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Tobias Brown

by RS Harding

Monster Books

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The Creake Castle series is dedicated to Major Francis Budd, otherwise known as ‘Grandpa’

Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire (LA&CS Ltd 3233613. Monster Books) Originally published in Great Britain by Monster Books The Old Smithy, Henley-on-Thames, OXON RG9 2AR All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

The right of RS Harding to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Text copyright RS Harding Illustrations copyright Rob Rayevsky This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser ISBN 0-9532261-3-9 soft cover A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Printed in Great Britain by Anthony Rowe

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Creake Castle Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, high on a hill in England’s countryside, a Knight, who was probably some sort of magician too, decided that he wanted to build a castle. Not because he particularly needed one or because there was any war going on, he just fancied it. Some people are like that; and anyway, he knew that you couldn’t possibly be a proper Knight unless you had a Castle, with a moat, a drawbridge and a very good view.

He got some builders together, some local stone and large amounts of wood and had it built in next to no time at all. The castle was called Creake and the Knight, who was called Sir Creake, was very proud of himself and of his gleaming white castle on his green grassy hill, with its high towers and bright red flags waving in the wind.

The Knight was also very clever, and he had the castle blessed with magic. There was a lot of it about in those days and it was certainly cheaper than it is now.

As I said, that was a long time ago. But the castle is still there today and a boy called Fred lives there with his mother and father, Sir and Lady Longshanks, direct descendants of Sir Creake. The castle doesn’t gleam white anymore and most of the flags have gone, but the hillside is still just as green and lovely as it always was and Fred is happy living amongst the

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ancient battlements and the towers.

He is never bored because some of the magic that the castle had when it was first built is still there to this day, sleeping in the stone. Things always seem to happen at Creake and often to Fred himself. Interesting things. Maybe even Marvellous Things.

Sometimes it seems that there is just as much magic in Fred himself as there is in Creake Castle. Or perhaps it is all just part of the same thing – you can decide about that for yourself.

It is time we began..........

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Chapter One

On inventors Do you know what an inventor is? Well yes, I suppose that is rather an easy one. Inventors invent. Everybody knows that, and if they don’t, then they should listen to what is being said in school and not stare out of the window quite so much.

Inventors invent everything. Take a look around you.

Everything that you see has had to be invented by someone, somewhere and at some time. Not just modern stuff either, like computers, cars, hi-fis or that thing that makes the kettle turn off when it has started to boil. Even old-fashioned things. Particularly old-fashioned things. Like clocks, pencils, pens, even shoes and socks.

Reasons have to be invented too. Like why you have to go to bed when you are still wide awake, or why you have to get up when you are still half-asleep. And why school cabbage always tastes as if someone’s boiled their underpants and is now trying to make you eat them.

Well, anyway, this is a story about an inventor. And it is also about Fred Longshanks, whom you may already have heard about. He lives in a very old castle called Creake Castle, in the middle of the countryside in England with his mother and father, Sir and Lady Longshanks.

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It is a wonderful old castle with a lake and a moat and on a clear day Fred can stand on the battlements and look out at the whole of Dorset, spread out before him like a very large map.

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Chapter Two

Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire On the morning in question, Fred was lying fast asleep in his bed, dreaming about an immense cake piled high with strawberries and covered in castor sugar, the sort that looks like snow and makes your mouth tingle when you eat it on its own.

‘CRRAAAASHH!

KABOOM!

Tinkle

tinkle………………..flibit’ went something extremely loudly in his ear.

One minute he was in the dream, cutting himself a huge slice of cake in the shining sun, and the next there was a tremendous noise and he was wide awake and nearly jumping out of his skin, trying to run in sixteen directions at once.

The crashing noise continued whilst Fred escaped (or at least tried to) from the sheets, which had tied themselves in knots around his head. He turned and stared at what was coming through his beloved window in his beloved bedroom, high up in his beloved castle.

The more he stared, the less he could make out what it was. It was large, certainly, made out of bits of wood, apparently, and it had a man sitting in the middle of it. On a 3

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bicycle. A very old decrepit bicycle, by the looks of things.

Fred was more surprised than angry, although deep down in his heart he certainly felt it was a rather rude thing, crashing about in other people’s bedrooms whilst they were still fast asleep, having the sort of dreams you only had once a month and only if you were lucky.

There was a pause, as the dust settled.

Then: ‘Hello,’ said the man, quite normally, as if they had just met each other out on a walk, or at tea in someone’s house.

‘Hello,’ said Fred, partly because he couldn’t think of anything clever to say just at the minute, and partly because he was beginning to feel curious. The machine lying half in and half out of the window was obviously some sort of plane and that, in Fred’s world, meant that it was worth another look. He was very interested in planes.

However, it didn’t look like the type of plane that you could buy in a shop, or wherever it was Fred supposed that planes normally came from. It wasn’t the usual sort of plane.

It looked home made, he decided. The man looked strange home made too, if that was the right word, but in a nice friendly way. He had a long pointed beard and wore a velvet red coat. On his head he wore a flying helmet, with a strap around his chin and what looked like a camera stuck on the top. His eyes were grey and had fine wrinkles, etched like kindness at their edges.

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There was a long silence.

‘Would you like a glass of lemon juice?’ asked Fred eventually, because he still couldn’t think of anything else to say. And anyway, he knew that offering drinks to guests was the polite thing to do. The flying gentleman, who was picking bits of Fred’s bedroom window out of his coat, looked up in surprise, as if he had forgotten Fred was there, and beamed through the dust.

‘Yes, that would be absolutely splendid, my dear boy.’

And so, ten minutes later, they were sitting on the window seat, with Fred looking at the flying machine and the broken window. ‘I really am most frightfully sorry about all this mess and the nasty shock of course,’ he said to Fred for the fourth time in as many minutes. ‘It’s windier today than I had calculated for. But the aircraft seems to be all right.’

Fred thought it was best to accept the apology gracefully; besides, he was fascinated to find out what the funny old aeroplane and this man with a strange contraption on his head were all about. He coughed politely.

‘Erm,’ he started, ‘what’s the plane, and what’s that thing on your head for? Actually... If you don’t mind me asking?’ he finished. The old gentleman, who was sipping his lemon, staring into space, stopped what he was doing, looked up and peered at Fred closely. Then he beamed again, both his eyes twinkling in the morning sunlight. It was a very special sort of beam, the sort that, when it is beamed right at you, 5

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makes you feel like a million dollars, or whatever the local currency is. Fred suddenly felt glad that this nice old man had crashed into his bedroom window. It was interesting, more interesting than school holidays. Kit was on an exchange in France, staying with some people called the de Lafonts. In her last postcard to him, she had written that the family had a daughter Kit’s age, called Isabelle, a swimming pool in the garden and a pony in a field. Fred felt a little jealous, quite frankly, which was not helped by the fact that he was also a little bored. He’d been on holiday for almost a week and in that time not a single dangerous or exciting thing had happened to him. Until now.

‘I know,’ said the pilot, clapping his hands together, and spilling lemonade all over the carpet in the process, ‘it’s a very long story, so why don’t you come to my laboratory for tea sometime next week and I’ll tell you all about it?’

‘Well...I...’ started Fred.

‘Good, excellent,’ he said, ‘that’s all settled. Say Wednesday at 4 pm, here’s my card and don’t forget to ask your parents. Now,’ he said getting up and starting towards the door. ‘I must be off,’ Fred started to get up. ‘No, no, don’t bother seeing me out, I expect you will be wanting to get some more sleep.’

Fred looked incredulously at the smashed window with its curtains flapping in the breeze and at the glass and bits of wood lying on the floor.

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‘I’ll find my own way back,’ the man continued, ‘and don’t worry about the mess. I’ll send someone around in a couple of hours to clear everything up. Well, goodbye for now.’ He leant down gracefully and shook Fred’s hand. Then he climbed up onto the window ledge and jumped on the bike, which he started to pedal. In an instant the plane’s propeller started to whirl around and the bicycle wheels left the ground. It moved forward, off the ledge and dropped like a stone. Fred stuck his head out of the window, expecting to see the plane go crashing to the ground. Down the plane went, but just when it looked as if it was sure to hit the ground, the man pulled the lever and the whole plane shot upwards, whirring and clanking its way above the lake and behind the trees.

Slowly the noise disappeared. Fred blinked and stared.

‘What an extraordinary way to start the day,’ he thought. ‘I think I will go to tea with him.’ He looked down at the card.

It was very thick and respectable-looking, with a gold band around the edge. In the middle, in elegant print, was written:

Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire Jasmine Cottage Barleymow Lane Dorset 7

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‘Yes, I know him,’ Fred’s Dad nodded, handing back the card as he climbed back up the ladder, where he was painting a ceiling. Thanks to Fred finding a heap of gold coins the summer before, they’d managed to repair Creake Castle, so that the roof looked like new and the white limestone walls gleamed in the sunlight. They even had a flag with the Creake coat of arms proudly flicking in the breeze from the Keep. Sir Longshanks was putting a final coat of paint on all 40 ceilings in the Dragon Wing, in preparation for the Creake Open Day held every August Bank Holiday. Needless to say, Fred had offered to help, but had been banned after a regrettable episode involving 5 cans of paint, a short piece of rope and Mrs Bee, the housekeeper.

‘He’s a local eccentric, very clever, nice old fellow. My father knew his father very well. In fact, now I think of it, he might actually be some sort of relation. Of course you can go, but I wonder if he knows what he’s letting himself in for.

Just try not to break anything, Fred, there’s a good chap.”

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Chapter Three

Tea So on Wednesday Fred put on his trainers and an old coat belonging to his father and went down the long drive, trying to look as if he did that sort of thing all the time. Barleymow was no more than twenty minutes away on foot and Fred was in a hurry to get there quickly, so he walked fast, wondering, as he had been all week, just what to expect.

Now the lane curly-whirled down towards a muddy pond at the start of the village. Just as he came around the corner, Fred heard a loud explosion and saw a cloud of green and yellow smoke come out of a chimney that was part of a house that nestled behind some trees.

‘That’s it,’ thought Fred, and he jumped over a fence and scrambled through the hedge.

Almost instantly, as Fred strolled up the path the door was flung open and out stepped the rather peculiar figure of Tobias Brown, followed by lots more green and yellow smoke. ‘My dear boy,’ he exclaimed, not seeming to notice the smoke or the part of his jacket that was still on fire.

‘Good grief, I completely forgot the time. Come in, come in, and I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Brown,’ Fred replied politely and 9

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stepped inside.

Barely a few minutes later they were both seated by a roaring fire, Mr Brown drinking tea, and Fred frothy hot chocolate. Fred stared around the room with his mouth slightly open. This was incredible! All around him there were pots and wires and tubes and buttons, some things bubbling, some things merely simmering. The place looked like a cross between a junk shop and a laboratory. ‘I am afraid I was trying to finish up a project I was working on just before you arrived,’ said Mr. Brown. ‘You may have seen a small explosion as you came up the lane.’

‘Er, no,’ said Fred, lying rather badly.

‘Only I don’t seem to be able to get the mixture right. Last week it exploded in the garden and turned Plato, that’s my cat, bright blue. I don’t think she has quite got over it.’

‘Uh-oh, he’s even got a cat, he’s got to be a wizard,’ thought Fred before he remembered his manners. ‘Oh dear,’ he said out loud.

‘I know,’ said Tobias, taking a big gulp of tea, ‘let me show you some of my other inventions.’

‘Yes please,’ said Fred, snatching the last two chocolate biscuits and putting them in his pocket for later. Tobias Brown got up and moved towards a door under the rickety old stairs.

‘Up here, my boy,’ he was explaining, ‘is where the chemistry goes on. I need natural light.’

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‘To see the cat, I expect,’ said Fred helpfully.

‘Um, no, to see the chemicals properly. Under electric light it’s difficult to tell the difference between dark blue and purple.

Very important if you want to get the right results. We men of science,’ he said, not terribly convincingly, ‘must be ceaseless in our pursuit of the truth, rigorous in our testing of the flaws. We must aspire to the absolute!’

‘Hurrah!’ shouted Fred.

‘Indeed,’ said Tobias.

‘But what does that mean?’

‘It means that if you play around with chemicals that you don’t understand, you are likely to end up with a blue cat and heaven knows what else. Now let me show you downstairs.

This is the INVENTING ROOM. It’s where I make things.

A lot of inventing is quite hard work, you know. You have to do a lot of sawing and nailing and cutting once you have thought up the fantastic idea. This is where I keep all the tools and materials. It is also where I keep the machines. But that is a surprise for later. Allow me to show you some of my latest inventions.’

