a bit like fun. ‘We can build a hide-out!’
‘We can launch cannonballs.’ Min hefted the little pebble.
‘Launch cannonballs? That?’ Pyro giggled. ‘It’s the littlest cannonball on the planet!’
‘No, it’s not!’ Min scavenged around in the dust. He collected an even smaller pebble. ‘This is the smallest cannonball!’
‘’Tis not!’ Now Pyro was scrambling about. ‘This is!’
By the time they’d agreed that there were no smaller cannonballs in this little bit of earth, they were covered in dust and grimy sweat.
Pyro flung himself onto the grass that clung, like a forgotten carpet, to the curve on the hill. Min sprawled out beside him with Becks keeping watch between them. She’d helped with the cannonball search by digging madly between their hands.
Pyro looked around. ‘You’d never throw a rock far enough to get out to sea.’
Min raised himself onto one elbow. ‘It’d be hard to get over those branches. You’d have to chuck it really high.’
Then, Pyro knew, they’d both had the same thought at exactly the same moment. They’d both jumped up, pointed at each other and shouted, ‘Slingshots.’
It was too much.
‘How’d you know I was going to say that?’ they cried together.
And, because they’d said that together too, they had to do scissors, paper, rock to see who got to go first.
It was brilliant.
‘We could get pine cones from the other beach …’
‘And make out there’s a ship down there and aim for it!’
‘Ping ’em!’ Min giggled.
‘Pong ’em!’ sang Pyro.
They stopped laughing long enough to make plans for the front of the hide-out. It would need some more branches shoved in so no one would be able to get in without making a lot of noise.
Perhaps it needed a bell … ‘No’! sang Min. A bucket full of water that would dump all over them if they tried.
And ropes. They could stretch some rope across so that intruders would be tripped if they managed to escape the dunking. Pyro wasn’t too sure how they were going to suspend a bucket but he could see promise with the rope.
Then Becks, who’d been sitting quietly catching her breath, pricked up her ears and let out a very low growl.
‘Quick!’ Min lay down flat on his stomach. ‘Get down.’
Pyro was as flat as one of Dad’s handkerchiefs.
‘Guess who?’
Pyro craned forward. They were a little above the level of the track and he could see, as he peered around the lowest branches, the rising heads of the Two Worries.
‘It’s the Worries,’ he said.
Min giggled. ‘The Whats?’
‘Not the Whats.’ Pyro was trying so hard not to giggle that he snorted. ‘The Worries! It’s what I called them when they were chucking stuff at us today.’
Beyond their hiding place the Worries had slowed. ‘Did you hear something?’ Plonker was glancing behind him.
‘Like what?’ Sausage Lips was listening really hard. ‘Can’t hear nothing at all.’
Plonker sneered. ‘Thought I heard Min Stobey. He’s looking to cop it, that kid! Did you see the way he took off after school today. I reckon he’s got something on.’
‘Yeah.’ Sausage Lips started off up the path again. ‘I reckon he has too.’
‘What do you think it is, then? What’s he up to?’ Plonker glanced around again before setting off up the path.
Pyro turned around just in time to see Min pull faces at their backs.
‘I’d like to get that Plonker, just once,’ he said. ‘He’s always after us.’
They waited until the coast looked clear and then set off down the cliff face. They were pretty certain the Worries would be sitting at the table at the top of the cliff walk, hoping for trouble.
The way Min put it was that, as they weren’t that keen to be the trouble, they’d go the long way round.
‘See you tomorrow,’ Min said when they reached the edge of Mor’s camper site. ‘My gran’ll be worried if we don’t get home before dark. Are you all right to get over there by yourself?’
The Two Worries weren’t anywhere to be seen. ‘Right as rain,’ Pyro said. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Pyro Watson woke early. He didn’t mind the kookaburras hacking and coughing their way into the day. Or the sounds of campers packing up. The old couple who were travelling around Australia weren’t leaving though. It looked like Australia would have to wait a little longer to greet them on their next stopover. Auntie Mor said she was hoping they’d choof off soon because she’d seen their photos four times already.
Pyro rolled over to check out the ocean and the day. It was shiny and blue and gold again which meant they’d probably go down to the rock pool. The tide was wrong though, Auntie Mor said, to go down early
, so it looked like the octopus would have to wait to squirt its ink at passing swimmers.
It was going to be a good day and thoughts of an ink-squirting octopus were easily shoved out of the way to make room for the new, the wonderful, the incredible hide-out and its construction.
