Custardly Wart Read online

  ‘That’s the lot,’ she declared miserably. ‘I’m broke. Busted. Pennilessless.’

  The Captain stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s a pity, Constance,’ he said. ‘Because here I am with all this pile of money and no one to play. It don’t seem fair not to give you the chance to win some of it back.’

  ‘I’ll take it off you,’ offered Mr Mate. ‘I haven’t won a bean all night.’

  The Captain ignored him and leaned forward over the table.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘What if we was to play one last hand, Constance? One last hand and I’ll stake everything I’ve won tonight.’

  Miss Scrubshaw widened her eyes. ‘All of it?’

  ‘All of it,’ said the Captain, pushing the mountain of coins into the middle of the table.

  ‘But I haven’t got anything left to bet,’ said Miss Scrubshaw.

  The Captain’s face took on a crafty look. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. There must be something. What about that worthless old map your uncle left you?’

  Miss Scrubshaw blinked. ‘Uncle Mack’s jap?’

  ‘Uncle Jack’s map,’ nodded the Captain.

  ‘That’s what I said, only my words keep getting middled,’ giggled Miss Scrubshaw.

  The Captain tipped the bottle and shook the last few drops of grog into her glass.

  ‘What do you say, Constance? One last hand and the winner takes all.’

  ‘I don’t know. You see, my ankle left me that map when he dieded.’

  ‘Your uncle?’

  ‘That’s what I said. And I really couldn’t bear to lose it,’ said Miss Scrubshaw.

  ‘Come now,’ said the Captain. ‘What’s one worthless old map when you could buy a hundred just the same?’

  He picked up a handful of coins and let them run through his fingers. Miss Scrubshaw watched with greedy eyes. Abruptly, she got to her feet and crossed to the study to unlock the door. A moment later she was back with the map and threw it on to the table.

  The Captain licked his lips, shuffled the cards and began to deal two hands. Mr Mate, sulking because he was out of the game, lit his pipe and puffed out smoke.

  Miss Scrubshaw picked up her cards and a smile of triumph spread across her face. The Captain scratched his knee and his hand crept down to the top of his boot. From the landing above, the boys saw him slip an extra card into his hand.

  ‘Did you see that? He’s cheating!’ whispered Dobbs.

  ‘Of course he is – he’s been cheating all along!’ replied Custardly.

  Miss Scrubshaw laid down her cards one by one. ‘Three little kings,’ she said. ‘My money I think, Captain.’ The Captain raised one eyebrow and spread his own cards on the table.

  Mr Mate whistled low. ‘Four Knaves! You have the luck of the devil, Captain.’

  ‘Luck has nothing to do with it,’ winked the Captain, rolling up the map and slipping it into his coat pocket. He scooped up the rest of his winnings and dropped the money into his purse. ‘Well, it’s been a real pleasure, Constance,’ he said. ‘We must do it again sometime. Oh, and by the by, I thought I might take the class on a little trip tomorrow.’

  Miss Scrubshaw’s head had drooped down towards the table. She raised it with an effort.

  ‘A little drip?’

  ‘Yes, to the sea. Do them good. Put some colour in their cheeks. I trust you don’t have any objection?’

  Miss Scrubshaw got to her feet rather unsteadily, leaning heavily on the back of a chair.

  ‘I think, Captain, I will have to … oh dear!’ She raised a hand to her head and swayed like a tree in the breeze. ‘I think I will need to give that some therious short. No, I’m middling my words again. What I mean to say is …’

  There was a loud thud as she let go of the chair, toppled sideways and hit the floor.

  Peering down, Custardly could see her black boots sticking out from under the fallen chair. She seemed to be snoring loudly. The Captain stepped over her, his pockets jingling with coins.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes then,’ he said. His eyes travelled upwards to the banisters where two pale faces stared down at him. ‘And as for you two young scoundrels, we’ve an early start in the morning so time you was both in bed.’

  Custardly and Dobbs didn’t need any more prompting. They sprang to their feet and hurried back to their dormitory before the Captain had a chance to come after them.

