Explosive Adventures (6 page)

A Lot of Popcorn

The pirates did not need to be reminded of the treat in store for them. At precisely twelve o’clock Tommy was at the galley door, where his eyes fell hungrily on the large tub of unpopped popcorn.

“Oh my goodness!” he cried, rubbing
his stomach in anticipation. “This looks very interesting!”

The others arrived shortly afterwards. Mrs Bert was the last to sit down, as she had some difficulty finding her teeth. But at last they were found in one of the frying pans and everybody was ready. They were all in a very good mood and were clearly looking forward to their unusual lunch.

“Makes a change from your potatoes, Mrs Bert,” said Stinger.

Mrs Bert glared at him angrily. “Nothing wrong with my potatoes, is there, Bert?”

Bert smiled. “Nothing at all, my dear. But I must say that I does like a nice bit of popcorn now and then.”

Lucy stepped forward and clapped her hands.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began.

“Oh, that’s a nice touch,” said Bert. “They shows proper respect for their betters, these kids. I think it was a pretty good bit of work we did when we stealed … I mean, when we
invited
these kids on board.”

Lucy waited until he had finished. Then she continued. “To thank you for all your kindness to us, we have prepared a traditional Popcorn Island feast for you. All I have to do is to light the stove and then, in a few minutes you will have all the delicious popcorn you could possibly eat!”

“Get on with it, then,” said Bert impatiently. “We’re all waiting.”

Lucy stepped forward and lit the stove. Then the three children stood in the doorway and waited. The pirates all watched hungrily.

“I hope it doesn’t take too long,” said Tommy. “I didn’t have a big breakfast this morning. I was saving myself for this.”

“Excuse me,” said Mrs Bert. “I saw you eating like a horse. You had four fried eggs and eight slices of toast. I saw you, Tommy. You can’t fool me. Can you, Bert?”

“No,” said Bert. “You can’t fool Mrs Bert. I’ve tried for years, but it’s never worked. You can’t fool her.”

While the pirates were arguing, the children were waiting for the first sounds of popping. Suddenly Sam nudged Lucy, and Lucy in turn nudged Hermione.

“It’s started,” Lucy whispered. “There it goes.”

It is a special feature of popcorn from the Popcorn Islands that it explodes with a particularly loud pop. This started to happen all of a sudden, and the pirates let out whoops of delight. As some of the popped corn started to come to the surface, it was grabbed by eager hands and stuffed into eager mouths.

“Oh, this is wonderful!” mumbled Tommy, as he put handfuls of popcorn into his mouth.

This brought grunts of agreement from other popcorn-filled mouths. But now, as more popcorn exploded, something quite extraordinary happened. So much popcorn started to go off, popping and cracking like a hundred little fireworks, that it flowed over the edge of the tin tub. The pirates thought this was very exciting, and they got down on their hands and knees to scoop the popcorn off the floor. But they could not do it quickly enough. More popcorn went off, and still more after that. The galley was now beginning to fill up with popping popcorn, surrounding the pirates and completely hemming them in.

“Help!” shouted Mrs Bert suddenly. “Stop this popcorn! It’s out of control!”

Nobody heeded her cries. The children certainly did not. They had now closed the galley door and were standing out on the deck, looking in through the window at the pirates. It was an unequal struggle they witnessed. No matter how hard the pirates tried to stand up and get out of the galley, they were forced back into their seats by exploding popcorn. It was like trying to swim in honey – quite impossible.

“It’s worked!” shouted Hermione. “They’re trapped!”

It was now a simple matter for Lucy to turn the key in the galley door and lock
the pirates in. They could do nothing to stop her, and they shouted and waved their fists angrily as they realised their plight.

“We’ll get you!” shouted Stinger, from the middle of the great mound of popcorn which had surrounded him. “It’ll be sharks for you!”

“Well it’s popcorn for you!” shouted Sam in reply. “And it serves you right too!”

It was one thing to trap all the pirates, but quite another to take control of the ship. They would now have to try to turn it round and sail right back, hoping to reach
the place where they had last seen Captain Foster. This would not be easy, as none of them knew a great deal about sailing, and the pirate ship was quite a large one.

“You go up and start pulling on those ropes,” Lucy said to Sam. “Hermione and I will …”

She stopped. While everybody had been sitting down to their popcorn feast, the ship had continued on its way. This meant that the pirates must have left somebody in charge of the ship – somebody who was not in the galley!

Lucy quickly looked through the galley window. The room was now almost completely full of popcorn, and so it was
difficult to tell exactly who was there. There was Bert – or a bit of him – and there were Stinger and Charlie, up to their necks in popcorn, and that arm over there, waving and pounding away to no effect, looked like a part of Bill. And of course Tommy could be made out in another pile of popcorn, or at least his stomach could. But there was no sign of Ed.

Lucy turned to Hermione and began to tell her what she had discovered.

“Ed must be at the ship’s wheel,” she said. “We should have thought –”

She was interrupted by an angry shout. There at the other end of the deck, shaking his fist in their direction, was Ed.