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Chapter Four

Deep Blue They bowed their heads low to get down the stairs and Tobias Brown spent a few minutes looking for the light switch.

When he turned it on, Fred blinked a couple of times to get used to the light and then turned around to inspect what was in front of him. Everything looked amazing.

‘What’s that?’ He asked, pointing to something that looked like a cross between a stereo and a set of bagpipes.

‘Oh that,’ said Tobias proudly, ‘it’s a stereo and a set of bagpipes.’ He paused and then smiled kindly. ‘Only joking. I know what it looks like. Actually, it’s an All Animal Technical Translator, or an AATT, as I call it.’ Fred looked blank, so Tobias continued: ‘It’s my own invention for talking to animals. You speak into the machine here,’ he pointed to the microphone, ‘press this button here,’ he pointed a long finger at a red circle, which looked to Fred suspiciously like a jam jar lid, ‘and then you turn the dial to the required language. Cat, for talking to cats, of course, Cow for cows – not bulls; they get very angry if you address them in the wrong way.’

‘Oh,’ said Fred.

‘And then,’ Tobias Brown continued, ‘the words come out 13

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and the animal in question can understand you perfectly. I shall give you a demonstration,’ he said, rather grandly. Fred leant forward. This was going to be good. Tobias flicked a switch and pushed the button and put his mouth to the microphone. ‘Hello, hello, testing, testing, one two three, can you hear me, nod your head if you can.’ Just then Tobias’s cat strolled past. She shot Tobias a suspicious look, as if wondering what was going to happen next. She still looked very blue to Fred. Tobias pointed the speaker at the cat, turned the dial to CAT and pressed the red jam jar lid again.

Nothing happened. Plato yawned and strolled past. Tobias looked puzzled. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it didn’t do that last time.’

‘What did it do last time?’ Fred asked.

‘I tried it out on a cow in the nearby field. It looked at me in a funny way and then jumped straight in the village pond.

I can’t imagine what it must have come out as.’

‘Maybe, ‘Go and jump in the lake’,’ Fred suggested.

Tobias paused. ‘Yes!’ he exclaimed, as if Fred had said something really clever, ‘you’re probably right.’

‘Barking,’ thought Fred, ‘mad as a hatter.’

‘Well anyway, I’ll let you know when I’ve got it right. But allow me to show you something else I have been working on; my robot. I call it Robert. It’s like robot, but it isn’t, Robert/robot.’

‘Yes, I get it,’ said Fred patiently, ‘what does it do?’

‘Well, actually not a lot at the moment. We’re 14

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experiencing some teething problems. His teeth keep falling out. Also, he’s meant to help out around the house, doing the cooking and cleaning, that sort of thing. Last time I turned him on and put in the Spring Clean program he washed all my food in the washing machine and tried to put my mattress in the toaster. It quite disturbed Plato’s morning nap.’

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ thought Fred, ‘I’m sure she’s quite used to it.’ Tobias went over to the window and looked out at the trees. He took his glasses off and gave them a polish.

‘Actually,’ said Tobias rather sheepishly, ‘I’m not a very good inventor.’

‘Oh no,’ exclaimed Fred, suddenly feeling sorry for this nice old man, ‘I’m sure you’re very good indeed. You’ve just been... er... unlucky.’

‘No, I’m useless,’ said Tobias Brown quite miserably.

‘No you’re not,’ said Fred, getting indignant, as he always did when people disagreed with him. Tobias Brown Inventor Esq. looked up suddenly and smiled.

‘You really mean that?’

‘Yes,’ said Fred definitely and positively.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Why, that’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.

Most people just think that I’m a mad old man.’

‘Not at all,’ said Fred gallantly, very pleased that he had managed to cheer him up so easily.

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‘Are you sure that you are not saying that just to make me feel better?’

‘Positively.’

‘I mean, I won’t be offended.’

‘Mr Brown,’ said Fred very firmly, meaning to put a stop to this, ‘I think that you are a marvellous inventor. Simply the best.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’ ‘So that means that you will come with me!’

Fred very quickly stopped and wondered what he might be about to let himself in for.

Before he had a chance to disagree, Tobias had started to jump about excitedly. ‘The moment that I saw you I knew that you would agree to come along. You had that look about you. An adventurer, I said to myself: there goes somebody who is not afraid of the unknown, to risk everything in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, to ignore danger – in short, to come with me on my Great Adventure!’

Fred finally found his voice.

‘What are you talking about?’ Tobias paused and looked at Fred.

‘Oh dear, I’m afraid I have run ahead of myself a bit. I am always doing that. You must forgive me.’ He paused and looked at Fred, a slight smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye. He took his glasses off and started to polish them.

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‘Perhaps I had better start at the beginning. You see, the day that I, er, luckily met you but, well, unfortunately crashed my microplane through your bedroom window, I never explained to you what I was up to.’

‘No,’ agreed Fred. ‘It seemed rude to ask at the time, and afterwards I forgot.’

‘Quite so,’ said Tobias Brown. ‘Anyway, I was actually out doing a bit of exploring.’

‘What were you exploring around Creake Castle?’ asked Fred.

‘Well, the lake, to be precise. I needed to get a view from above for my aerial calculations. They have to be very exact, you see.’

‘What for?’

‘For the descent into the lake. Your lake, actually – the one at Creake, that is, opposite the North Wall of the Castle.

If I make a miscalculation we could get stuck and the whole operation will be a waste of time. Not to mention very dangerous.’

‘We’re, I mean you’re,’ said Fred, remembering just in time that he had not agreed to anything yet, ‘going down into the lake. But why?’

‘Oh dear,’ said Tobias again, perhaps it would be best if I just showed you Deep Blue; that would help to clear up a great deal.’

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being in a muddle since he had come to tea. Outside it looked as if it was about to rain and Fred thought he should be going home.

‘Deep Blue? Why, that’s my submarine, of course. I thought at least you would have realised that by now,’ replied Tobias, with a short laugh. ‘Allow me to take you to the garage outside. I’ve had to put it in there for the time being, because it’s too big to fit down here and it must be kept wet at all times.’

Despite his better judgement, Fred was suddenly very interested. Ever since he could remember, he had loved submarines, and if he had to name a brilliant sort of invention, apart from a machine for making sackfuls of money, it would have to be a submarine. ‘I’ll just have a look at it,’ he thought to himself, ‘make some helpful suggestions, and then I’ll be on my way. There is absolutely no way anyone is going to get me to go down into the lake in anything that Tobias Brown has invented.’ Even so Fred had a sneaking suspicion that nice old Mr. Brown could be quite good at getting you to change your mind. Probably because he never seemed to hear anything you said anyway. ‘Why do you have to keep it wet at all times?’ he asked, immediately wishing he hadn’t, running after the inventor who was now bounding up the stairs.

Tobias stopped and turned around.

‘Ah, yes, well, good question my boy. Deep Blue isn’t any 18

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ordinary submarine. I have built it to my own design to withstand great pressure. This means that Deep Blue can travel further below the water than any submarine known to man.’

‘How come?’ Fred found himself almost running to keep up with Tobias.

‘Well, it’s really rather clever. At least I think it is. I have been working on an idea based on fish.’

‘Fish?’

‘Fish,’ said Mr. Brown quite definitely.

‘Okay, go on.’

‘Well, fish can travel extremely far below the surface because of their shape and the way that their bodies are made. So I have decided to design a vessel along the same lines that can withstand lots of pressure of water above it.

This means that the material has to be flexible, bendy that is.

Most submarines, and most boats for that matter, go through the water by using a propeller. Pushing themselves along, using lots of energy and making an awful racket at the same time. Dirty smelly things. No wonder all the fish run away.

Deep Blue, on the other hand, is not only bendy to stop it breaking up when it goes very, very deep. It actually swims!’

‘You’ve made a submarine at home out of dead fish?’ said Fred, less horrified than amazed. They were at the door of the garage and Tobias was fishing around for keys in his pocket. He found a large rusty one and put it in the lock.

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‘No, of course not. It’s made out of rubber. But a special type that feels almost like skin, so it has to be kept wet at all times to stop it from cracking up, like old rubber bands if you leave them in the sun. Here we go,’ he said, heaving the door open, ‘you can see what I mean now.’

As the doors swung open with a loud creak and a bang, Fred’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. ‘Wha wha er wha?’ he said blinking furiously.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ said Mr. Brown, smiling a big smile that went from ear to ear.

‘Wha wha,’ continued Fred.

‘It’s nearly ready – I’m just putting the finishing touches.’

‘I...it...it’s a SHARK!’ Fred finally managed to say. And indeed there, right in front of him, long and dark grey with enormous teeth and a great sleek body, was indeed a shark.

‘A basking shark to be precise,’ said Mr. Brown, smiling up at the thing. ‘Not a real one of course. But rather a clever disguise. Did you know that one of these in real life can sink to a depth of nearly a mile under water? Not bad for flesh and bones. And they’ve got a brain almost as big as a human’s. So they’re very clever really – or very stupid; it depends on which human beings you’re talking about. Now, I have the most amazing secret about Creake Castle.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Fred. Creake had been around for centuries, and apart from secret passages, buried treasure and ghosts, Fred could not think of any sort of secret worth 20

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knowing about the old castle that Tobias Brown would know and that he didn’t.

‘Well,’ continued the inventor, ‘it is a little known fact, but Creake Hill is actually the site of a volcano.’ Fred’s eyes widened like two dinner plates. ‘Don’t worry,’ Mr. Brown continued quickly, ‘it’s quite extinct now. In fact it’s been extinct, like the dinosaurs, for nearly sixty-five million years.’

‘Oh,’ said Fred, now a little disappointed.

‘Well, my dear boy, I’m pleased to say that it doesn’t end there. In the course of my investigations, just after I discovered the lava rock at the foot of your hill that proved that there was a volcano, I also found the same rock, further down the valley where a stream runs from your lake. This made me think that your lake isn’t an ornamental pond at all, built by one of your illustrious ancestors, but perhaps a natural lake formed by a volcanic eruption creating a huge hole in the ground and that hole then filling up with water.’

Fred looked puzzled.

‘This means,’ said Tobias Brown, getting more and more excited, and starting to wave his arms about, ‘that the lake is probably very deep right in the middle. In fact the perfect chance to try out Deep Blue, as I said. ‘ ‘Yes?’ ‘Yes. As it turns out, I was absolutely right. After the unfortunate accident when I crashed the microplane into your bedroom window – sorry again, by the way-’ 21

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‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Well, I came home to study the data I had used for measuring the lake and was surprised to discover that it is highly likely that the lake is the deepest in Britain.’

‘How deep?’ asked Fred.

‘Four miles deep actually.’

‘What?!’

‘Four miles,’ repeated Tobias matter-of-factly.

‘It’s amazing,’ Fred gasped, looking up at it with his mouth open. He had never suspected the lake went down so far. That would probably explain, he thought, why it was cold even in the middle of summer. It gave him the creeps and made him quite excited at the same time. As for Deep Blue, he had never seen anything like it in his life. From where he was standing it looked completely real. And completely terrifying. ‘Wow!’ was practically all he could think of saying.

‘I’m glad that you like it,’ said Tobias Brown, still beaming, ‘after all, it would be no good having a co-pilot who didn’t want to co-pilot.’

‘But I didn’t say I would go,’ Fred said quickly, but this time a little less sure of himself. After all, it was all incredibly interesting and it sounded like a great adventure. Also, for once, with Deep Blue Tobias Brown really seemed to have got it right. This wasn’t the same sort of badly put together machine he had seen down in the cellar that was likely to go 22

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wrong and explode. It looked amazingly solid and with teeth like that – even mechanical ones – it was likely to scare off any horrors they might find lurking in the cold dark waters of the lake.

‘If you don’t go,’ the inventor went on, ‘then I’m afraid I’ll have to call the whole thing off. You see, I need a co-pilot to help steer and keep a look out. Meeting you the other morning was perfect. It was fate! Deep Blue is packed with special machinery and computers for doing all sorts of things. Another grown-up would be too big and heavy.

Someone your size would be ideal. In fact, you are just the man for the job. Without you I might as well call it a day and take Deep Blue apart for spares.’

Fred looked at his new-found friend and felt sorry for him. He thought about the long summer holidays stretched out before him, no Kit, and with nothing out of the ordinary to do, the same old thing, day in, day out. Then he thought of the wonderful – or at the very least interesting – time he could have with Tobias Brown, Inventor Esquire. ‘I must be mad,’ he decided.

‘OK,’ said Fred, ‘ I’ll do it.’

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Chapter Five

Preparations So, over the next few days, Fred had ants in his pants.