  Chapter 5

  The Salty Gherkin

  The stagecoach pulled up outside a tavern called The Jolly Sailor and the children climbed down excitedly. It had been a long journey from Dankmarsh, especially with twenty children, two pirates and one very pale schoolteacher jammed into one coach. Custardly and his friends had been forced to squash on to the roof with the baggage, where they hung on for dear life as the stagecoach rattled and lurched around corners at alarming speeds of up to twenty miles an hour.

  ‘There she is, shipmates!’ shouted Mr Mate.

  At the foot of the hill they could see the harbour bristling with masts, yardarms and other boaty things. Custardly breathed in the sharp salty air and marvelled at the number of ships. He had never realised the sea was such a busy place. Miss Scrubshaw, meanwhile, climbed out of the coach in her crumpled bonnet, looking as green as a gooseberry.

  She couldn’t remember much of the night before or how she had come to agree to this trip. All she knew was that her head felt like someone had been using it as a tambourine. If anyone mentioned grog, she was going to be very sick.

  The Captain led the way along the bustling harbour until he came to a halt at an impressive ship with three tall masts and six cannons on either side.

  ‘There she is – The Salty Gherkin,’ he said proudly.

  Custardly stared. ‘Is she really yours?’

  ‘Mine, shipmate, and you won’t find a finer ship on the seven seas.’

  Mr Mate coughed. ‘Well, apart from The Black Tadpole, Captain. She’s a lot faster. And The Pelican has more guns …’ He tailed off, noticing the Captain grinding his teeth. ‘I’ll just see to the gangplank, shall I?’ he said.

  Miss Scrubshaw, who had been trailing some way behind, now pushed her way through the crowd of excited children. ‘The Salty Gherkin? What is the meaning of this, Captain?’

  ‘Meaning?’ said the Captain. ‘Well, a gherkin is a kind of vegetable –’

  ‘Not the name!’ thundered Miss Scrubshaw. ‘I mean, what are we doing here? You said nothing about setting foot on a boat. I do not like boats, Captain. Boats do not agree with me.’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, you are looking a bit green at the gills,’ said the Captain. ‘We’re going to take a little tour of the ship so why don’t you slip into that tavern there and have a mug of sweet tea? We can look after the children for a bit, ain’t that right, Mr Mate?’

  ‘Aye, Captain,’ replied the mate with a wink. ‘We can look after ’em.’

  Miss Scrubshaw didn’t need much persuading. Right now she couldn’t think of anything worse than clambering over a ship and feeling the deck moving beneath her feet. She brightened even more when the Captain offered to escort her to the tavern and pay the landlord to look after her. (He was a charming man with a black eyepatch.)

  Meanwhile Mr Mate led the excited children up the gangplank to begin the tour.

  Custardly had always dreamed of setting foot on board a real ship and The Salty Gherkin was everything he’d imagined. Mr Mate led them up and down narrow stairways, peeping into the galley, where dirty pots and pans lay in the sink and the Captain’s cabin, where a table was heaped with maps and charts. Finally the mate took them below to the gun deck where he said he had one or two jobs to do and left them to play by themselves.

  Custardly found a pile of old cannonballs in a corner and they were soon enjoying a game of skittles across the deck. The game was just reaching an exciting point, with Custardly about to take his third shot, when the deck gave a violent lurch and he almost dropped the cannonball on his foot.r />
  ‘What was that?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Custardly. The escaped cannonball rolled across the deck by itself and came to rest in a corner. Dobbs went to one of the gunwhales and peered out.

  ‘Hey, the dock is moving!’ he cried.

  The others crowded round to see for themselves.

  ‘It’s not the dock that’s moving, it’s us!’ shouted Custardly.

  They clattered upstairs to the deck, where they found Mr Mate at the wheel of the ship and the Captain bellowing out orders. ‘Hoist the mizzen, Mr Mate! Weigh anchor! Hard down on your left as she goes!’

  ‘Beg’n your pardon, Captain,’ puffed the mate, ‘but I can’t be hoisting and hauling and steering at the same time – I’ve only got one pair of hands.’

  The Captain caught sight of Custardly. ‘You, shipmate!’ he roared. ‘Take the wheel! Keep her steady!’

  Custardly did as he was told, mainly because the mate had let go of the wheel and the ship was in danger of scraping the harbour wall.

