mayday, this is the Golden Albatross, are you receiving me? We are in deep over-our-head trouble. Over.’
Still no reply. This was very odd. The coastguard were meant to answer immediately. Sabina’s voice rose louder.
‘Mayday, mayday, I repeat, are you receiving me? Over.’
‘Yes,’ said a voice – unfortunately not a voice from the radio, but rather a deep voice from just behind her. ‘It’s certainly over for you lady!’
Sabina spun around and there, standing a few feet away, was a smartly dressed young man who looked like he would be more comfortable in an office than on the deck of a pirate boat; he did not look one bit like the murderous type. However, the man at his side did. He was smiling, revealing a mouth full of gold teeth, some chipped, some missing. He was a small man, but he seemed to easily occupy the cabin with a monstrous malevolence.
In his hand was a very shiny and very sharp-looking knife.
‘I was just… trying to cancel a… dental appointment,’ stammered Sabina, not at all sure what she was saying – but she was staring at the man, and dental hygiene was the first thing that had come to mind.
The man sniggered cruelly. ‘No need for teeth where you’re going.’
Sabina didn’t like the glint in his eye – he was obviously a man who enjoyed throwing dogs into the ocean, no doubt women too. He grabbed her arm and pushed and dragged her back to the deck.
‘Watch it, would you Captain Hook; you’re wrenching my arm out of its socket.’
‘No need for arms where you’re going,’ laughed the pirate. Then he spied the gem on her finger. ‘Now give me your ring!’
Sabina shook her head. ‘But this is a family heirloom, it belonged to several of my great-grandmothers, and if you think…’
‘You hand it over,’ growled the pirate, ‘or I’ll kill everyone on-board.’
‘But… it won’t come off my finger,’ protested Sabina.
‘No need for fingers where you are going!’ he said, flashing the knife.
Goodness, thought Sabina, there’s not going to be much of me left.
‘Let me cut it off, save you the struggle.’ He laughed again.
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said Sabina, clenching her fists. The pirate lunged towards her and Sabina lashed out, clocking him on the jaw; Sabina Redfort packed quite a punch and the ring, which was diamond, gashed a scarlet ribbon across the pirate’s cheek.
‘Oh my, that was an accident,’ said Sabina a little nervously. ‘I was about to say, if you want this ring, you had better get me a little soap and water.’
The pirate didn’t look like he was about to oblige, but then he grinned.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Here’s the water; good luck finding the soap.’
And with that he picked her up and threw her overboard.
Brant Redfort, horrified, bellowed, ‘Honey, don’t think of drowning, I’m coming to save you!’
And he swan-dived from the bow of the boat and disappeared beneath the waves. The pirates, sensing they had in some way failed to create an atmosphere of blind terror, began shooting into the water. They continued to shoot for some minutes, wanting to be sure that these two have-a-go heroes would never resurface.
‘We won’t be worth much to you if we’re all dead!’ screamed Mrs Sylvester. ‘Hostages have to be alive, remember.’
‘Who said anything about hostages?’ snarled the pirate.
This had the desired effect and all the remaining passengers trembled and awaited their fate.
RUBY WOKE ON WEDNESDAY MORNING to hear her radio making an unpleasant noise, like an orchestra tuning up. She lifted her head wearily from the pillow and through the blur of her poor eyesight saw a grey furry shape.
‘Bug,’ she groaned. ‘You wanna switch that off?’ It was a trick of his to step on the set, turning it on – it usually got Ruby out of bed.
The dog bumbled over to where she lay and licked her nose.
‘Cut it out, would you Bug?’
She dragged herself up, and tripped over the happy husky and landed on her behind. Darn it! She crawled over to the set and blindly fiddled with the dial.
‘If you’re gonna switch the radio on, at least tune it to something that sounds like a tune.’ To her surprise she found it was tuned. Mrs Digby had obviously been in with the vacuum since the dial was set to easy-listening Chime Melody. However, the track that was playing was anything but easy listening: it sounded like a whole bunch of grasshoppers were playing badly tuned violins.
Jeepers, is that enough to give anyone a sore head.
Ruby looked at herself in the mirror.
‘I guess I’m up,’ she muttered. She showered and dressed and fixed her barrette in her hair, and looked at herself in the mirror.
Better, she told herself. She pulled on a T-shirt that said wake me if things get interesting.
School that day basically involved trying to coax Clancy out of packing his bags and heading for the hills.
‘I think I should just get outta here, make a run for it,’ he said. He seemed to mean it. ‘I won’t survive two minutes in the ocean, not two minutes.’
‘Clance, you’re overdramatising – the worst that could happen is you get stung by a jellyfish.’
‘A jellyfish!’ squealed Clancy, by now flapping his arms furiously. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. No, I’m gonna head for Colorado – it’s landlocked. I could camp out for a few months until this whole thing blows over.’
Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘Clance my friend, you’re beginning to lose it. It’s just a school swimathon.’ But Clancy Crew could not be calmed.
‘You know how I am about jellyfish; if I get stung, I’ll most likely have an allergic reaction and sink.’
‘You can borrow my Spectrum anti-sting canister, how about that? That’s gotta reassure you,’ said Ruby.
By Thursday, Clancy was worse – he was hardly able to speak and in physics class when Mr Endell asked him what he would do if an asteroid struck earth, Clancy replied, ‘Thank my lucky stars.’
Elliot tried to jolt him out of it by making him laugh, but most of his jokes seemed to revolve around some poor bozo meeting a gory end and so his efforts resulted in Clancy Crew sinking lower into his sweater. He actually looked like he was shrinking.
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