He kept going down to the lake, as if drawn there by a large magnet, and staring into the waters, trying to see under the gentle ripples that ran across the surface. ‘The deepest lake in England. Well, fancy that,’ he remarked to himself and threw five pence in for luck. ‘I wonder whether anyone will ever find it, perhaps in a thousand years. And it’ll be worth a fortune by then. I might ask for it back.’

The only difficulty he had had was convincing his parents that it was a good idea. And a safe one too. Fred’s parents were pretty good as parents went, but they still liked to know that he wasn’t doing anything too dangerous. They knew what Fred was like. Everything had eventually sorted itself out when Tobias had come around with maps and drawings and a very official-looking letter from someone in the government saying that Deep Blue was safe and wouldn’t leak, burst into flames or just explode for no reason. It also said that the lake was clean and not very deep; which just goes to show that people from the government are only right half of the time.

After that had sorted itself out, Fred’s parents had calmed down enough for Fred’s dad to suddenly realise that he was 25

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very interested in inventing and then get very excited and start talking about some of his own ideas that he had had.

This included a robot in a suit of armour to open the door to visitors, also programmed to stop Fred charging around the house late at night. Even Fred’s mother had decided she liked Tobias after he complimented her on her roses and promised to send her some powder he had discovered for making pansies grow twice as large, twice as quickly, for a quarter of the price.

As for Tobias Brown, he was charming, if a little mad, which seemed to suit Fred’s father who could right a large book himself on being eccentric.

Preparations at Tobias’s laboratory were well underway within one week. Every day Fred took his packed lunch and strolled through the country lanes, down to the village and found his way to the cottage. Day and night bangs and crashes could be heard, coming from behind the barn door where Deep Blue was kept. Tobias was making the last adjustments to the submarine whilst Fred helped by making lists of the equipment that they would need and adding it to lists that Tobias had made. By Friday they nearly had everything together. They put everything on the barn floor and ticked the items off a huge list that the inventor held on a clipboard. The list included: Rations- enough for 3 days, 26

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Water- enough for 1 week, Water purification tablets, First Aid kit, Maps, Compass, 2 high beam spotlights, Matches that could even light underwater, Basic repair kit, including a blowtorch, 2 underwater watches, Pair of all weather walkie-talkies, range 200 miles.

‘That’s it,’ said Fred, looking at it all piled up, wondering how they were going to get it all in.

‘Er, not quite,’ said Tobias with a large smile at Fred. ‘I thought that perhaps you needed a special something for going underwater in. Deep Blue is of course very safe, but just in case something unexpected happens, I have designed an all-purpose explorer’s underwater suit or an APUS for short.’ With a flick of his arm he whipped aside a curtain to show Fred.

There, hanging from the ceiling, hung something Fred was amazed to discover looked quite cool. The suit itself was made of black rubber and came with a large pair of black shiny boots. It all looked very solid and seemed just the thing for keeping the water out. On top of that, though, Tobias 27

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had made a helmet. Fred went forward to inspect it more closely. Tobias jumped forward too. ‘Ah, the helmet. It features all the latest equipment for underwater work. A radio set to communicate with the Deep Blue, or anyone on the surface. It has a range of three to five miles. These two things on the side are flashlights. The one on the left is a wide light for seeing all around. The one on the right is an extra strong beam, which should cut through even the murkiest of water. Inside the helmet you’ve got your oxygen mask for breathing.’

‘Can I try it on?’ asked Fred excitedly.

‘Of course you can. I hope it fits, I had to guess the size.’

Tobias helped Fred get himself into the suit, which was made to go over his clothes, but had to be very tight at the neck, so as not to let the water in. When he had got the suit on, Tobias then helped Fred try on the mask to check everything was all right and working properly. Once he had screwed in the seals at the side for safety, Fred turned and took a few experimental steps.

The suit felt fantastic! ‘I thought it would be heavy,’ he said through the radio to the inventor. Tobias put on his headset for his radio and twiddled a knob on the ear piece.

‘That’s because I made it out of the same material as Deep Blue. Not only is it incredibly strong, but it is also very light.

Not like the old underwater suits. Did you know that they were so heavy the divers used to have to be lifted in and out of the sea by crane?’ His voice was slightly crackly, but still 28

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very clear, ‘By the way, look in the pocket on your left trouser leg.’ Fred reached down and saw a flap with a long pocket just above his knee.

‘I see it,’ he said.

‘Okay, open it up.’

Fred did so and pulled out a long sharp knife with a pointed end. He held it up to Tobias.

‘Is this what I should be looking for?’ he asked.

‘That’s it,’ said Tobias, ‘now be very careful with this, it’s only for emergencies. Above all, don’t wave it around.’

‘Like this?’ said Fred, taking a few practice swipes.

‘Er, yes, but you might put a hole in your suit and then you’d sink like a stone.’ Fred stopped what he was doing quickly. ‘It’s been specially sharpened with a laser. The steel is very hard, so it won’t break easily. Now let’s go through everything once more and test it. Today is Friday. We have to have everything ready by Saturday, because we leave on Sunday morning.’

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Chapter Six

Dive That Sunday the weather was boiling hot. Any clouds that appeared on the horizon were quickly burned off by a custard coloured son. Fred and Tobias were down by the water, making the last adjustments to their equipment.

Beside them Deep Blue hung from a sort of crane that a man with a lorry had been hired to bring along. Tobias was trying not to look excited, but he kept fidgeting with things, hopping from one foot to another stroking his beard, until at last he announced, ‘Well, I think that everything is ready now Fred. Sir and Lady Longshanks, would you be kind enough to keep to one side, Deep Blue is ready for launching!’ He took a deep breath and shouted to the man in the lorry: ‘Okay, William, lower away! Steady as she goes!’

Deep Blue, looking sleek and very unlike a submarine, was hoisted up and then half into the water, its cockpit open and ready for Tobias and Fred to step inside. With its shark’s body and the slanted eyes and dangerous-looking teeth painted where the mouth is on a shark, Fred thought for a moment that Tobias had created something with a mind of its own. Almost as if it was just waiting for a chance to turn into a proper shark and swallow Fred, suit and all, in one 31

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enormous healthy bite.

‘Stop daydreaming, young Fred, it’s time we got aboard.

You first, I’ll pass you the sandwiches and then we can be off.’ Fred paused to wave goodbye to his parents, who were now standing on the battlements looking down on the scene with binoculars, and then stepped inside the cockpit, in the co-pilot’s seat. He had promised not to touch any buttons, but his fingers were positively itching at the sight of all those knobs and levers and the thought of what might happen if he decided to pull a few.

Without any hesitation Tobias jumped into the front seat and pulled the glass canopy closed. ‘We’re off!’ he cried and pressed the big red start button. Deep Blue shuddered, and then sprang into life, the motors purring like a large fat cat.

And down they went.

At first it was only a few feet. Tobias was getting used to the controls and he slowly started to circle the lake, Deep Blue’s shark’s tail flicking this way and that. Fred checked everything in front of him and then busied himself looking out the window, in case his lake had sharks in it. What he saw were a load of rusty bikes and objects that he did not recognise. One of the bikes, though, he did recognise as his.

‘I always wondered where that got to,’ he said to himself.

Then he saw an old football he had once kicked in by mistake. It had floated around for a couple of days out of reach and then it had disappeared. ‘It must have had a leak 32

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and then sunk,’ he thought.

Down they went.

Fred felt his ears pop. He looked above him and found that he could still see the surface, the top of the water floating above their heads like a large shiny sheet, all silvery and blue. ‘Are you all right there, my boy?’ Tobias’s voice came over the intercom.

‘Just fine here,’ replied Fred. ‘Can we collect my football on the way back? I lost it a few years ago, but I’ve just seen it floating below the surface. It was a good one, too.’

‘Okay,’ said Tobias, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Now that they were lower it had got darker, so Mr. Brown turned on the powerful searchlights at the front of Deep Blue. Fred saw another bicycle, propped up on a muddy ledge, as if someone had left it there on purpose. This one certainly didn’t belong to Fred. He had seen bikes like it before, but only in picture books. It had one huge wheel at the front and a tiny one at the back. ‘Oh look, there’s a Penny Farthing!’ exclaimed Tobias. ‘I haven’t seen one of those in years.’

‘A Penny what?’ asked Fred.

‘A Penny Farthing,’ repeated Tobias. ‘It was a type of bicycle a lot of people used about a hundred years ago. It’s called a Penny Farthing because of the wheels. The one at the back that was called the farthing bit, because it was so small, like a farthing coin that was worth practically nothing, even in those days. And the big one at the front was called 33

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the Penny because it was so large. Then bikes like the ones we see today came into fashion because they were much easier to ride. Sitting on top of one of those Penny Farthings made you nearly nine feet tall. This is fine if you want to see over the tops of hedges, but not much fun if you fall off.’ They had now done a complete circle of the lake. Fred looked at the timer in front of him. They had been under water for exactly ten minutes. Tobias now turned on the side lights as well, so that they could see all around them at the swirling, muddy waters of the lake.

Down they went.

The waters got darker and darker. Then, all of a sudden, there loomed out of the darkness the most extraordinary sight, perched on a ledge, about 100 feet down. ‘What’s a carriage doing down here?’ came Tobias’s excited voice through the intercom. Fred looked at the carriage and the four barrels tied to its bottom. He stared at it for a while.

‘I think I know,’ he said slowly. ‘Uncle Percival the Third was apparently mad as a bucket full of snakes. He decided, one day, that he would invent a carriage that could go on water. An Fibbiness, I think he called it.’

‘Amphibious,’ corrected Tobias. ‘It’s Latin for something that can go on water.’

‘Anyway,’ continued Fred, ‘he was wrong about that. He got halfway across the lake and sank like a stone.’

‘You mean he’s still down there?’ cried Tobias.

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‘No,’ said Fred, ‘luckily the horses were able to swim to the side and Uncle Percival, in a very rare flash of intelligence, grabbed hold of one of them and was saved too.

He was covered in pond weed and everybody was trying not to laugh. He was furious and tried to say that it was everybody else’s fault. But he gave up floating carriages after that and concentrated on growing geraniums. He wasn’t very good at that either, but at least growing geraniums badly isn’t dangerous.’

‘No, not usually,’ said Tobias in a very strange way, and pulled a lever.

So down they went again.

In front of him, Fred looked at a dial, showing how deep they had gone. At the moment it said 200 feet and they were gradually going lower and lower. Every so often a fish swam close to Deep Blue, curious about this new creature in the lake. One came right up to the glass as Fred was peering out and tapped its nose against the pane before shooting out of range of the lights.

Then, quite unexpectedly, they hit the bottom with a loud squelch of mud.

‘Glop!’

‘Oh dear me,’ went Tobias.

‘What’s up Doc?’ said Fred into his intercom.

‘Well,’ Tobias paused, ‘we seem to have hit the bottom already.’ Fred looked at the readout: 258 feet, it said.

‘That’s not all that deep,’ he said, beginning to feel a bit 35

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disappointed. Tobias continued fiddling with his instruments and checking a large folded map.

‘I can’t believe that the reading could have been wrong, I checked the figures several times to make sure,’ he was muttering to himself.

‘Mr. Brown,’ said Fred.

‘There can’t be mud here; it would have shown up on the scan.’

‘Mr. Brown,’ Fred repeated.

‘Maybe we missed something on the way down, a secret tunnel or some sort of opening, yes, that’s it.’

‘MR BROWN!’ Fred took a deep breath and roared.

‘Yes, what? My dear chap, can’t you see I’m trying to concentrate! It’s practically impossible with you wittering on in my ear like a deranged chimpanzee.’

Fred took another deep breath.

‘I thought you ought to know something.’

‘What? Can’t you see I’m very busy?’

‘We’re sinking,’ said Fred.

And indeed they were.

Slowly and surely Deep Blue was being sucked down by the mud like an explorer being sucked down by quicksand in a jungle.

The mud got blacker and blacker until one by one Deep Blue’s lights went out. All around it was totally black, with only squelching for company. Fred shivered, turned the on36

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board heater on and, as an afterthought, turned on the light fitted to the side of his helmet. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Tobias, sounding much more puzzled than worried. ‘It looks like we have hit the bottom, but the machine for measuring depth is telling me there is much further to go. The mud is not very thick. More like slime, but it seems to be sucking us down. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was a sort of suction created by some kind of vacuum or airlock far below. There is nothing much that I can do.’ Without warning there was a loud clanking noise.

‘What was that?’ asked Fred, looking around, trying to see over Tobias’s shoulder at the controls.