  As The Salty Gherkin slipped past the harbour, the children crowded to the rails. A woman in a black bonnet was chasing along the dock, hitching up her skirts and shouting.

  ‘STOP!’ cried Miss Scrubshaw. ‘Kidnapper! Thief! Turn that ship –’

  Her next words were drowned out by a great splash as she reached the end of the dock and dropped like a stone into the water below. A moment later she bobbed up like a cork, spluttering and gasping for breath. ‘Urgle flub! COME … glug! … BACK!’

  Dobbs turned to Custardly, who was steering for the open sea.

  ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ replied Custardly. ‘But it sounded something like, “Go on without me.”’

  Chapter 6

  Riddles!

  The Salty Gherkin bobbed along on a calm sea. On deck, however, all was not well. ‘It’s not fair! You tricked us!’ said Angela. ‘You said we were going on a trip but you just wanted to kidnap us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Custardly. ‘We’ve been talking it over and we’ve decided to hold a mutey thing.’

  ‘A mutiny,’ prompted Dobbs.

  ‘Yes, one of those.’

  ‘Lads, lads, you’ve got this all wrong!’ The Captain held up a hand for quiet. ‘First off, I promised you a trip to the sea. Well, I’m a man of my word. This is a trip and ain’t that the sea you’re looking at?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Custardly, ‘but –’

  ‘And second, shipmates,’ the Captain went on, ‘let me ask you this – where would you rather be now? Back at school with old Miss Starchpants or on a ship with the breeze in your hair and the sun on your back?’

  The children considered it. When you put it like that the Captain hadn’t really kidnapped them at all, he’d actually helped them escape.

  ‘And thirdly,’ said the Captain, ‘who has kidnapped who? You don’t look like kids to me – you looks like a proper crew of pirates!’

  ‘Do we?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the Captain. ‘And since you is pirates, it’s high time you changed out of them lubberly clothes. Mr Mate!’

  The mate pulled out an old sea chest and opened it to reveal it was stuffed full of shirts, spotted head-scarves, belts, boots, daggers and cutlasses. The Captain left them to try on their new clothes and, having dealt with the mutiny, retired to his cabin for a well-earned nap.

  Two hours later Custardly knocked on the cabin door.

  ‘Enter!’ bellowed a voice.

  He found the Captain munching a Ginger Crunch and studying Miss Scrubshaw’s old map.

  ‘Ah! Just the lad I wanted to see!’ he cried, looking up. ‘Take a seat, shipmate, and help yourself to biscuits. What kind’s your favourite?’

  ‘Chocolate,’ said Custardly.

  ‘Mine too,’ agreed the Captain. ‘Have a Custard Cream. I never touch ’em.’

  Custardly glanced round the cabin. It was cramped and untidy, with socks, papers and biscuit crumbs littering the floor. On the wall was a portrait of the Captain looking moodily out to sea with a telescope in his hand. Various ship’s instruments were scattered round the room and there was a shelf of books with titles like Navigation Made Easy, The Wicked Book of Sea Shanties and Eyepatches for All Occasions.

  ‘Now, shipmate,’ said the Captain, ‘cast your eye over this and tell me what you make of it.’

  Custardly looked at the map spread out on the table. It showed an island, and scrawled across it in black ink was the name:

  DOOM ISLAND

  ‘Doom Island?’ said Custardly. ‘Is that where we’re going?’

  ‘Oh, don’t let the name worry you,’ said the Captain. ‘That’s just something we pirates call it for effect. Have another biscuit!’

  Custardly helped himself. ‘So it isn’t dangerous or anything?’ he said.

  ‘Dangerous? Lord bless you, no!’ laughed the Captain. ‘There’s nothing there but sand and sea. You might come across a sea turtle or a few parrots but nothing that would give you nightmares at all.’ The Captain pulled a flask from his pocket and took a long swig of grog.

  ‘And this is where you think the treasure is buried?’ asked Custardly.

  ‘Oh, it’s there all right,’ said the Captain. ‘This is Black Jack Mulligan’s map and everyone knows he was rich as the King of Spain. But that’s the part that’s got me foxed. See for yourself, lad – it don’t make sense.’