And Min.
And Becks.
A smile crept across Pyro’s mouth when he thought back over the way Min could make things sound funny. Min just said things out loud like it didn’t matter what anybody else thought. It was different to Geezer. Geeze liked things to be a bit more organised and he didn’t say anything fast.
He was all right though, Geeze. Graham Achmed Radhi Smith. Ms Cllump, not Miss or Mrs but Mzzzzzz Cllump, had told everyone that Geezer was from India and had raved on about how brilliant that was. Geezer said he wasn’t from India, he was from Australia. It didn’t stop Mzzz Cllump though. On International Day, when everyone was supposed to come in a national costume of some sort, she wanted Geezer to wear a turban.
‘I want to come as a surfer,’ he’d said.
Ms-not-Miss-or-Mrs Cllump said not to be ridiculous because a surfer wasn’t a nationality like Australian or Pakistani or Vietnamese or Indian. A surfer was just someone who surfed.
‘You can’t surf anyway,’ Donny Millet had said. Everyone knew that Donny Millet was the best surfer in the class and his dad had won cups or whatever you win if you surf the best. ‘Can’t even swim properly.’
A couple of girls laughed because they reckoned anything Donny said was cool, and Mzzz Cllump explained that everyone was different and learned things faster and slower than everyone else and yadda-yadda-yadda like she did whenever anyone was getting picked on. It didn’t make any difference to getting picked on except that the ones doing the picking got a bit fed-up and usually wandered out into the playground and delivered a good shove or a quick trip as well as a bit more picking.
It washed off Geezer though. He had a lazy way of smiling like he’d just thought up something really bad that just might happen to nuisances like Donny or Sumo-Pong if he could only work up the energy to do it. And, if that didn’t work, he got out of the way quickly when he didn’t feel like being shoved. He couldn’t swim but he was quick on his feet. He didn’t trip over easily either and Donny and Sumo-Pong more or less gave up. It probably helped that Geezer’s dad was a soldier. He had turned up in his soldier’s uniform one day when Geezer had to go home early. Donny and Sumo-Pong did salutes behind his back but they stopped quick-smart when Mr Smith turned around.
It’d be nice to have a dad who was a soldier. He was probably a colonel or something special.
Pyro’s dad worked in a bank and played rugby and did sport. Donny and Sumo-Pong wouldn’t be scared of someone just because they played rugby. They didn’t get it with games. They never took ‘out’ without a fight. Sports days with Donny or Sumo-Pong were a trial, Mzzz Cllump said. And they were never, ever on the same team or even on the same field at the same time. She made sure of it.
Geeze wouldn’t be worried about the Two Worries. He’d just move on a seat and, if they wanted that seat too, well, he’d just keep going. Pyro could almost see the Worries getting fed up with trying to annoy Geezer and leaving him alone. They’d probably chase him and, if they met him on the way to the shops or something, block the path and try to shove him or twist his arm, but Geezer was pretty good at making sure he stayed in places where that didn’t happen.
It probably helped having a dad who was a soldier.
Behind him Pyro could hear Auntie Mor snoring quietly and the shuffling sounds of Mr Stig creeping out for his early morning walk to buy the paper. Pyro leaned over and pulled his drawing book to him. He opened it to yesterday’s map and was pleased that it still looked splendid. Sometimes when he opened up a yesterday’s drawing it wasn’t as great as he remembered. In fact there were a whole series of pirate ship drawings that never failed to disappoint. His mother loved them and had put them on the fridge anyway. His father said that perhaps she should just choose a couple of ships that looked like they might sail and not bubble down at the first breeze.
Pyro had agreed with him. Not out loud though.
This map was brilliant. It had undulating lines to show contours of the mountains, soft colours for the tree lines and little nipped-out coves and a colour key at the bottom to explain it all. A couple of magpie-could-be-galahs were sprinkled around the outside border but even these added a special feel to the whole page.
Now, Pyro decided as he turned to a new page, what was needed next was a place to write all the things they’d need and all the things they were going to do in the hide-out. It would be like a log.
He smiled as he began to plan the way it would look.
San Simeon stood on the top of a sandbank and looked down at his men. They gazed up at him. They looked across to the side when Sweet Calamity wandered by drying her long, curling locks with a soft wrap that Simeon had made from the shirts of captured pirates.
‘Take this!’ he’d cried as he threw down his needle and thread and raised the soft folds of cotton from his lap. ‘I’ve made ye a special towelly thing to dry your hair.’