‘It’s the engines. I am going to have to turn them off, to stop this horrible goo getting into the machinery and breaking it. I’m afraid after that we will just have to trust where it is taking us. It seems to have a mind of its own. Or a mud of its own one might say, ha ha.’ But Fred didn’t even bother to laugh at this really terrible joke: he was just sitting there wondering how he got here, lost in mud at the bottom of a lake. ‘How incredible,’ he thought, ‘one minute I’m lying in bed minding my own business, the next I’m meeting a dangerous lunatic. And before I know it, I’m stuck in the middle of a muddle in an extraordinary submarine. I wonder if this happens to other people?’

Down and down they went. All around Fred he could hear the horrible sucking of the slime and the creaking and 37

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groaning of Deep Blue as it tried to take the pressure. ‘It’s not really made for all this,’ Tobias was saying.

‘Now you tell me,’ replied Fred, checking his diving gear, wondering whether he could swim to the surface on his own, if he needed to. He was beginning to regret having gone on this adventure in the first place. Just then something happened to take his mind off the strange sucking mud.

Something much worse.

‘Slap!’ went the cockpit glass.

‘What was that?!’ Fred inquired loudly into his intercom.

‘Ouch! No need to shout,’ said Tobias. ‘I’m only next door you know.’

‘Sorry,’ said Fred.

‘SLAP!’ It came again, but this time much louder. Fred looked above him and saw what was causing the noise. At first, it looked like a huge hairy sausage had stuck itself to the window. ‘I wonder where that came from,’ thought Fred, just before another one went ‘SLAP!’ against the smooth shiny glass of the cockpit, then another and another. ‘SLAP SLAP SLAP!’ ‘Slugs?!’ cried Fred, reaching across and tugging at Tobias’s shoulder. ‘Look!’

‘Oh dear, I think you may be right, Fred.’ Huge great hairy slugs were sticking themselves to the sides of Deep Blue as if they were trying to get into the submarine and attach themselves to Fred and Tobias. Fred had never seen 38

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such enormous slugs, even in zoos.

‘I’ve never seen such enormous slugs, even in zoos,’ said Tobias. ‘Do you know, I think that we may have discovered a new species, Fred my boy. I wonder how we could get a specimen to show the Royal Academy of Ugly Creatures.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ thought Fred, ‘he’s thinking about that at a time like this.’ The slugs were completely white, having never seen the sun, about as long as Fred’s arm and covered with thick black hairs on the top. They were leaving huge slimy marks across the glass as the mud oozed about them.

Fred thought he was about to be sick, they were that disgusting. But he was mainly worried because the glass itself was beginning to creak and groan horribly. ‘Well, I can certainly say that it’s not made to take being covered with slugs either,’ said Tobias, looking around at the cockpit glass, still looking amazingly calm, all things considered. ‘If it goes on much longer it may crack and we will be sucked out.’ For a couple of minutes, though, Fred had been noticing that the sucking noise had been getting louder and louder. Now, ever so slowly, Deep Blue began to turn around in the mud. At first it was hard to tell, because the slugs had covered the window almost completely, but to Fred they were definitely moving, starting to spin like water in a plug hole.

‘We’re really beginning to be sucked down by something,’ declared

Tobias.

‘It

wasn’t

your

imagination

my

boy.................I’m sorry........that...I....ever.....took you on 39

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this........silly…’ There was obviously something wrong with the intercom. It sounded like interference.

Then that was it: the intercom cut out in Fred’s ear, or perhaps the noise was so loud he couldn’t hear anything anyway. The glass was still creaking in a terrible way because of the slugs, and the sucking mud noise was deafening. To cap it all, the spinning got worse and worse. Down they went, spinning and spiralling like a spider being sucked down a plug hole.

Then he fainted.

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Chapter Seven

Another world Seconds passed, then minutes. Maybe even hours. Who knows?

Then, slowly, one by one, Deep Blue’s lights came back on and the submarine stopped its nauseating spinning.

Fred opened one eye and saw Tobias shaking his head.

He glanced down at his diver’s watch and looked at the time.

4 o’clock. Tea time. They had been underwater for four hours! Fred glanced out of the cockpit window, expecting to see the slugs, with their hairy bodies and one beady eye in the middle, still holding onto the glass. Some were still there but he was surprised to see them beginning to drop off one by one. Deep Blue’s lights shone out into the inky black darkness.

Fred turned his helmet light off so he could get a better view. The mud was gone and in its place was clear water, so pure it was like air. Fred looked down and saw the slugs tumbling silently away, down in to the dark waters below. He looked up and saw the mud above them, like a layer of cloud.

It felt more like being in an aeroplane than under water, with the slugs like skydivers jumping out of a hatch. If this felt like being high up, thought Fred to himself, then that must mean that there was plenty of stuff down below. Just as 41

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Tobias had been saying all along.

‘CRCRCCRCRCRcCrackle

crackle

crccccrrrrrr

CCCCCCRRRRRCR!’ went his intercom.

‘AAARGH!’ said Fred. ‘Turn your volume down.’

‘Sorry Fred,’ said Tobias after a moment, ‘it must have bumped itself up when we were being shaken around so much. Fred, are you all right? For a moment there I thought that we weren’t going to make it; either the slugs would get us or we were going to be sucked away by the mud. By the way, I see that the slugs have gone. It might be that they don’t like the clear water we seem to find ourselves in. The mud must be where they live. I hope that they get back all right,’ he added after a pause.

‘Where are we?’ asked Fred, suspecting that if he let Tobias go on then he would talk all day without ever getting to the point.

‘Well, according to my readings we are in roughly the same place as where we started out,’ he replied.

‘We can’t possibly be,’ exclaimed Fred.

‘Well, except that we are a lot lower.’ Fred could hear Tobias chuckling.

‘You don’t say.’

‘Well, the point is this, actually,’ continued the inventor rather excitedly, ‘the mud never actually took us anywhere except down, and so we haven’t drifted much North or South. This means that it should be fairly easy to get 42

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ourselves back again, if it wasn’t for the sucking mud.’

‘Okay,’ Fred didn’t feel relieved; he looked about him in the water. There was nothing to see except a lot of water. ‘I’m not surprised,’ thought the boy to himself, ‘not much could survive those slugs, except perhaps a submarine disguised as a two ton shark.’ ‘So how far down are we then?’ he asked, not really thinking. Tobias Brown coughed and blew his nose.

‘Oh, about two miles,’ he replied.

‘Well that’s it!’ shouted Fred, ‘we’ve hit the bottom!

Hooray!’

‘However,’ he went on, ‘I seem to be getting an indication from the depth meter that your lake is deeper than we had originally expected, Fred.’

‘What are we going to do, then?’

‘Well, I think that as we can’t go up through the mud again, and as we seem to have a lot of water below us, our only option is down. Also, I’m picking up readings that there’s a current, probably caused by the same phenomenon that made all that black mud suck us down.’

‘What does that actually mean?’

‘Well, if there’s a current it means that the water is going somewhere. I suggest we follow it.’

In spite of the experience with the mud and the slugs, Fred was still dying to see what was at the bottom of his lake. Mr Brown pressed the red start button on the front of the 43

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control panel, checked some dials, and Deep Blue purred into life once more.

‘Okay, we’re going down!’ he cried and Fred, for the second time that day, really and truly felt in his bones he was on the edge of a very big adventure indeed.

‘Okay, Captain,’ he said, grinning.

‘Now Fred, you see that digital display in front of you?’

‘Yes.’ ‘That’s the back-up depth meter, if you turn it on you can shout out the readings to me and tell me how far we are going down. I can concentrate on the controls.’

‘Okay.’ Fred turned the control panel on. It took a moment to flicker into life and then the display read: 3 MILES 25 YARDS ‘How deep did you say the lake was?’ asked Fred. Tobias took a few seconds to reply.

‘Well, er, I originally thought that it was probably 4 miles straight down, that’s about six and a half kilometres. But I’m not so sure now.’

‘Why not?’ Fred felt suspicious. It wasn’t as if Tobias Brown didn’t know what he was doing. In fact Deep Blue had stood up incredibly well so far. It was just that small details like the possibility of slug-infested mud did not seem to bother him. Now he had no idea where he was going.

‘Well,’ Tobias continued, ‘it seems as if the mud muddled the computer. My original calculations are probably 44

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completely wrong.’

‘Completely?’ asked Fred.

‘Completely,’ replied Tobias, looking sheepish. There was a long pause.

‘Oh well, I suppose we had better get on with it then,’ sighed Fred, and with that Deep Blue turned its long shark’s nose downwards and began to swim through the dark waters.

3 MILES 100 YARDS, said the depth meter.

3 MILES 500 YARDS, it continued.

3 MILES 800 YARDS. Fred felt his ears pop.

‘4 MILES!’ they both shouted at the same time. ‘I can’t believe it is four whole miles. How’s Deep Blue doing?’ asked Fred through the intercom.

‘Just fine,’ answered Tobias excitedly. ‘And it’s still going down and standing up to the pressure perfectly!’

And indeed it was. Deep Blue seemed to be speeding up, diving straight down. Fred looked about him through the waters. They were clear and black. Nothing seemed to live down there. Nothing could survive it was so deep.

4 MILES 500 YARDS. Fred felt a trickle of sweat on his forehead, like in all the best submarine films.

4 MILES 800 YARDS. ‘That’s it!’ cried Tobias.

‘What, where?’ cried Fred back, thinking they had sprung a leak or been attacked by a giant fish. All through the journey he had been imagining things with tentacles coming out of the gloom.

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‘Yippee, we’ve broken the record!’ shouted Tobias. ‘Noone has ever been this deep in a submarine before. At least not one with people in it. Just imagine: we’re going to be famous when we get back.’

‘Hooray,’ cried Fred, thinking about signing autographs and going on television.

5 MILES. Just then Deep Blue’s front light flickered. Once, then twice, and then it went out. Once more, they were plunged into virtual darkness, with just the small lights at the side to show what was going on outside the submarine. ‘ W h a t ’ s happening?’ asked Fred. It was all very well being five miles down and knowing what was going on in front of your nose, but five miles down and in darkness struck Fred as being a bit too creepy for his liking. Also, it was getting very, very cold.

‘The fuse seems to have blown,’ muttered Tobias, almost to himself. ‘It’s probably the cold. The thermometer is showing that it’s minus 20 degrees out there. The water is most probably salty, otherwise it would freeze up. That means there is an exit somewhere to the sea. How marvellous! That would explain why it is so deep, it was possibly some sort of underground cave millions and millions of years ago. An earthquake or a volcano must have destroyed it and let in the sea from a tunnel, or probably several tunnels.’

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‘Earthquakes?’ said Fred. ‘Volcanoes!’ He was beginning to get very worried. ‘How’s fixing that front light getting on?’

‘What? Oh yes, of course, sorry, I almost forgot. Now where did I put that fuse box? Ah yes, here it is, in the glove compartment, young Fred, just like in a car.’ There was some muttering and fiddling from Tobias; the lights went on, then off again almost immediately. Then there was some more muttering and fiddling. Fred was beginning to feel a bit sweaty. It was rather like being locked in a dark cupboard with no idea what was behind or in front and, even worse, with no idea of what might be in there with you.

Then the lights came on.

Now, Fred thought that he saw it first because he was staring out of the window, and Tobias said he was sure that he saw it first because he was sitting in the front and had a better view. They argued about it afterwards, but perhaps the most important thing was that there it was, right in front of them, when the lights came on, as plain as the nose on Fred’s face. The bottom. Flat and smooth, undisturbed and unseen for millions of years.

Or so Fred would have said, except there was a very rotten, very old looking wooden warship lying there too.

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Chapter Eight

The Crosspatch Peccadillo They sat and stared at it for a while in stunned silence, as Deep Blue floated just above the ship, its shark’s tail flicking slowly this way and that.

‘It’s a ship,’ said Tobias eventually.

‘Well spotted,’ said Fred, ‘and, it may seem like a silly question to you, but what’s it doing down here?’ The intercom crackled slightly at some mysterious interference.

‘Well, at the moment I’ve got absolutely no idea Fred. It’s an English ship though, you can see the name on the side.’

Fred squinted through the water and saw up at the front an old painted plaque: ‘The Crosspatch Peccadillo’ he read.

‘Pyrate ship, also available for private hyre, parties and splendide days out’ it said at the bottom. ‘Shall we go and take a closer look?’ said Tobias.

‘That might be dangerous. We’ve no idea what’s there.’

‘Nonsense, I’ve already checked the scanner. It shows no sign of life whatsoever.’

‘You’ve got a radar scanner on Deep Blue?’

‘Yes, of course.’