  Custardly studied the map in more detail. Apart from cheery names like Hangman’s Hill and Coffin Cove, it seemed ordinary enough.

  ‘It looks all right to me,’ he said.

  ‘All right?’ repeated the Captain. ‘Where’s the X? How the devil do we find a treasure without an X marks the spot?’

  Custardly ran his eye over the island again. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing to a dark splodge in the hills. The Captain dabbed at it and licked his finger. ‘Blackberry jam,’ he said. ‘Mulligan’s favourite.’

  Custardly took the map to the window where the evening sun was spilling into the cabin. When he held the paper up to the light, he immediately saw what they’d been missing. ‘Look at this, Captain. There’s something written on the back.’

  The words were faint and scrawled in spidery black writing. Custardly read them out slowly.

  ‘Dark I am and cold as death.

  Mouth I own but have no breath.

  Speak to me, yourself replies.

  In my heart the treasure lies.’

  The Captain snatched the map and read the words several times, frowning hard. Finally he threw it down on the table in disgust.

  ‘Mouth I own but have no breath? What kind of bilge is that? If Black Jack Mulligan wrote this, he’d drunk too much grog.’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ said Custardly. ‘It must be some sort of riddle.’

  ‘Riddle?’ frowned the Captain.

  ‘You know, a riddle like … “What do you call a cat with eight legs?”’

  The Captain knitted his brows. ‘A cat with eight legs? There’s no such thing!’

  ‘No, it’s a sort of joke,’ said Custardly. ‘What do you call a cat with eight legs? An octo-puss!’

  The Captain’s puzzled face slowly broke into a great grin. ‘AH-HAAAARR!’ he roared, punching Custardly on the shoulder. ‘An octopus! Wait till I tell Mr Mate that one. A cat with eight legs, an octopus! Har har har! An octopus!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Custardly, who felt a joke was never quite as funny when you kept repeating it. ‘But the point is, it’s some kind of clue. If we can solve the riddle, maybe it’ll lead us to the treasure.’

  The Captain pushed the biscuit barrel across the table. ‘Smart thinking, shipmate. Have another. No, take a chocolate one. I insist.’

  He began to pace the cabin excitedly. ‘I knew you was a sharp one the first time I clapped eyes on you. So riddles, you say – riddles? And if we can find this eight-legged octopus it will lead us to the spot?’

  �
��Um, no, forget the octopus,’ said Custardly. ‘Just let me take this away and try to work it out.’

  He copied out the riddle on to a piece of paper and slipped it into his pocket. If anyone was able to solve the clues, it would be Dobbs, who was a genius at any kind of puzzle.

  When it came to riddles, he had a feeling the Captain wasn’t going to be much help.

  Chapter 7

  Doom Island

  ‘LAND AHOY!’ cried Rose from high in the crow’s nest.

  Everyone rushed to the ship’s rail, eager to get their first glimpse of the island.

  Doom Island certainly lived up to its name. Black rocks like giant’s teeth guarded the coast. To the east were tall cliffs, to the west a wide beach backed by forest, and over it all a grey blanket of fog that looked as though it would never lift.

  ‘Is that it? asked Dobbs with a shiver.

  ‘Maybe it looks better on a sunny day,’ said Custardly.

  But it was hard to imagine the sun ever shining on Doom Island. There was no sign of the brightly coloured parrots that the Captain had talked about. Black shapes wheeled and dived from the cliffs but they didn’t look like the kind of birds you’d keep as a pet.

  The Captain meanwhile was busy giving orders. He announced that once they’d dropped anchor in the bay a landing party would go ashore. Immediately he was flattened in the stampede as the crew all rushed to be first in the boat.

  ‘WAIT!’ he roared. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Getting in the boat,’ replied Angela. ‘I want to be in the landing party.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Rose. ‘Will there be jelly and cake?’

  The Captain scowled. ‘First of all, it ain’t that kind of party. Secondly, it’s my boat and I say who gets in. And thirdly … um, what is thirdly, Mr Mate?’

  ‘The one after secondly, Captain,’ said the mate helpfully.

  ‘No, thirdly, someone has to stay on board and guard the ship.’