One Big Wacky Family

by Jackie French

Cecil shrugged. It was a little warmer with his pants on, but not much. The rain dripped and drizzled down his hair.

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Big Bernie looked down at the raging water. He seemed to have shrunk in the last hour.

  Mrs Parsnip tried to smile. ‘There’s really nothing to worry about,’ she said, a little shakily ‘I’m sure the flood won’t come any higher. And if it does, well, someone is sure to rescue us!’

  ‘How?’ demanded Big Bernie. ‘There isn’t any boat around here big enough to take us all!’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Cecil.

  Big Bernie rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, yeah? Your mum’s pirate ship I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cecil.

  ‘Huh,’ said Big Bernie, recovering himself a little. ‘Just because you’ve got a crocodile doesn’t mean you’ve got a pirate ship too! Hands up who believes in CJ’s pirate ship?’ he looked around triumphantly.

  Immediately Jason and Shaun put their hands up.

  Cecil blinked. ‘Hey, thanks,’ he whispered.

  Then slowly Mr Farthingale stood up and put his hand up too. Mrs Parsnip stared. ‘You really don’t think…’ she began.

  Mr Farthingale grinned. ‘Listen,’ he said.

  Suddenly everyone on the roof was quiet. The only sounds were the mutter of the flood and the beat of the rain and the crash of logs and sticks as they swirled against the hall walls, and…

  ‘With a yo ho ho and you’ll walk the plank.

  The deck was slimy, the galley stank,

  The porridge smelt of seagull doo;

  The briny deep’s too good for you!’

  ‘Here they come!’ yelled Cecil, as the good ship Mermaid sailed across the brown and boiling water where Bandicoot Creek had once flowed peacefully before the flood. He ran to the other end of the hall roof, the tin clanging damply under his feet. ‘Hey, Mum!’ he yelled, as he waved his arms. ‘We’re over here!’

  ‘Ahoy, shipmate!’ yelled Harry the Hook from the crow’s nest. ‘The Captain heard on that radio thingy you bought her for Mother’s Day that you lot were having some trouble up here! Thought we’d see if we could lend a hand. Or a hook!’ he added.

  Mrs Parsnip sat down suddenly in a puddle on the roof. ‘It…it…it is a pirate ship!’ she stuttered.

  Big Bernie blinked. ‘Is that a real sword she’s waving?’ he breathed.

  ‘Hey, cool,’ breathed Jason. ‘They’re flying the skull and crossbones!’

  ‘Look at all those sails,’ cried Shaun.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Cecil.

  CHAPTER 14

  Saved From the Flood

  Filthy Frederick tossed the grappling hook over to the roof and the good ship Mermaid pulled alongside the hall.

  ‘Right,’ ordered Mum, marching up and down the deck with her hands on her hips. ‘Step lively now, you varmints! Last one on board’s a blubber-bellied bull ant!’

  The kids of Bandicoot Flats Central School clambered over the rails and onto the good ship Mermaid. Cecil handed Snap to Filthy Frederick. Snap looked relieved to get back on board. He crawled over to a pile of rope, lay down and shut his eyes.

  Mum strode up to Mrs Parsnip and held out her hand. ‘Captain Tania the Terrible at your service,’ she said.

  ‘Er…I’m Mrs Parsnip,’ said Mrs Parsnip.

  Mum beamed. ‘Then you’re the school principal,’ she cried. ‘The captain of the school, that right?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Mrs Parsnip.

  Mum nodded. ‘Tell me, M’lady Principal, what do you find is best for keeping discipline? Do you make the kids walk the plank or do you clap them in irons in the school dungeon and let the rats nibble their toes?’

  ‘Er…’ said Mrs Parsnip. ‘Usually detention.’

  Big Bernie went pale. He nudged Cecil. ‘Does your mum really clap people in irons?’ he whispered.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Cecil. ‘Mum is totally against people being clapped in irons.’

  Big Bernie breathed out again. ‘Of course I knew she wouldn’t…’ he began.

  She just makes them walk the plank,’ said Cecil.

  Big Bernie went even paler. Cecil grinned. He didn’t think Big Bernie needed to know that Mum only made people walk the plank if there was an island nearby.

  Mrs Parsnip looked a bit pale too. Mum patted her arm sympathetically. ‘Why don’t you go below, m’lady, and let Putrid Percival make you a nice tankard of tea?’ she suggested. ‘And maybe a bowl of good hot sea monster soup too.’