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Fred was beginning to feel quite cheerful again. ‘Let’s go and have a look then.’

‘Right you are.’

So Deep Blue slowly sank the last few feet to the bottom, keeping its light on the ship all the time. Fred noticed over Tobias’s shoulder that the Depthometer now read just over 5 miles. When they got to about ten feet away, Deep Blue stopped again. The ship looked far, far larger closer up. It towered over Deep Blue, its mast rising in the air like a church spire. ‘Amazing,’ said Tobias, ‘I would say it was an 18th century galleon of some sort. Definitely a warship; look at those rows of tiny portholes, that’s where the cannons would have gone. There must be fifty on each side. That makes a hundred in all. Cannons are very heavy, that’s why the ship has to be so big.’

‘Imagine being fired at by fifty huge cannons,’ thought Fred to himself, ‘it would be like being hit by a hurricane, an earthquake and one of the fierce chickens his parents kept behind the castle that Fred called, ‘Attila the Hen’. All at once.’

‘Funny, though,’ carried on Tobias, ‘I can’t see any cannons now, even though the portholes are open. It may have been unarmed when it sank, if it sank, although there don’t seem to be any signs of damage.’ Actually it just looked like it had been put there by some giant hand. It was very peaceful at the bottom of the lake. Peaceful and quite 50

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spooky, as Deep Blue swam its way slowly over the side of the ship and up to the deck, its lights darting amongst the ragged sails. On top of the bridge at the far end of the boat, where the captain would usually stand, the ship’s wheel rocked restlessly to and fro in the current, as if a ghostly hand was still steering the great warship under water. Fred felt a shudder run up the back of his neck as they came to the top of the mast.

‘Look,’ gasped Fred, pointing to a large hatch lying open on the middle of the deck, ‘do you think we can get in there?’

‘The provisions hatch? Why, of course. It’s where they put all the food. Did you know, Fred, they sometimes put live pigs and goats down there?’

‘Why?’ asked Fred, feeling quite glad that he wasn’t a pig or goat in the 18th century. It couldn’t have been much fun, going to sea stuck in the dark bottom of a ship.

‘For food, of course,’ cried Tobias, ‘they couldn’t just live on porridge or ship’s biscuits. They needed meat for protein.

Oh, and rum.’

‘Rum?’ ‘Yes, rum, and plenty of it. Every man used to get a pint a day. It’s very strong alcohol, that’s why sailors were always in such a bad mood in those days, wanting to mutiny and cut people’s throats. They had terrible headaches caused by hangovers from drinking too much rum all the time. On very long voyages, when they ran out of fresh fruit their gums 51

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would bleed and their teeth would fall out. It’s called scurvy, and very nasty it was too.’

‘Sounds it!’ said Fred.

That’s why you should always eat your greens and fresh fruit,’ continued Tobias, ‘you need the Vitamin C.’ And with that thought in mind, they turned and swam Deep Blue slowly through the hatch.

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Chapter Nine

The Thingamajig Now, deep in the bowels of the ship, where nobody goes, something ancient and rather horrible stirred.

The Thingamajig was just waking up in a very bad mood.

It had been in a bad mood for nearly two thousand years, but today’s strop was a particularly bad one. The last thing it had eaten was a rock, near enough four years ago, which it had thought was a large fish, and the rock was definitely beginning to give it a stomach ache.

The Thingamajig lifted up a claw the size of a large oak tree and rubbed a spot more or less where one of its fifteen stomachs rumbled away like a broken boiler. It thought evil thoughts in its own evil way.

The Thingamajig had been in the salty waters below Creake Castle for longer than even it could remember. A lost relic, a forgotten dinosaur, but not like anything anybody had ever dug up anywhere before, trapped and probably the only one of its species left. A real life monster. It called itself the Thingamajig because it didn’t have a name, and anyway its mainly fishy brain rather liked the sound of it. ‘It suits me,’ it probably thought in its tentacled way. And besides, nobody had ever been stupid enough to want to call it 53

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anywhere, so it had had to make up a name for itself.

If truth be known it was rather lonely. But that didn’t stop it eating everything it met instead of trying to make the odd friend or two out of life.

Looking back, the Thingamajig remembered a time about 900 years before when life had been fairly good. Then one day the roof collapsed in its underwater cave and smashed its collection of interesting rocks. The Thingamajig loved its rocks and wondered if life could get any worse after this calamity. As if to answer it, Life made the wall fall down almost immediately after, so it was left floating about in the cold water with only its pyjama bottoms on.

In order to prevent anything else bad happening to it, it had moved onto the ship, which it hated because it was too dark and cramped. And anyway, it didn’t think much of the furnishings. But at least the boat didn’t cave in, it was quiet and nobody had asked it to pay any rent yet.

And now something though had just woken it up from the first decent sleep it had had in nearly a century. And, by the sounds of it, that something was approaching the Thingamajig’s lair right at that moment.

It used one of its many tentacles to open the door a crack just as Fred and Tobias came around the corner in Deep Blue.

The scanners on the monitor of Deep Blue and the Thingamajig’s four hundred eyes saw each other at the same time. It is hard to say who was more surprised. Tobias and 54

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Fred both stared through the cockpit window at the most disgustingly ugly and quite frankly largest creature they had ever clapped eyes on. When Tobias had scanned the ship for life forms the scanner hadn’t picked it up, because when it got to the Thingamajig it decided that nothing could possibly be that large or that old. It looked like a crab mixed up with an octopus, except that it had huge yellow teeth the size of tombstones and a large horn, like a rhinoceros, in the middle of its head. Or at least Fred thought that that was its head. All he was sure of at that moment was that: 1. He wasn’t so interested in exploring the ship anymore and 2. They were in deep, deep trouble.

‘Back up slowly,’ he whispered through the intercom to Tobias, who was just sitting there opening and closing his mouth soundlessly. ‘I don’t think this was one of your better ideas, Mr. Brown.’

‘Yes.’ Tobias Brown Inventor Esquire managed to find his voice again. ‘I believe you are right about one thing, Fred, it’s probably not a good idea to hang around too long just at the moment.’

The Thingamajig was stunned for a moment because it couldn’t believe anybody had been stupid enough to come straight up to it. It usually had to go looking for food. The monster of the deep raised one claw, almost lazily, towards the submarine. This was just a distraction; at the same 55

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moment one of its tentacles shot out at lightning speed.

Fred and Tobias were too busy watching the enormous claw coming towards them to notice the tentacle. One minute they were slowly backing out of the wide hatch that led to the hold where the Thingamajig had its lair; the next they were being grabbed. Fred looked up to see an enormous mouth coming towards him and the tentacle wrapped firmly around Deep Blue’s middle. Tobias had seen it too. He stopped what he was doing and grabbed at the control stick that made Deep Blue accelerate.

The submarine spun around to face the open store hatch that they had just come through and shot off, still with the Thingamajig’s tentacle holding on tight. They had just got out of the hatch when the Thingamajig ran out of tentacle and Deep Blue ran out of steam. The Thingamajig pulled one way and Deep Blue with its powerful motors pulled the other way. The Thingamajig’s tentacle stretched like an elastic band but held on firm as Deep Blue twisted and pulled to get out of the grip. Tobias pushed the stick down as far as it would go. At the same instant he shouted to Fred, ‘Flick the red switch to your right that says ‘Turbo’, we’re going to need all the power we’ve got!’

Fred looked at the panel of switches by his elbow. They were all red and none of them said ‘turbo’. ‘Which red switch?!’ he shouted desperately. Out of the corner of his eye he could see another tentacle groping towards them in the 56

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murky waters. If that got hold of them they were in trouble, there was no way Deep Blue could escape from two of those things.

‘What do you mean which switch?’ cried Tobias. ‘It should be clearly marked T u r b o.’

‘Well, it’s not,’ yelled Fred back in frustration, ‘none of them are labelled with anything.’ He looked at the floor. At his feet Fred could see a pile of labels, which had fallen off.

‘What did you stick the labels on with?’ he asked. There was a pause.

‘Marmalade,’ said Tobias trying not to sound guilty, ‘we had run out of glue and the shops were shut. Anyway, why?’

‘Because all the labels have fallen off. That’s why. We’re doomed.’

‘No we’re not,’ shouted Tobias, ‘just hit every button.

We’ve got to shake this thing off and quick.’

‘Okay,’ said Fred. He counted four red buttons that looked likely and pushed the top one first.

The radio came on. The cockpit was suddenly full of ballroom dancing music. ‘Ba ba ba bam! Da da!’ it went as Fred hit the second button. Deep Blue twisted and turned and started swimming backwards.

‘Turn it off, turn it off,’ cried Tobias, ‘I hate ballroom music! And we’re swimming right towards its mouth!’ Fred pushed the button again and once more Deep Blue shot forward just as one of the Thingamajig’s ten jaws went snap.

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The Thingamajig roared and the ship shook. It had broken a tooth. Fred hit the third button as hard as he could.

There was a loud whiz and bang like a firework going off, a whirring noise and suddenly Deep Blue roared forward.

The Thingamajig couldn’t believe it. One minute it thought it had finally dragged the food in, the next it was being dragged by the food, through the hatch (where it got a nasty bump on one of its heads) and out into the clear water, Deep Blue shooting along at nearly ninety miles per hour.

This clearly wasn’t much fun in anybody’s book, let alone The Thingamajig’s, which all things said and done, really preferred the quiet life. It tried to let go. Unfortunately for Fred and Tobias and for the Monster of the Deep, its tentacle had got caught on one of Deep Blue’s shark’s fins. It tried to shake loose but couldn’t. It looked up to see that Fred and Tobias were heading for a tunnel they could just fit through but it clearly could not. The Thingamajig did the equivalent of a gulp of fright.

It pulled to get free, and failed, just as Deep Blue shot through the gap and the Thingamajig crashed with a splat at the foot of the tunnel. Finally the tentacle came free as Deep Blue shot to freedom and The Thingamajig sank to the bottom with a gurgle and the start of a very nasty headache.

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Chapter Ten

Cavern Now you may still be wondering about what a threehundred-year-old galleon was doing five miles down underwater. On the other hand, perhaps you couldn’t care less. However, it’s important for the next bit for you to know that it will all be made perfectly clear as soon as we’ve caught up with our heroes. If you can call them that.

We recently left them hurtling through a tunnel, having left the Thingamajig lying unconscious at the mouth, very probably liable to wake up in a few hours with an unholy headache and in a temper tantrum that was going to last most of the next century.

If Deep Blue went pretty fast when it was dragging two and a half tons of angry sea monster, it was positively supersonic now with just an inventor and a twelve-year-old boy as passengers. It shot through the tunnel, the radio now blaring out light opera, and hit something solid. Something very solid indeed.

Long ago an old Chinese philosopher sitting in his garden asked a question of no-one in particular: It went something like this, ‘What happens when an unstoppable object hits an immovable force?’ Now, if Deep Blue was going so fast it was unstoppable and whatever they hit was so big that it wouldn’t 59

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budge an inch, no matter what, then the philosopher would get his answer: A bloody big bang. The unstoppable object (Deep Blue) stopped and the immovable object (a stone wall, as it turned out) moved.

Fred and Tobias also stopped. In fact time stopped for them. A total blank.

‘Am I dead?’ was Tobias’s last thought.

‘Marmalade!’ was Fred’s.

Seconds passed.

Hours went by.

It may even have been days.

Fred coughed. His eyes flickered and he mumbled something about cheese and tomato sandwiches being found in his shoes.

Fred coughed again and opened one eye slowly. He saw a shoe standing on a sandy beach and thought he heard someone say something that sounded very like, ‘Oi tink tha lards awike.’ Fred concentrated hard. ‘Oh, ‘I think the lad’s awake’,’ Fred thought, ‘that’s what they’re saying. They must 60

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mean me. Uh-oh.’ He opened his other eye slowly. He was definitely on a beach and he seemed to be alive. If not, then heaven must be a place where they have smelly feet. The pair standing in front of his nose positively whiffed.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a rowing boat on a sandy shore, but no sign of Tobias. He tried to lift his head.

As he did so he groaned loudly, ‘Oh my poor head!’

‘Ee’s English!’ cried a woman’s voice that Fred thought came from somewhere just behind the man.

‘Isn’t he dressed funny,’ came the first voice, the man’s.

Then another one said, ‘Iz ‘ee aloive?’

‘Oh course ee’s alive, how do you think we know he’s English stupid!’

‘Who are you calling stupid, Stupid?’

‘You, Stupid. You must be stupid if you don’t even know you’re stupid.’

