The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones

by Will Mabbitt

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in the United Kingdom by Puffin, an imprint of Penguin UK, 2015

  Published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2015

  Text copyright © 2015 by Will Mabbitt

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Ross Collins

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mabbitt, Will.

  The unlikely adventures of Mabel Jones / by Will Mabbitt ; illustrated by Ross Collins.

  pages cm.—(Mabel Jones ; book 1)

  ISBN 978-0-698-17622-5

  [1. Pirates—Fiction. 2. Kidnapping—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Collins, Ross, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.1.M24Un 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014030543

  Version_1

  For Tilly, Etta, and Ellen

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  CHAPTER 1: The Kidnap

  CHAPTER 2: Pirates

  CHAPTER 3: The Greasy Pole of Certain Death

  CHAPTER 4: The List

  CHAPTER 5: The Cadaverous Lobster Tavern

  CHAPTER 6: A Storm and Some Filthsome Treachery

  CHAPTER 7: That Sinking Feeling

  CHAPTER 8: The Unremitting Drip

  CHAPTER 9: Mabel Escapes the Unremitting Drip

  CHAPTER 10: The Fish Burps

  CHAPTER 11: The Bestest Thief Ever

  CHAPTER 12: A Friend in Need

  CHAPTER 13: A Fate Worse Than a Fate Worse Than Death

  CHAPTER 14: Princess Mabel Jones

  CHAPTER 15: A Helping Hand

  CHAPTER 16: Really, the Bestest Thief Ever

  CHAPTER 17: The Captain’s Leg

  CHAPTER 18: A Sheep Trick

  CHAPTER 19: Going Underground

  CHAPTER 20: Secrets of the Crypt

  CHAPTER 21: Fishing

  CHAPTER 22: Rough Passage

  CHAPTER 23: Home

  CHAPTER 24: Ghostly Forms

  CHAPTER 25: The Bell Tower of the Dead

  CHAPTER 26: Raising Hell

  CHAPTER 27: The Terrible Klank

  CHAPTER 28: The Consequences of the Terrible Klank

  CHAPTER 29: The Sonorous Bong

  CHAPTER 30: Repercussions of the Sonorous Bong

  CHAPTER 31: The Count’s Revenge

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  The Kidnap

  Mabel Jones was woken by a sudden quiet.

  She sat upright.

  “What wasn’t that noise?” she wondered.

  The city outside was strangely soundless.

  The neighbors weren’t listening to the TV.

  The cars weren’t driving up and down the busy road.

  Even the mice that scuttled under the floorboards observed the eerie silence. A most suspicious silence . . .

  Mabel listened very carefully, but even with her eyes closed really tight she couldn’t hear where the silence was coming from.

  Little did she know that the source of the silence was squeezing through the cat flap with a cutlass in its teeth . . .

  . . . tiptoeing through the lounge, leaving wet pawprints on the carpet . . .

  . . . creeping up the stairs, pausing for a second to shudder in fear at a photograph of Mabel’s great-grandmother . . .

  . . . crouching outside Mabel’s room with a large, specially designed child-sized sack and, at that very moment, pushing open her bedroom door ready to—

  STOP! WAIT!

  Before we witness the terrifying sight of young Mabel Jones being skillfully bagged in the dead of night, I believe it is time to reveal the identity of the creature that has invaded her home in such a deafeningly silent fashion.

  Let us shine a light into the shadows and reveal the sly beast that lurks in the corner.

  Who are you, creature? And what’s with the sack?

  The creature’s whiskers twitch.

  Some fur that grows in the wrong direction on top of its head is anxiously straightened with a licked paw.

  A pause, then it fixes us with its saucery eyes and blinks nervously, whispering:

  “I? I is Omynus Hussh.”

  It speaks!

  And to which species do you belong?

  “I is a silent loris.”

  A dastardly breed: quiet as a peanut and sneaky as a woodlouse in a jar of raisins.

  What brings you to the bedroom of the poor, unfortunate Mabel Jones?

  “I is the bagger on board

  THE FeROShUS MAggOt!”

  The bagger?

  “The bagger what bags them children! I gots the proper fingers on me paws that ties the proper knots that keeps the wriggling little snuglet safe inside.”

  Surely not young Mabel Jones?

  “It performed the sacred DEED. THE DEED that seals the deal! THE DEED that binds it to the captain for a lifetime’s service aboard the Feroshus Maggot.”

  The creature leans close and whispers.

  “The Deed that shows it’s a pirate in the making.”

  She didn’t?

  Not THE DEED?

  “It did! It did! We saws it through the captain’s telescope!”

  Goodness me! THE DEED was performed!

  What’s that, reader?

  You know not of which DEED we speak?

  Of course not—how silly of me. You probably haven’t spent years aboard a pirate ship. You probably haven’t ever sat around a fire on a tropical beach finishing the last morsels of a freshly grilled parrot. Then, after the rum has run dry, heard the talk turn to whispered tales of the unfortunate children recruited to piracy after unknowingly performing THE DEED!