  ‘Th—thank you,’ stuttered Mrs Parsnip. ‘Er…not the soup. I’m sure it’s delicious but…’ Suddenly she turned green and dashed for the side of the ship.

  Shaun looked over the rail. ‘Hey, she had a salad sandwich for lunch.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Jason.

  ‘Because I just saw it float off in the flood. There were green bits and red bits and brown bits and…’

  ‘Ooohh,’ groaned Mrs Parsnip.

  ‘Seasick,’ said Mum. ‘Shark-eyed Pete, fetch the lady some of Cecil’s turtle dung and vampire bat seasickness potion. Maybe you’d better get her a bucket too. Barnacle Bruce, help the lady down the companionway and put her in my bed. It’s a good potion but it makes you sleep,’ she added to Mr Farthingale. ‘Now trim the sails, you scurvy mongrels!’ she yelled to the rest of the crew. ‘Let’s get this ship underway!’

  Mum grinned at Mr Farthingale. ‘We’ll have you back on dry land before you can say, “there goes breakfast overboard”.’

  Jason looked eagerly at Mr Farthingale. ‘Sir, do we have to go back to dry land straightaway?’

  ‘Eh?’ asked Mr Farthingale.

  ‘Couldn’t we go for a sail? Just a little one?’

  ‘Well, I…er…you’d have to ask the captain,’ said Mr Farthingale. ‘And Mrs Parsnip.’

  Mum beamed. ‘It would be a pleasure,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll go ask Mrs Parsnip,’ offered Shaun. He disappeared down the ladder, only to reappear a minute later. ‘She just said “anything! anything!” and groaned,’ he reported.

  ‘Hasn’t found her sea legs yet,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll be grand once she gets a bit of potion in her. Right, head her out to sea and through the time warp thingy, boys!’

  ‘Time warp?’ asked Mr Farthingale.

  Mum nodded. ‘That’s how young Cecil here gets to school. The wizard showed us.’ She grinned at Mr Farthingale. ‘Filthy Frederick was right, you know. You are a fine figure of a man!’

  Mr Farthingale blushed.

  The good ship Mermaid changed course. Soon the land was distant, grey and shadowed. The rain had eased to a gentle drizzle but the clouds hung low. Even the seagulls were silent.

  Then all at once the light changed. The air grew blue, then green, then gold. You could almost hear the sparkles in the air. Suddenly the air was clear again; the rain had gone, and the land behind had vanished too. The sun beamed down from a cloudless sky.

  ‘Wow!’ yelled Jason. He ran to the rail. ‘We’re out at sea!’

  ‘And back in the past,’ Cecil told him. ‘No computers, no phones. Just sailing ships and sea monsters and…’

  ‘Slaver to starboard, Captain!’ cried Harry the Hook. ‘By thunder! It’s the Black Ship! She’s headed this way!’

  ‘The Black Ship!’ Mum ran to the rail too. ‘The Black Ship is the biggest slave ship in all these waters!’ she told Mr Farthingale. ‘If only we could catch her! But she’s too fast for us. As soon as she sees us she runs away.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’ demanded Big Bernie.

  ‘It’s the groans of the slaves,’ said Cecil quietly. ‘Sound travels across water.’

  ‘But it’s horrible!’ cried Big Bernie.

  ‘What could make people cry like that?’

  ‘Being trapped in a dark hold with rats and bound by chains,’ said Mum shortly, ‘with nothing to look forward to but whips and slavery.’

  Mum shaded her eyes. ‘Yes, she’s going about. We’ll
never catch her, lads.’

  ‘But you can’t just let her get away!’ cried Mr Farthingale. ‘We have to at least try to rescue the slaves!’

  ‘No use,’ said Mum. ‘Don’t think we haven’t tried, time out of mind, to catch up with them. But she’s bigger than the Mermaid, with more sail. And they can blow us out of the water while we dare not use our cannon, for fear of hitting the slaves too.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Suddenly Cecil had an idea. He stared at the big ship on the horizon. ‘You said she was headed this way?’

  ‘She was indeed.’ Mum nodded.

  ‘But she turned around when she saw us?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Mum.

  ‘So if we weren’t here, she might head this way again?’

  ‘Yes. What’s wrong with you, lad? Has all that reading made your brain slow?’

  ‘No, Mum, listen!’ insisted Cecil. ‘Why don’t we go back through the time warp! Then we can wait till you think the Black Ship has had time to get here, and zap out through the time warp again and grab them!’