Fred raised himself up on his elbows. It was about time he got a proper look at who the voices were attached to. He winced at the pain in his head, where he must have taken a bump in the crash. In front of him stood a man in a tattered brown shirt and stripy blue stockings and with a scarf around his head. He looked around and saw one or two more figures standing about. One of them was a huge fat woman with a patch on one eye.

‘Hello,’ said Fred as politely as he could. He was always as 61

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charming as possible as a rule in dangerous situations. It usually did the trick. The man in front of him jumped backwards quickly as if he had forgotten about Fred, he was so busy arguing. Fred noticed that he was holding a rusty old sword. He peered at Fred and chewed on his beard for a few seconds. Then he seemed to come to a decision.

‘Er humph!’ He cleared his throat. ‘Hello Sir. And, er, greetings! What might I ask brings you here?’

Fred looked around him. It seemed to be daylight but there didn’t seem to be any sun and it was completely still. In fact, there wasn’t a breath of air anywhere. It was as if they were indoors. We’re not back on the surface, thought Fred, that’s for sure. The atmosphere sort of felt like a greenhouse.

‘Where are we?’ he asked, squinting up at the man.

The man thought about this for a moment longer, as if Fred had just asked him an incredibly hard question. ‘We’re here,’ he said at last and looked very pleased with himself.

‘Yes, but where’s here?’ asked Fred.

‘Here’s here. It can’t be anywhere else, now can it?’ This isn’t going to be easy, thought Fred, he took a deep breath.

‘Yes but what do you call ‘here’?’

‘Oh, I sees what you’re saying me lad. Well, right at this very minute likes, you’re lying down with a nasty bump on your head on the shores of the Invisible Sea. In a minute you’ll be coming with us to where we live.’

‘And who are you?’ said Fred, eyeing up the band 62

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suspiciously. He was beginning to suspect the obvious- they were in some sort of underground cave and that the ship they had seen earlier belonged to these strange people, who spoke in an odd, old-fashioned way and were dressed like they had just come out of a story book.

‘My name is Mr. Plymtree Bosun the fiftieth and this is Colin.’ He pointed at a very large man with tattoos the size of small dogs on his arms and a huge grin all over his big broad face. ‘Colin’s not too bright but as strong as ten men and this is Fenny Brishes, our lovely scullery maid and all together – we’s PIRATES!’ said the man proudly and loudly.

‘But we’re not going to rob you,’ he said quickly. ‘We only robs people with money. And you ain’t got none. We’s already checked.’ Fred thought sadly about the four pound coins he had started out that morning with. They must now be at the bottom of the sea somewhere. Where on earth was Tobias now?

The last thing he remembered was shooting through the tunnel away from the sea monster. After that, things were a bit of a blur. Fred shivered suddenly and horribly at the thought that Tobias hadn’t been as lucky as Fred himself.

And was at the bottom of the sea too. Suddenly Fred felt more alone than he had ever in his life.

The pirate then said, as if he was reading his thoughts: ‘Your friend, he had plenty of money.’

‘You mean Tobias!?’ asked Fred.

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The man paused a bit more, and obviously decided he wasn’t giving too much away if he told the truth. ‘Talks funny like you. Tall feller. Bit odd though. Wears a funny hat.’

‘That’s him,’ said Fred with a huge sigh of relief.

Somehow he couldn’t imagine Tobias having much money on him. He suddenly had a nasty thought. ‘You didn’t doing anything horrible to Mr. Brown after you found he had got money by any chance?’

‘Er no,’ replied the man shaking his head definitely, ‘found him a bit further along the shore there and took him straight to the Captain. Kept on bangin’ on about a young lad missing, must ‘ave been you – seemed ever so worried, that’s why we’re going to take you there now, just as soon as you’ve got up and brushed all that muck off yerself.’

As Fred struggled to his feet he felt rough but surprisingly gentle hands help him up. He wondered what was going to happen to him. They seemed nice enough, but you could never tell with pirates. He’d never met any himself but he’d read in a book once that they might turn nasty at any minute.

One of Fred’s ancestors had been famous for catching pirates and roasting their toes over hot coals until they told him where they had buried all their treasure. Fred hoped none of these pirates had relatives who had been roasted by his Great-Great-Uncle Davy Bones.

Thinking of roasting, he was also beginning to wonder if 64

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they had any food where they were going. He was starving and very, very thirsty.

But most of all he was still wondering, as they left the shores of the Invisible Sea, where on earth he was.

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Chapter Eleven

Pirates introduced Fred needn’t have worried.

They soon set off along what looked like a large beach that curved off into the distance for almost as far as Fred could see. He looked around as the Pirates walked in single file, no-one saying very much. He was definitely in a cave. If he strained his eyes he could see the stone walls rising up on the nearest side and once or twice, at a low point in the cave, he glimpsed the shady outline of the great granite roof. This was more than a cave, he thought to himself. This was a cavern. It was certainly huge. Larger, he reckoned, than at least four football pitches put together and certainly higher than the highest stadium he had seen on TV. One thing that had been bothering him all along was how they were able to see. People in films who lived in caves carried torches about and had long beards. Even the women. That was because, Fred knew, they couldn’t see to shave in the mornings.

He soon realised just why he was able to see everything quite clearly when they turned off from the beach and headed towards a narrow path that ran close to one of the cliff faces.

Hanging down in thick garlands of emerald green was a strange plant Fred had never seen before. It looked like the sort of creepers you get in a rainforest, except much softer, 67

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furrier somehow. Fred could easily imagine that it would be possible to gather up enough of it to make a bed quite easily.

What was most unusual, though, were the tiny flowers that covered practically every inch of this hanging green carpet. Each flower was brilliant white and glowed brightly, as if it was a miniature light bulb. The effect of thousands of these tiny white lights that grew on the green foliage everywhere was startling. It lit the entire cavern like fairy lights on a Christmas tree. Looking around him, Fred decided that this was quite the most beautiful and odd place he had ever seen. Just as he was busy thinking this, there came a rumble, like the sort you get when you are standing near a station and a train comes along. Fred stopped and looked around, but the pirates hadn’t seemed to notice anything, so he shrugged and carried on. He must be imagining things after the bump on his head.

After walking for an hour or so the path widened out a bit and Fred saw smoke and smelt the delicious smell of frying.

By now he was nearly fainting with thirst and hunger, so the first thing he said to Tobias, who came running out of the camp to meet them, was: ’Hellonicetoseeyou’resafehaveyougotanyfoodiamabsolutelyfl ippingstarving.’

Tobias looked very well and not at all roasted, and he was very excited and pleased to see Fred. ‘You’re alive!’

‘It would seem so,’ said Fred tucking into something that 68

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looked and tasted like fish, which he had been handed by one of the lady pirates. ‘What happened, Mr. Brown? One minute we were hurtling away from that hairy tentacled monster and the next we had hit a wall and I was unconscious. Deep Blue’s lost; there were bits of it all over the beach when I woke up. How come we didn’t drown?’

‘Good point, Fred,’ replied Tobias, looking very pleased with himself. ‘That would be the suit you were wearing. It can sense if you have fainted and then it will take over. What must have happened is that we were luckily thrown clear of the crash, and the suits are designed to start swimming using their sensors to the nearest way out of the water. In this case, the underground beach where we both ended up.’

‘Yes,’ replied Fred, ‘but where are we exactly?’

‘That’s what I’ve been wondering about,’ said Tobias, frowning a little. ‘As far as I can make out, we’re still very, very deep underground, and more or less right under Creake.

The whole area is volcanic and must have been formed millions of years ago. In that time it has been cut off from all contact with the outside world and has developed all its own plants and animals. There seems to be some earthquake activity. The pirates pretend not to notice it but I think that they are worried. By the way, have you seen the strange weed that hangs off the rock face?’

‘Yes,’ replied Fred, nodding.

‘Just my point. There’s nothing like it anywhere on earth, 69

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except down here. Did you know that every twelve hours or so the flowers close up and the lights go out? Just like day and night. They call it Tinseldown. And that fish you are eating. It’s totally unique. There’s simply nothing like it anywhere in the world. It’s probably millions of years old.’

‘Urgh!’ said Fred.

‘No, not that fish in particular,’ said Tobias, a little crossly because he didn’t think anyone could be that stupid. ‘I mean that it’s probably not changed one bit since the cave was cut off all that time ago. This place is fascinating. I could live down here for years!’

‘Yeah, sure,’ said Fred. ‘If the cave has been cut off for so long, it still doesn’t explain why we’ve got a pirate ship down here and pirates?’

Tobias frowned again. ‘Well, that’s another mystery. But the Captain, Black-eyed George, that’s his name, is a terribly nice chap, not like pirates I’ve read about at all. And what’s more he is very excited about us being here, says they’ve never had visitors. He was waiting until you turned up to give introductions.’

‘Why’s he called Black-eyed George?’ asked Fred.

‘Well, apparently he is very clumsy and he’s always walking into things. He fell over four times just when he came to greet me. It was very embarrassing, but apparently he’s quite used to it, you know. That’s why he’s always got a black eye.

Sometimes one on the left, sometimes one on the right.

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Sometimes on both eyes. That’s how pirates get their names.

By the things they do. I read that. In a book, you know.’

Fred heard some shuffling of feet and he looked up. The pirates were forming up in two straight lines. At the end of the line sat a short fattish man with a bandage on his head and, sure enough, a large black eye.

He sat there grinning for a while and then shouted.

‘Ahoy there! We’ve got visitors, we ‘ave. Bring out the rum and we’ll toast them through the introductions!’

At that moment, Fred was surprised to hear someone start to play a musical instrument rather like an accordion.

‘It’s tradition,’ whispered Tobias, bending down towards Fred’s ear. ‘On board ship they sing everything, that way you remember it better. That’s where sea shanties, or songs made up on board ship come from, telling them what rope to pull next, that sort of thing. They’ll sing the introductions so that you don’t forget everyone’s name. And whatever you do don’t laugh, however ridiculous the names. Remember, each pirate is proud of their name, that’s because they’ve earned them.’

The accordion got louder and all of a sudden Black-eyed George jumped up and started to sing in a rough gravelly voice. The song went a bit like this:

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CAPTAIN’S INTRODUCTIONS Quiet all and pray be calm Our crew they’re home and free And with them brought a boy and man Through caverns measureless to man From the Invisible Sea And now to introduce to them Our crew so fine and fair My name’s Captain George – the black And I’ve lost all my hair.

Mabel the Ladle She’s very able to cook and clean and sew And Fenny Brishes, a dish, who does the dishes -a beauty don’t you know.

And have a look For old Ben Cutter (he’s got a hook and a terrible stutter) He lost his arm once in the dark ‘Twas bitten off whole by a hungry shark

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(he shouted, ‘hhhhhhhhh help!’ at any rate But by then it was far too late) And the Triplets three Bill, Trill and Gill You can see upon the hill Keeping watch on the camp at night And singing madrigals by firelight …… and so it went, on and on and on, until Fred began to lose track and feel sleepy. The pirate’s accent was a strange one and he had trouble following all the words. He caught the name of the Bosun, Mr. Plymtree (who’d never been to sea) and Tom, who was the cabin boy and about Fred’s age.

Apart from that there must have been about twenty or so others. Fred’s favourite was the beautiful Fenny who had already smiled at him. Twice.

It had been a long day and he must have dozed off for quite some time. When he woke it was quite dark as the Tinseldown had obviously closed and all the pirates had gathered closer to the fire. The cave was surprisingly warm and Fred felt snug and safe in there, so he kept his eyes closed for a while thinking sleepy thoughts. He could hear Tobias asking George how they had come to be in the cave. And so, slowly, he began to wake up to listen to one of the strangest 73

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stories he had ever heard.

And this is it.

Black-eyed George’s story ‘It was the year 1777 aargh!’ began Black-eyed George.

The band of sailors went quiet. If there is one thing that a true pirate can’t resist, it’s a good story.

‘The year that The Crosspatch Peccadillo set sail for the last time from Plymouth harbour on the South Coast of England.’

Now they had obviously heard the story of their ancestors a thousand times before, but it didn’t bother them one bit.

They couldn’t wait to hear it again. Black-eyed George spat on his hands and rubbed them together. ‘Urgh! I mean aargh,’ he said. ‘The year Old England lost the American war of Independence.’ Fred knew all about this. They had done it in history. Funny, though, it seemed a lot more interesting now that he was hearing it from someone who had very nearly been there, and not Henry the Horrible History master, who never brushed his hair and wore the oldest pair of trousers Fred had ever seen, except for the ones his father wore to church on a Sunday. ‘The Crosspatch Peccadillo was the finest ship of her kind, three hundred foot and fast as the wind. The crew set sail, pretending to be honest merchants 74

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selling sack loads of wool. As soon as we got out of harbour and into a handy cove we threw it all overboard and took on our real cargo.’