  So let me take you back an hour, to the deck of the pirate ship

  THE

  FeROShUS

  MAggOt

  on which stands one CAPTAIN IDRYSS EBENEZER SPLIT.

  Split is a wolf.

  A wolf with a pirate hat and a false leg carved from a human thigh bone. He has a rusty cutlass hanging from his belt and a loaded pistol hidden in his underpants, with no fear of the consequences! His left eye has long since been lost—burned from his skull by a stray firework. His right eye is pressed to the end of a telescope. The telescope is focused on a strange hole in the thick fog that envelops the FeROShUS MAggOt—a hole through which he observes a different world from the one he knows.

  A hooman world.

  A world where young Mabel Jones is about to perform THE DEED: the ceremonial picking of Mabel Jones’s nose by Mabel Jones’s nose-picking finge
r.

  “Has it been eaten yet?” the crew asks eagerly. “Is THE DEED complete?”

  “Not yet, lads. Not yet!”

  Mabel’s fate is to be decided by the final destination of the booger currently sitting on her finger. The finger that now pauses precariously between mouth and wall as Mabel makes the decision whether to eat or wipe.

  Will she eat it?

  Finally she makes the decision. The very same decision that any person believing they were unobserved would make. The same decision being made across the world at this very moment by principals, policemen, lunch ladies, and parents (but especially by principals).

  She eats it!

  Split allows himself a toothy grin. An extra pair of hands aboard ship could come in useful. At the very least, the child might fetch a modest sum at the next port.

  He turns to Omynus Hussh and claps the loris on the back, laughing wickedly.

  “Fetch your sack. For tonight you go child-bagging!”

  In the bedroom of 23 Gudgeon Avenue, Mabel Jones climbed out of bed to find the source of the suspicious silence.

  Looking out of her window, Mabel could see the city was wrapped in thick greeny-gray fog. Only the tops of the tallest tower blocks could be seen.

  What an odd night! She wasn’t normally woken by a strange quiet. The city wasn’t usually—

  OUCH!

  She had trodden on something.

  A peanut!

  Why would there be a peanut on her bedroom floor?

  I don’t even like peanuts, thought Mabel Jones. Apart from the chocolate-covered ones, of course . . . And even then I only like the chocolate part.

  Oh! There was another.

  And another.

  This is strange!

  Someone had left a trail of peanuts leading to the darkest corner of her room.

  She picked them up one by one.

  It’s almost as though someone WANTS me to follow them.

  Mabel scratched her armpit thoughtfully.

  It’s almost as though there is somebody in my room.

  THERE IS

  SOMEBODY IN MY ROOM!

  Mabel Jones turned to run for the door, but a strong, spindly hand grabbed at her from behind. She opened her mouth to call for help, but only got as far as the “D” in “Dad” before another hand was clamped tightly over her lips and she was wrestled into a sack. Skillful fingers tied a neat knot at the top.

  The sack was lifted to the window, where a large pair of hairy arms grabbed it eagerly and pulled it deep into the fog. Then, pausing only to examine a Mabel-Jones-sized bite on his hand, Omynus Hussh climbed up onto the sill and leaped into the night.

  Shortly afterward the silence was broken. Above the usual noise of the busy street in the middle of the busy city, far away from the nearest port or shore, the tuneless singing of a rude sea shanty could be heard drifting on the last wisps of the clearing fog.

  The neighbors turned up their TVs accordingly.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pirates

  Mabel Jones was not the sort of girl to be scared of something as silly as being kidnapped by a pirate in the middle of the night.

  “My name is Mabel Jones, and I am NOT SCARED of ANYTHING!”

  It was dark inside the sack, so she said it again, but louder this time, just to make sure that it was true.

  “My name is Mabel Jones, and I am NOT SCARED of ANYTHING!”

  Still, she wished her mom or dad was there in the sack with her.

  Actually, now she thought about it, it would be better to wish that she wasn’t here, rather than that her parents were. There wasn’t enough room in the sack for them, for a start.

  Still, they would be worried if she wasn’t there when they woke up. Dad always came in to say good-bye before he left for work.

  Unseen paws loosened the knot on top of the specially designed child-sized sack, and Mabel Jones climbed out into bright sunshine.

  The first thing she noticed after the cawing seagulls and the blinding sun was a severed hand tied to some rope and swinging in the salty breeze.

  The last time she had seen those spindly fingers, they had been clamped tightly around her mouth. It turned out that it hadn’t taken long for Mabel’s bite on Omynus Hussh’s paw to go septic.

  OLD SAWBONES, the ship’s surgeon—an aged and toothless saltwater crocodile—had sighed when he first saw the wound.

  “There ain’t nothing quite so toxic to a pirate’s blood as child spittle mixed with fresh toothpaste . . .”