  Mum said nothing for a moment. Cecil’s face fell. ‘You don’t think it would work?’

  Mum nodded slowly. Suddenly she grinned. ‘You’re a genius, lad! Why, it’s enough to make me take up reading too!’ she cried. ‘Well, almost,’ she added. ‘Filthy Frederick!’ she yelled. ‘Take us back the way we came! Hurry, you poxy varmint! Hurry!’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain,’ called Filthy Frederick.

  One minute…two minutes…suddenly the light changed again. The rain drizzled around them as the coast appeared once more, the township smudged and grey in the distance.

  ‘We need to wait ten minutes, I reckon,’ said Mum, glancing up at where the sun would have been if the clouds hadn’t covered it.

  Suddenly Mr Farthingale looked worried. ‘The kids!’ he said. ‘I…I can’t take them hunting slavers! You have to drop them off where they’ll be safe!’

  ‘But there’s no time!’ cried Mum. ‘We’ll lose her again!’

  ‘You can’t put us off, sir!’ Jason and Shaun ran up to Mr Farthingale. ‘We want to get the Black Ship too!’

  ‘You heard the slaves!’ yelled Big Bernie. His face was pale, but he didn’t look as scared as he had back at the flood. ‘They’ll never be free if we don’t rescue them!’

  ‘Um,’ said Mr Farthingale.

  ‘Everyone who’s frightened go below!’ yelled Mum. ‘That sit right with you, teacher? But everyone who has the stomach for a fight grab a sword!’

  There was a buzz of excitement on the deck. No one went below.

  ‘Swords!’ yelled Jason. ‘Cool!’

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ said Mr Farthingale doubtfully.

  Mum grinned. ‘No. Life isn’t safe! One minute you can be safe on your ship and next minute a typhoon can sweep you into the sea, or the pox take you, or a sea monster swallow you whole. But while there’s breath in us and life, let’s live it! And help others live it too!’

  Then Mr Farthingale grinned back. ‘Hand me a sword!’ he declared.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ decided Mum, ‘maybe you lot of landlubbers had better have your first go with swords some other day. I don’t want anyone cutting off hands and feet accidentally! Let’s go with plan number two! Putrid Percival!’ she yelled.

  ‘Yes Captain!’ shouted Putrid Percival from the galley.

  ‘Bring up the buckets of old sea monsters’ guts!’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain!’ cried Putrid Percival.

  ‘Sea monsters’ guts?’ inquired Mr Farthingale. ‘How do you fight with sea monsters’ guts?’

  ‘You’ll see!’ said Mum. ‘Right, you young varmints. As soon as I yell “Jump!”, all of you jump onto the Black Ship and hold onto the rail. Got it?’

  ‘Got it!’ yelled Bandicoot Flats Central School.

  ‘Buckets of bubbling guts coming up, Captain,’ puffed Putrid Percival, as he, Filthy Frederick, Barnacle Bruce and Ambrose One Arm lugged buckets of yuck

  up the companionway. Muffled glups came from the buckets and the odd white maggot crawled from under the lids.

  ‘Eweerk! They pong!’ cried Shaun.

  ‘All the better!’ declared Mum. ‘Haul them up! That’s right, boys!’ She glanced up again to where the sun should be. ‘Well lads—and lasses too, of course—this is it. Everyone obey orders!’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain,’ chorused six pirates, twenty kids and a teacher.

  ‘Right! Back through the time warp then!’ yelled Mum, waving her pirate hat in the air so the rain danced on her hair.

  Gold light, green light, showers of sparkles, then blue sky again, white-capped waves and…

  ‘The Black Ship ahoy, Captain!’ shouted Harry the Hook from the crow’s nest.

  It was the Black Ship, looming up only metres away from them. It was so close Cecil could hear the whips below as the slaves cried with despair, deep in the hold.

  For a moment Cecil looked at the Black Ship uncertainly. It was so very big and so very black, with cannon poking out of every porthole. But there was no time now for the Black Ship to aim their cannon.

  ‘Get the grappling hooks!’ shouted Mum. ‘Don’t let her get away! Cecil, into the coil of rope!’

  ‘No way!’ shouted Cecil. ‘I’m fighting too this time!’

  ‘But you hate piracy…’ began Mum.

  ‘It’s different now!’ declared Cecil, and somehow it was. Somehow being with your friends made all the difference.

  ‘Swing your buckets!’ called Mum.