‘What was that?’ asked Fred, fully awake now and sitting up for the first time.

‘Why, Pirates, of course, my boy! What else?’

‘Argghhh!’ went everyone.

‘Pirates and guns.’

‘Argghhhhhhh!’ cried the other pirates all the more, loving every minute of it.

‘Muskets, pistols, cutlasses and cannons!’

‘Shiver me timbers!’

‘Steady as she blows!’

‘Mine’s a pepperoni!’ cried Colin.

‘Pieces of eight!’ they all cried together. Black-eyed George spat on his hands again.

‘Now, what we knew was that the King of England, mad old King George, God bless him, had lots of gold over in America. Pots of it, heaps and heaps of the stuff. To pay for all those soldiers.’

‘God bless King George!’ shouted the band of pirates.

‘Long live the King!’ Everyone shouted. Tobias caught Fred’s eye and winked. King George had been dead for nearly three hundred years. ‘Good ol’ King’s gold.’

‘SHUT UP! ‘ bellowed George. ‘Whose story is this, yours or mine?’ He glared at the crew for a bit and then carried on.

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‘Anyways, we’s were meaning to get a slice of that pie as it were. So we’s sailed down the south coast of England, the salty spray of the South Seas and the Atlantic flying in our faces turning our beards white and our faces brown as conkers. We stopped again at Penzance.’

‘The Pirates of Penzance! Everybody knows about them.

Didn’t they sing a lot or something as well?’ cried Fred.

‘SSSHHHH!’ said everyone. It was just getting to the good bit and there was no interrupting allowed. Black-eyed George waited for it to quieten down and then started again.

‘At Penzance we were to wait just off the Scilly Isles, where we were due to pick up our captain – DEAF BILL.’ ‘Deaf Bill! Deaf Bill ooohh! Deaf Bill aaarggghhh!’ echoed around the echoing cavern in the firelight.

‘Surely you mean Death Bill, or even Bill Death? That’s a much better name for a pirate.’

‘No, Deaf Bill,’ corrected George, ‘on account of him going deaf from standing next to cannons too much. Hell of a racket you know when there’s fifty cannon a-going orf in yur ear’ole. Nuf to send anyone deaf. Best Pirate Captain on the high seas though was Deaf Bill. Couldn’t hear a thing, but he could smell gold at fifty leagues with the wind going in the wrong direction.

‘Anyways, we picked him up just off the rugged coastline one dark and windy night. Pitch black it was, with waves as high as a mountain and The Crosspatch Peccadillo rolling 76

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from one side to another like she was going to capsize and spill us out into Davy Jones’s locker. ‘Set sail for the Atlantic at once!’ cries Deaf Bill to us the moment that he steps on board. ‘We’ll outrun this blaggard of a storm!’ And so our ancestors did, skimming over the tops of the breakers likes we was flying on the wings of the very devil himself. Now, by morning we had woken to find themselves on the open blue sea, Old England now far away, heading across the Atlantic, with the last of the seagulls turning back towards the coast.

They were in fine spirits: the sailors sailed, Mr. Plymtree, the bosun, busy bosuned and the Captain walked this way and that on his deck happily captaining for all he was worth.

Meanwhile the lookout was on the top of the main mast from early morning, a telescope jammed in his right eye, scanning the horizon for signs of the topsails of a British Frigate.’

By now all the faces of the pirates were lost, their faces aglow in the firelight, totally taken up with the story. Tobias seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. Black-eyed George paused, took a gulp of rum and carried on.

‘Well. They sailed for one day and they sailed for two and then they sailed for another two and then a day, which makes four in all, plus one, which is eight. Eight days in all without seeing a thing! Not so much as a dolphin or even a dinghy. If the crew were getting restless, then Deaf Bill was getting even more restless. Pacing up and down the deck glaring. ‘Bosun!

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Bosun!!!!’ he always shouted, on account of him being deaf.

(He wasn’t even allowed to sing hymns in church anymore on account of him scaring the children. And some of the adults for that matter). Oh, and Deaf Bill had a very loud voice.

‘Bosun!!!! BOSUNNNNN!!! PLYMTREE, YOU MORON!’ ‘Yes Captain, what is it?’

‘HAVE WE SIGHTED A SHIP YET?!’

‘Not yet, Captain. Not even a sunken boat.’

‘WHAT!?’

‘I SAID ‘NOT YET CAPTAIN – NOT – EVEN – A – SUNKEN – BOAT!!’’

‘WHAAAT?! I’M A DRUNKEN GOAT YOU SAY!!

HOW DARE YOU?’ roared the Captain. ‘I’LL KILL YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS!!!’ And he would dive at the poor Bosun, who would have to get the helmsman and the ship’s mate and the cabin boy to pull the Captain off and explain the situation. It wasn’t even worth writing it down, because Cap’n Bill could not read or write.

Time was passing all the time and the sailors were beginning to give up hope of ever spotting a British frigate laden with gold.

Then, suddenly, on the ninth day, just as the sun came up, a cry came from the crow’s nest: ‘Ship ahoy!’

The captain was downstairs having his morning nap.

‘WHAT WAS THAT?!’ he yelled, jumping up in bed so quickly that his head hit the ceiling, ‘WHO’S HAD A BOY?!

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I DIDN’T GIVE PERMISSION FOR PEOPLE TO HAVE BABIES ON MY BOAT. THIS IS A PIRATE SHIP, NOT A MATERNITY WARD!’ Rubbing his head, which was beginning to come up in a nasty blue lump, he looked out of the window. And there she was: The Royal Garter, well known to be one of the finest vessels of His Majesty’s Fleet, and bound to be brimming with gold. ‘AAARRRGHHHHLLLL!’ said Captain Deaf, forgetting for a moment how to speak, he was so excited, and pointed at the Royal Navy Frigate bobbing around on the blue sea. ‘WHY DIDN’T SOMEBODY SAY!?’ he roared, finally finding his voice, and with that he rushed up the stairs. ‘BRING ME MY CUTLASSES, BRING ME MY PISTOLS, SHE’LL GET AWAY IF WE’RE NOT CAREFUL!! WHY DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE?!’

But he was in luck. By the time he had got up the stairs, still wearing just his nightgown and his red spotted knickers, the crew had been ready for ten minutes, putting up more sails for extra speed, pushing cannons into place and clearing the decks ready for all the gold.

‘HOIST THE JOLLY ROGER!’ cried the Captain and the shout went out as the Jolly Roger flag, the international sign of all God-fearing and not-so-God-fearing pirates, crept up the flag pole with its white Skull and Crossbones, which started to flap in the wind.

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‘IF SHE HADN’T SEEN US BEFORE SHE CAN CERTAINLY SEE US NOW!’ laughed the Captain. ‘LET’S JUST SEE WHAT SHE DOES.’ And sure enough, as the Jolly Roger’s skull and crossbones fluttered in the breeze in the bright sunlight, The Royal Garter turned about sharply and away from the direction that The Crosspatch Peccadillo was travelling.

‘QUICK – AFTER HER!’ shouted Deaf Bill. ‘She can’t be moving fast, not with all that gold on board. HOIST THE MAINSAIL, SPLICE THE JIB, BRING ME MY BREAKFAST!’ Now The Crosspatch Peccadillo was the fastest vessel on the high seas at the time and there wasn’t a boat in the world that could beat her. Before you knew it the gap between the boats was closing steadily and the crew on the Navy boat could be seen quite clearly by the pirates. This made Deaf Bill even more excited, so much so that he spilt his tea down his shirt front and got a rasher of bacon stuck in his beard.

Still The Crosspatch Peccadillo raced towards The Royal Garter, which was trying to get away by twisting in one direction and then turning in another. But Deaf Bill knew what he was up to: he had been at sea so long he was said to have barnacles on his bottom, and he could spot every trick in the book.

‘STARBOARD! HARD TO PORT!’ he

shouted, nearly knocking the helmsman clean off his feet each time. ‘PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR BOARDING,’ 80

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he ordered, when he was absolutely sure that The Royal Garter was cornered. One hundred pirates took out various gruesome-looking rusty swords and cutlasses, gripped knives between their teeth and blew their noses on spotty hankies.

Just then, the other ship stopped.

There was a sudden screaming of the wind in the sails as The Crosspatch Peccadillo tried to slow down and come about. Then Captain Deaf spotted sixty little puffs of smoke all at once running along the length of the Royal Navy boat that sat barely eighty yards from them now, bobbing in the bright blue sea. ‘THEY’RE GOING TO FIRE – THE DOGS!’ he boomed in his loudest voice yet. ‘THEY’RE FIRING ON MY SHIP! AND WE HAVEN’T EVEN DONE ANYTHING TO THEM YET, EXCEPT CHASED THEM AROUND A LITTLE BIT! IT’S SO UNFAIR, EVERYBODY,’ he cried. ‘DUUUCK!!!!’

Everybody ducked, except for the Captain himself, who was much too fat for that, and anyway he hadn’t finished his tea yet. The sixty little puffs of smoke became sixty big puffs of smoke and then sixty flashes of cannon, and sixty roaring lumps of iron came hurtling towards The Crosspatch Peccadillo. They were in so close now that it was going to be the only chance they got to sink the pirate ship before the pirate ship was upon them. As the burning hot balls of metal hurtled towards them, everybody held their breath.

Fifty-eight lumps of screaming red hot iron missed The 81

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Crosspatch Peccadillo. Two hit.

One went through the Jolly Roger flag and the other one went whistling past Captain Deaf’s rather large red nose and smashed his cup of tea into a thousand bits of broken china.

‘WHAAAAAT!’ roared the Captain, as one hundred pirates crouched down in fear. It was his favourite mug, the one with little blue flowers on it. One hundred Royal Navy marines, who were now close enough to hear, crouched down in fear too. ‘It was his favourite mug,’ they whispered to one another. ‘THAT WAS MY FAVORITE MUG,’ he said at last, ‘THE ONE WITH LITTLE PINK FLOWERS ON IT!’ ‘Blue actually,’ corrected the Bosun under his breath.

‘PINK!’ roared the Captain, suddenly hearing really rather well.

‘I think you’ll find, Sir, that they were blue,’ replied the Bosun, beginning to look rather nervous under the Captain’s glare. The Royal Garter had now drifted very close, and someone cleared his throat on the deck of the other ship. It was the Second Lieutenant, Augustus Thribb, from Little Gidding near Maidstone.

‘I say chaps,’ he said, holding up his hand, ‘I really feel that I must agree with your Bosun chap, I’m sure the cup had little blue flowers on it, not pink. You see my Great Aunt Agatha has got a set just like it. She wanted pink, but Harrods said that they only did it in blue.’

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‘SHUT UP!’ yelled the captain so loud and hard, the bacon flew out of his beard, as well as a couple of startledlooking birds and a family of four spiders who had finally had enough. ‘WHO ASKED YOU, YOU BIG PANSY?’ ‘Sorry,’ replied the Lieutenant from the other boat. ‘Keep your beard on. I was only trying to help. Can we get on with the war now?’

‘CERTAINLY!’ Captain Deaf raged. ‘ALL ABOARD HMS GARTER!! LAST ONE THERE GETS NO FRIED RAT FOR A WEEK!’ and with that, one hundred pirates leapt over the side across to The Royal Garter and swung from the masts onto the rigging of the other boat.

The battle was a short one but a good one. We Pirates know how to fight at sea and we were hungry for gold. The Royal Marine soldiers put up a bit of a fight and then gave up. After all, it wasn’t their gold they were fighting for, and when they got back to port they could say that they had been attacked by four hundred pirates instead of one hundred, who were eight feet tall and man-eating. We didn’t mind one bit. If folks believed the stories it just meant they were even more scared of us the next time.

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Chapter Twelve

Storm ‘So we tied everyone up from the other boat and made the Captain walk the gangplank.

Just as he got to the end of the plank Captain Deaf called him back. You see, he wasn’t the ‘orrible sort of pirate who drowns people just for the fun of it. That’s just propaganda put about by the government. He’d got his gold, and he also knew that by the time they untied themselves The Crosspatch Peccadillo would be miles off and they would have no chance of catching it. Even if they had wanted to. No – it was much better to leave the Royal Navy Captain tied up, just wearing his vest and long johns he got for Christmas. We nicked all their rum too, and their ship’s biscuits. And last of all we took the Union Jack flag down and we hoisted the Jolly Roger instead. The English captain got very angry about his and started shouted threats like ‘Wait until I get back to England, you’ll be sorry, I’ll see you hanged before I’m through!’ and other things, which was quite brave considering he had nearly just walked the gangplank and his knees were still probably quite wobbly.