“What’s going on?” he shouted. “Where’s everybody? Why have you closed the galley door?”

The children stood stock still. Ed was now running towards them and nobody had any idea what to do. It would be impossible for them to resist him, as the pirates, even if lazy, were all remarkably strong. Ed would quickly overpower them and release the others, and then …

Biscuit leapt out and stood in front of Ed, growling and barking as fiercely as he could. Ed stopped where he was and looked down at the plucky little dog.

“Get out of my way, you stupid little animal,” he snarled.

Biscuit did not take well to being talked to in this way, and he let out a low growl.

Ed now drew back a leg and aimed a hard kick in Biscuit’s direction. With most dogs, that would have worked, but Biscuit, of course, moved sideways. Ed did not expect this, and suddenly found a determined little dog latched painfully on to his leg.

“Ow!” shouted Ed. “Get your dog off!”

Sam ran forward.

“Pull, Biscuit!” he shouted. “Pull as hard as you can.”

Biscuit responded, and tugged ferociously on the pirate’s leg. For a moment it looked as if he would just not have the strength to do it, but then, quite slowly,
Ed toppled over and landed with a crash on the deck. This gave Sam his chance. Seizing a coil of rope, he wrapped it round the dazed pirate and rolled him over and over, until he was completely tied up. Only then did Biscuit let go of Ed’s leg.

Lucy and Hermione ran up to see that the hapless Ed was firmly secured. They were both experts in knots and they made quite sure that whatever Ed did, he would not be able to free himself.

Then they all looked at one another and smiled. The first stage of the plan had worked very well. They were very pleased with this, of course, but they all knew that a major test lay ahead.

9

Sailing Homewards

Turning the ship round was not easy. With a sailing ship, you can’t just turn the wheel and leave it at that – you have to allow the sails to fill with wind, and that is a fairly tricky piece of work. It is also quite dangerous. If you turn the
wrong way, the ship can go right over on its side and capsize, and that’s the end of the voyage.

Lucy took the wheel to begin with, while Hermione and Sam busied themselves with the sails. They had to prepare all the ropes and scurry up masts to make sure that the sails were all ready. Then, when Lucy gave the order, they had to pull hard on several ropes to bring the billowing sails under control.

When everything was ready, Lucy shouted out, “Ready about!” and everybody sprang into action. For a few moments the great ship seemed to lose speed as she turned into the wind, then, when the wind
caught the sails again, everything began to tilt in an alarming way.

“Pull away!” Lucy shouted. “Haul in the sails!”

Sam and Hermione tugged and pulled for all their worth. At first it seemed as if they were getting nowhere, and the ship leaned further and further over. A few small waves came over the deck now, and lapped at their feet, but they did not let up. Slowly the sails came under control and the ship began to right itself.

“Well done!” shouted Lucy above the wind. “Now let’s keep her like that.”

They made good progress. There was a fresh wind behind them and the ship
cut through the waves like a dolphin. Now that the sails were in the right position, Sam and Hermione had less to do, and they could sit on the deck, watching the blue ocean go by. Biscuit enjoyed the open air; he had been fed up with hiding in the cabin, and he was very happy to sit up on the prow, feeling the salt spray on his whiskers again.

Ed, of course, stayed exactly where he was, safely tied up on the deck, and in the galley the remaining pirates floundered hopelessly in their mounds of popcorn. Tommy had eaten quite a bit of it while he was trapped, and now had a
well-deserved stomach ache. The others just passed their time in moaning and arguing about whose fault the whole thing was. Bert blamed Stinger, and Stinger blamed Bert, saying that he was not quite so clever as he had thought he was. Mrs Bert blamed both of them, and Bill thought it could all be put down to Mrs Bert’s allowing the children to use the galley in the first place.

“And now we’ll all be going to jail,” moaned Bert. “That’s a terrible end to a great career in piracy!”

“And I hear the food’s not very good in jail,” said Tommy. “Dry bread and things like that.”

“Better than Mrs Bert’s potatoes,” said Bill. “I could never stand those potatoes, to tell the truth.”

“You ate enough of them!” shouted Mrs Bert, pushing a heap of popcorn away from her face. “You never turned down second helpings.”

And so it went on: moan, moan, bicker, bicker.

They sailed all afternoon and into the night. There was a bright moon out, and the children were perfectly able to see where they were going. Lucy handed over the helm to Hermione, and she in turn handed it over to Sam. So they all took turns
in keeping the ship on course, all the way until morning.

By Lucy’s calculations, they were now not too far away from the place where the pirates had first seized them. Sam was sent up to the crow’s nest, the little basket up at the top of the highest mast, where he could sit and keep a lookout.

If he saw anything, he would shout out to the deck below and the ship could change course.

Sam’s shout came about two hours after breakfast, which was some rather old ship’s biscuit that they’d found in the hold. Lucy was at the helm and Hermione sitting on the deck below. They both
heard Sam’s call, though, and looked up to see he was pointing.