  Up on the maindeck the pirates grabbed their buckets and threw their contents with all their might. An avalanche of sea monsters’ guts rained down on the Black Ship’s decks, all green and black and bubbling putrid pink.

  ‘What the…?’ The captain of the Black Ship looked up from the wheel and stared. ‘Where did you come from? What’s this muck? It stinks! Magic!’ he roared, picking rotten sea monster from his beard.

  ‘No magic, you black-hearted varmint!’ shouted Mum. ‘Or not much anyway,’ she added. ‘Take that, you rat-whiskered rogue!’

  Mum leapt over the rails of the good ship Mermaid and onto the deck of the Black Ship. Cecil started to go after her. Filthy Frederick held him back. ‘Not till Captain says, matey. Always obey orders.’

  ‘But…’ began Cecil then shut his mouth. Orders were orders.

  ‘Rogue am I?’ shrieked the Black Ship’s captain. He raised his sword and charged down off the bridge and onto the slippery deck.

  Swack! Mum’s sword cut though his belt. Plop! The Black Ship’s captain’s trousers fell down. ‘Glub!’ cried the Black Ship’s captain, as he tripped over his trousers and tumbled face first into the sea monsters’ guts. ‘Men!’ he screamed, lifting his head and spitting out a slimy orange tentacle. ‘Attack!’

  Up the companionway, onto the slippery deck ran the slavers.

  ‘Arrk!’ cried the first one, as he saw the last remnants of long-eaten sea monsters oozing over the deck. ‘The pong! The stink!’

  ‘Now!’ bellowed Mum.

  Over the rails swarmed the crew of the good ship Mermaid: six pirates with their swords, twenty kids and a teacher.

  ‘Now hold onto the rail,’ shouted Filthy Frederick. ‘As the Captain told us to.’

  ‘But how will that help?’ began Mr Farthingale then shook his head. ‘Aye aye, Filthy Frederick,’ he said.

  The pirates and Bandicoot Flats Central School clustered at the rails of the Black Ship, as the slavers poured up the Black Ship’s companionway and down from the upper deck towards them, dressed in their steel breastplates holding halberds and pikes and double-edged swords.

  Then suddenly…

  CHAPTER 15

  The End of the Black Ship

  All at once the Black Ship began to tilt with the weight of the kids and the pirates and the Black Ship’s crew, who were thundering towards them. And as the decks tilted, the slavers stepped in the slimy, slippery sea monsters’ guts and…

 
; ‘They’re all sliding overboard!’ yelled Jason, holding tight to the rail.

  ‘Yep!’ grinned Mum, one boot on the Black Ship’s captain’s back. She gave him a neat kick. ‘Off with you too, matey!’

  ‘Gloop!’ said the Captain, his mouth full of maggots. Mum gave him a shove and he slid down into the sea.

  Cecil peered over and looked down at him. ‘Don’t worry!’ he yelled. ‘It’s nice and clean in the water! It’ll wash off the maggots!’

  ‘But I can’t swim!’ bleated the Black Ship’s captain, paddling and splashing furiously.

  ‘Oh, throw him a lifebelt, someone,’ said Mum, stepping down off the bridge and onto the deck. ‘Frederick, Ambrose, Harry, go down and unchain the slaves and…’

  ‘Mum!’ shrieked Cecil. A final, unseen slaver had crept along the bridge, just above her, his sword in his hand.

  Cecil thrust himself forward. ‘Don’t touch my mother, doggie dribble!’ he roared.

  Whump! Cecil grabbed the slaver’s knees and brought him down onto the slimy deck.

  ‘A perfect tackle!’ yelled Mr Farthingale.

  Mum grinned. ‘Thanks, son. Looks like you learnt something from all that feetball.’

  ‘Eeerk,’ said Cecil, wiping sea monsters’ guts off his tracksuit. It had been wet and muddy before, but now it smelt like the school garbage bins that time the meat pies went bad in the tuck shop.

  Big Bernie lumbered over. ‘You stink,’ he offered helpfully. ‘Hey, do you need a hand throwing him over the side?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Thanks,’ said Cecil, surprised. He grabbed the slaver’s feet while Big Bernie grabbed his arms.

  ‘One, two, three!’ yelled Jason, as Cecil and Big Bernie heaved the slaver overboard.

  ‘Right, that’s the last of them,’ said Mum briskly. ‘Now I want everyone hauling up buckets of water to clean this deck.’