‘Oh,’ sighed the Sweet, ‘but what of the pirates who owned these shirts? Surely they’ll be wanting them back.’
‘Ha! Ha! I don’t think so, me Sweet Calam! These pirates have met their match in Davy Jones’s locker. They flung their shirts upon the deck as they launched themselves into the sea.’
Sweet Calamity had leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’ll cherish it,’ she’d said.
The crew had all been busy then, with their needles and threads and ropes and twine, making things for Calamity, for they loved her truly and were very proud whenever it was their twined basket or their knotted waistband that she chose to wear. Today, however, she’d chosen the towel and, slightly disappointed that it wasn’t their gift that adorned her lovely being, they looked back to their brave leader, Simeon.
‘Well, me hearties!’ he cried. ‘We’ve finished building up our defences and now we’re going to get onto the log!’
The crew looked around.
‘Log?’ said one.
‘What log?’ said another.
‘There’s not being any logs ‘ere!’ called out Derrick the Cook. ‘They all be up there behind ye!’
As indeed they were. They’d dragged, lumped, pushed, pulled and heaved every log and branch and twig and trunk of tree from where it lay to form the deeply impenetrable defences.
‘We’re not bringing ‘em back, are we, Cap’n?’ groaned the Blowfish. ‘I’m proper wore out from draggin’ ‘em up there!’
‘No …’ San Simeon started to explain. His crew were quick but sometimes they were quick in the wrong direction. ‘No. Not that log …’
‘Oh right!’ Derrick was pointing to a new log that had just washed up onto the shoreline. ‘He’d be meaning this one. Come on, lads. Last one on’s a rotten egg!’
They were fast. Their bare toes and crusty old heels’d make many a surfer proud as they launched themselves across the sand and leapt, as one, onto the log.
‘We’s here!’ they called. ‘We’s on the log, Cap’n. Now, what’ll you have us do next?’
Simeon, who loved his crew and understood they’d fight to the last man defending the good ship Olga, took a deep breath. Brave they might be, but that didn’t stop them being as thick as bricks.
‘Next,’ the sweet melodic voice of Calamity rang out, ‘you have to run on tippy-toes through the seaweed, over the big rock and under the yukka-ukka-ukka tree and line up, split-splot, in front of your brave Captain!’
Before you could say ‘Jack-Splatt!’ they were lined up, panting and grinning from ear to ear, ready to listen to their Captain.
‘We’re going to make a log …’
A new frown creased the brows of the crew members but Calamity was quick to stop any more confusion.
‘He means …’ she said so softly that every last man was b
ent double to catch the breath of her words as they left her lips ‘… he means we’re going to make a list. That’s what a log is! It’s a special list of all the things we’ll need and how we’re going to use them!’
‘Course,’ sang the crew. ‘We knowed that all along.’
‘I didn’t,’ confessed Derrick the Cook.
‘A list!’ called Simeon before any more shenanigans could break out. ‘We have to think of every single thing we’ll need in there in case we have to hole up!’
‘Aye! Aye!’ sang the crew.
And, without any further ado, they began shouting and calling all the things they’d need to make their new hide-out a home away from home.
A home away from home. Pyro liked that and began his list.
Cushions. Old sheets. Boxes. Some timber to make more steps. Stuff to make slingshots.
There were so many things to collect. He wished he could ring Min, like he would have rung Geezer, to tell him about this new step in the plan.
Geezer was a great listener. He never interrupted or jumped in with his ideas until he’d heard it all. Sometimes he was good at pointing out the things that could go wrong. Most of the time, actually. His mother said the world would be a better place if there were more Geezers.
And fewer Mins. Pyro could almost hear her say it. ‘He needs to look before he leaps!’ That’s what she’d say about Min.
And Geezer’d probably be saying that it wouldn’t be easy to get cushions and boxes and timber when all they had was a campervan and whatever was fitted into it to choose from.
But Min … Pyro hugged the thought to himself. He just bet that Min’d say, ‘Let’s do it, kiddo!’ and ‘Give that boy a prize!’ and get on with rounding it all up.
It was then that Pyro thought a new, sneaky thought. Geezer and the hide-out mightn’t be as much fun as Min and the hide-out. He felt a little bit mean for thinking it and then thinking a bit more about it but, however he tried to turn it around, it still remained the same. Geeze would be crossing things off and saying they wouldn’t fit, or couldn’t go or wouldn’t be needed, and Min’d just be doing it.