  And, while Omynus Hussh was wondering what “toothpaste” was, Old Sawbones had removed the infected paw with a meat cleaver. There being no spare hooks on board, he had replaced the missing hand with a doorknob.

  Omynus Hussh had managed to retrieve the severed hand from Old Sawbones. He planned to keep it in a box for sentimental reasons. But first it needed to be dried. Otherwise it would smell.

  “Are ye sure ye really need it?” Old Sawbones had asked, licking his lips.

  The second thing Mabel Jones noticed was that she was on board a ship in the middle of the sea. And the ship was crewed by a wild-looking bunch of creatures.

  They were all looking at her.

  My name is Mabel Jones, and I am NOT SCARED of ANYTHING.

  This time she just thought it really quietly. She was a bit scared to say it out loud. It was, after all, her first time on a pirate ship.

  But I forget myself! You may never have been on a pirate ship either. So let’s pause the action on deck and explore the vessel to find out more about its bestial crew.

  That door there leads to the captain’s cabin. I dare not take you through it, though, for he is still inside.

  This open hatch leads below deck.

  DOWN

  THESE

  WOODEN

  STEPS . . .

  Careful as you go.

  It’s dark down here. And damp. This room is where the crew sleeps, in those hammocks slung from the timbers. The smell of sporadic nighttime farting still hangs thick in the air, for the fresh sea breeze does not reach below deck.

  That corner is where Old Sawbones works. See his trusty cleaver, its sharpened edge embedded in a wooden block? A certificate in Advanced Nautical Surgery from the Butcher’s Guild is pinned proudly to the wall.

  That there’s a crate of ship’s biscuits.

  Pardon?

  Yes, you may try one.

  Delicious, no?

  Currants? Those are no currants. That’s weevil.

  Look! The ship’s register—the list of names of all the crew on board. It’s in the first-aid box, nestled between a half-empty bottle of rum and a box of princess Band-Aids. Let’s rejoin the action above deck and put some faces to the names, eh?

  Ah! Fresh air. Sunlight!

  Right, let’s do the roll call.

  You already know, of course, the captain: CAPTAIN IDRYSS EBENEZER SPLIT, a wolf. He has emerged from his cabin to inspect the new arrival. Behind him lurks Omynus Hussh, the silent loris. You’ve met him too. Next comes OLD SAWBONES, the saltwater crocodile.

  The others you’ve not met yet . . .

  The goat with the pipe is called PELF. He’s the first mate, all braided beard and grubby fleece.

  Then the shiny-faced pig, that’s Milton Melton-

  Mowbray,

  a well-spoken young porker.

  The orangutan is MR. CLUNES, a strong and silent type. Not a word has passed his lips for many a moon.

  Then you’ve got the mole, McMasters, the best shortsighted lookout ever to have mistaken a pirate ship for an optician’s shop.

  And that is the crew of the Feroshus Maggot, all present and incorrect.

  A voice sounds from the top of the mast!

  “What is it? I cannae see!” sh
outed McMasters.

  There was muttering and discussion among the crew.

  “Tell us what it is, Pelf! What kind of snuglet have we bagged?” asked Milton.

  Pelf sucked on his pipe. “A snuglet can come in many shapes, sizes—”

  “And flavors!” said Old Sawbones.

  “There’ll be no eating of the crew this voyage, Sawbones. Least not until the biscuits run out.” Pelf scratched his impressive horns and blew out a cloud of thick smog. “Aye, but this one is a scrawny lad for sure. A real bag of bones. Not the best type. Not altogether useless, though. A bit short maybe, but he could probably be stretched.”

  Mr. Clunes cracked his knuckles.

  There was a growl from behind the gathered crew.

  All eyes turned away from young Mabel Jones and toward the lean and hungry figure that was limping through the crowd: Captain Idryss Ebenezer Split.

  His one eye narrowed suspiciously and his lip curled into a snarl, revealing his yellowed fangs.

  “Well, well, well . . . What has THE DEED Brought us this time?”

  He grabbed Mabel Jones by the chin and inspected her closely. Very closely indeed.

  So closely she could see the rotten meat wedged between his fangs.

  His hot wolf-breath crawled all over her face, up inside one nostril, down through the other and then tried to squeeze between her lips.

  Mabel coughed politely and hid her nose and mouth beneath her pajama top.

  Captain Idryss Ebenezer Split turned to his crew and uttered an oath so foul it could NEVER be written down.

  (It contained a word so rude that if an adult whispered it to themselves after bedtime, under the quilt so no one could hear, they could still be arrested and thrown in prison for a very long time.)

  The crew huddled together in a worried cuddle as the captain paced the deck. Finally he stopped and, glaring at Mabel Jones, declared in a voice as wicked as a poisoned ice cream:

  “This is no boy.

  This is a —”

  Split gagged. The disgusting word he had reached for caught in his throat like a bad belch.