But the pirates just laughed.’

‘What about the treasure, what about the treasure?’ cried all the pirates back in the cave. Black-eyed George held up 85

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his hand for silence.

‘The gold,’ he said after a long silence. (He almost whispered it as if he were talking about something holy that you couldn’t mention too loudly). His face glowed in the firelight and his eyes sparkled like two precious gems at the thought of all the money. Everyone held their breath, including Fred.

‘MASSES OF IT THERE WAS!’ he suddenly shouted and everyone jumped, and then laughed excitedly. ‘Pots and pots; gold sovereigns, golden nuggets, gold cans and silver pans, precious stones in dead men’s bones with sharpened knives and jewels for wives.

Melted ores and silky drawers, cups for wine and gems sublime, rubies, pearls and diamond swirls.’

At that, Black-eyed George jumped up and started dancing a jig with excitement on the tips of his toes.

Everyone except Fred and Tobias suddenly jumped up and did the same. They looked like Indians all dancing around the fire.

‘A basket here and casket there and sparkling baubles everywhere, 86

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heaps and heaps for everyone, with silver bracelets by the ton, And Captain Deaf laughed at these things Saying ‘Even now we’re rich as Kings I’ll just pop out and buy Alaska And build a golf course – in Madagascar!

Here, my boy – an enormous sum, So pass me up a tot of rum And now a drink to toast your health!

And wish you all stupendous wealth!’

‘HURRAH,’ they all shouted. ‘HOORAY FOR GOOD OLD CAPTAIN DEAF.’ Just then there was a loud crash as Black-eyed George jigged too far left and fell over a rock. Everyone gasped until his smiling face reappeared. He rubbed his head. ‘Oooh, I think I’ve got a black eye coming on.’

‘But how did they end up in this cave if they had so much money? Black-eyed George’s story doesn’t explain anything,’ whispered Fred to Tobias, who was still standing there muttering things like ‘Extraordinary,’ or ‘Real pirates, well shiver my timbers!’

‘What?’ he said, blinking suddenly and looking down at Fred. ‘Oh that, well, I’ve got my own theories, but I think 87

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that we are just about to find out. I wonder if they’ve still got the swag, me hearty.’ Fred gave Tobias a funny look; what with all the pirates and the excitement around their discovery, it seemed as if Tobias Brown was turning into a pirate himself.

‘He must have got some water in his ears from Deep Blue,’ thought Fred, ‘and it’s affected his brain. The poor man already thinks he’s a pirate. He seems to have completely forgotten that we’re 5 miles from home with millions of tons of mud and water on top of us, which is probably about to cave in any minute, and, what’s more, we have no way of getting back now that Deep Blue has been squashed flat as a pancake. Let’s just hope that something turns up.’

After everyone had calmed down and the singing and shouting had stopped, Black-eyed George sat down on a rock and continued.

‘So,’ he dabbed his eye with a wet handkerchief, ‘I expects yous are a-wondering how we got ourselves into this mess after coming up trumps with all that bullion?’

‘Yes, actually we were.’

They all stopped and looked at Fred with admiration.

‘You were!’ they said, amazed.

‘Yes,’ replied Fred.

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ said Fred.

‘What, really really, no fingers crossed or nuffink?’

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‘Er no, I really was wondering.’

‘The boy’s amazing,’ some of them gasped.

‘A true genius,’ said another.

‘Sharp as a button.’

‘Bright as a pin.’

‘Clever as a plank.’

‘He’s read our minds!’

‘Er, thanks,’ said Fred.

‘So,’ said Black-eyed George, interrupting, and looking a bit cross because no-one had ever called him a genius, ‘I’ll tell you.’

‘We sailed from where we had left The Royal Garter, heading due east. Captain Deaf had decided to lay low for a few months. The Atlantic would be crawling with people on Royal Navy gunboats looking for us, and they weren’t too particular as to whether we were found dead or alive, if you get my meaning.

So we headed towards the Cornish coast. It’s full of nooks and crannies and places where you could hide whole armies of boats without being found. What happened next though just goes to prove that as soon as something nice ever turns up, something bad has to happen soon after to keep things balanced. It’s the way of the world. There’s no point in getting cross about it. It works the other way around too.

If something bad happens to you, it’s no use getting upset about it – you should be happy because generally something 89

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nice happens later on.

Now, that storm I think I mentioned earlier had been following us about, although we did not know it. All the time getting bigger and blacker and angrier, as if it had been sent by the King of England himself to get all his gold back. Just as the sun was going down, it rose up like a demon on the horizon. Thousands and thousands of feet of the blackest cloud you have ever seen, like a huge tower of smoke; some of the older sailors even swore they could see the faces of devils peering out from the black folds of the clouds, laughing and cackling at the thought of sinking us.

And the wind got louder and louder, just like before, until it was a sickening screech like a witch’s howl. Just then the Bosun spotted land. A thin strip of the Devon coast, like a blue smudge on the horizon. He pointed it out to the Captain, who was busy overseeing the securing of the treasure in all the hatches so that the storm wouldn’t wash it all off the deck. ‘LAND AHOY!’ bellowed the captain.

‘QUICK, HEAD FOR IT, IT’S THE ONLY CHANCE WE’VE GOT. IF THE STORM CATCHES US WE’LL SINK.’ So The Crosspatch Peccadillo, with all her gold on board, turned about and started to race for the shoreline.

‘FASTER,’ roared the captain, as the crew struggled to get the sails up and the helmsman strained to keep the ship’s wheel on course.

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The waves began to rise higher and higher and white foam started to blow across the deck. Captain Deaf stood firm on the bridge. ‘FASTER!!’ he roared again. The crew flexed their muscles and pulled on the sails as The Crosspatch Peccadillo raced across the waves, going faster in the wind than any other boat had done before in history.

But still the eye of the storm crept up on them.

‘FASTER!!!’ raged the captain in his loudest voice yet.

‘All right, we get the point!’ shouted the crew back. ‘If she goes any faster the sails will tear to pieces. We’re not sure we can hold her any longer, Captain.’

Captain Deaf scanned the horizon with his good eye. The coast was still a long way off and the storm was almost upon them, so he used his bad eye instead. He couldn’t see anything at all now but it made him feel better. ‘There’s only one thing for it,’ he thought. ‘HOIST THE STINGER!’ he shouted in the Bosun’s ear, who jumped three feet in the air in fright.

‘Hoist the Stinger?! But Captain-?!’

‘HOIST THE STINGER YOU DOG!’ shouted the Captain again.

‘B… bu.. but we’ll sink, Captain.’

‘WE’LL SINK IF WE DON’T, NOW GIVE THE ORDER!’ The poor Bosun, Mr. Plymtree, swallowed twice.

‘I used to be a grocer,’ he thought. ‘I was quite good at it, too, until I decided to give it all up for a life of crime. I wish I 91

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hadn’t now. I could still be living comfortably above the shop in Penge, weeding the azaleas at the weekend, catching up on the crossword, that sort of thing. And there was that Gladys down the road, terribly kind you know, even with her wooden eye – would have made a perfect wife, keeping me socks darned, helping out looking after Mum’s lumbago. Oh well, here goes. If we’re going to die, we’re going to die.’ He cleared his throat and shouted above the storm: ‘HOIST THE STINGER!’ ‘Now the Stinger,’ said George turning to Fred and Tobias, ‘is a large piece of sail that goes at the front of the ship like a mushroom, and was an invention of Captain Deaf himself. It is only ever taken out when the wind is very low, on account of it being very sensitive to the slightest gust. To bring it out now would be like being blasted out of a cannon for trip down the road to the shops. Very fast, no guarantee that you would stop until you went head first through a brick wall – and, what’s more, no-one’d ever done it before. Noone had ever put the Stinger up in any more than a light breeze, but it was the only chance they had to make the safety of the coast and beat the deadly storm.’

‘The crew shivered when they heard this order,’ continued George in his storytelling voice. ‘Weak men fainted right there on deck and the stronger ones just burst into tears. But they knew, deep down in their salty hearts, that this was the only way they were going to beat the storm.

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So up went the sail.

There was a moment’s pause when nothing happened, and then suddenly The Crosspatch Peccadillo gave a slight creak and then a sort of whistle through its sails, and shot off like a dog after a hare. Before they knew it they were skipping over the tops of the waves.

Faster and faster and faster and FASTER. Soon everything became a blur almost. ‘We’re making it!’ cried the Bosun, his wig flying off, leaving what remained of his hair in patches on the top of his head, waving about in the wind.

‘Hoorah, hooray!’ everyone cried. ‘Captain Deaf has saved the day!’ And indeed it looked as though they were right. The storm was gradually retreating into the distance as the shoreline and safety got closer and closer.

They were now, without a doubt, going faster than any ship had ever gone before. From a distance it looked as if The Crosspatch Peccadillo was flying just over the surface of the water, not just sailing upon it. Only Captain Deaf was silent. He was concentrating fiercely on the mast and the cliffs of Devon that he could now see clearly. The mast was bending and straining like a whip and he was worried that it might snap at any moment. But more importantly, he had to time taking down the sail exactly. If they did it too soon, the storm would catch them up very quickly and all that effort 93

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would have been for nothing. If they did it too late, then they would end up like strawberry jam, splattered on the side of the cliffs. And Captain Deaf would not have the opportunity to spend all that money he had captured.

He raised his hand slowly and held it in the air. The crew went quiet. They knew that the moment he dropped his hand the Stinger must be cut loose immediately. Captain Deaf held his breath. So did everyone else. ‘One, two, three, five. Now!’ Quick as silver leaving a rich man’s pockets in a pirate tavern, the crew cut the Stinger down. The effect was almost immediate. The Crosspatch Peccadillo slowed down like she was suddenly filled with lead. She entered a natural cove and came to a halt barely ten yards away from some nasty, sharp-looking rocks. Two seconds later and it was certain that she would have ended up being smashed to matchwood on top of the rocks themselves.

Now they would have all breathed a sigh of relief, but the storm was still approaching and everyone knew that they had to get under cover as soon as they could. The Captain squinted his eyes and looked around the harbour for a place to land or at least get out of the way of the howling storm.’

George paused now in his story and wiped his hands over his eyes and forehead.

‘That’s when he saw the Cave Mouth!’

‘The Cave Mouth, The Cave Mouth,’ everyone murmured 94

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at once.

‘His big mistake. And the reason why we are still down here to this day.’

Fred looked at Tobias who looked back. They were beginning to guess what had happened.

‘In went The Crosspatch Peccadillo.

At first it looked like just the regular sort of cave that you gets all along the coast of Devon. If you looks at it from a distance through a powerful telescope, it looks just like one of those cheeses what’s got holes in them that ship’s rats love to eat.

Anyway, they were in, and just beginning to breathe their first sighs of relief when there came a terrible swell from under The Crosspatch Peccadillo. Just like the start of a volcano erupting but made out of water. The swell became a fountain as the boat got higher and higher and threatened to capsize. ‘What’s going on?!’ Everyone cried all at once, and rushed to the side just in time to see The Thingamajig raise one of its giant gnashers and grab the whole hull of the boat in one of its slimy tentacles.

‘They saw it too. They saw it too!’ hissed Fred at Tobias.

‘The horrible lump of shell and tentacles that chased us. You know, the giant crab!’

‘Well, it would seem so. It would seem so. But that was over 350 years ago. It can’t possibly be that old. Then again, it just may be. Did you know, my boy, that the average 95

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lobster is over 60 years old? And that is barely one thousandth the size of our friend we so narrowly escaped from today.’

‘SHHHshhh!’ said one of the pirates next to Fred, ‘he’s getting to the good part.’

‘So, down they went, under the water,’ continued George.

‘Most of them were experienced sailors and had the good sense to grab hold of something thick and hold their breaths for all they were worth. Those that didn’t probably drowned, because, as you probably don’t know, most real sailors, particularly pirates, can’t swim.

So D O W N they went, as I was saying. Then just as everybody thought they couldn’t hold on any longer, they popped up again. In this underground cavern. The Crosspatch Peccadillo was too big, even for the Thingamajig, and he spat us out, right on the shore where we are today.

‘Well, that is to say, he spat our ancestors out.

Generations of pirates have been living down here now for three and a half centuries, it would seem, with only the Tinseldown to show our way and what we can scavenge down here to eat. And with only the Thingamajig for company. This isn’t too bad – it’s all we know, after all.

However, something has been happening in the cave, something we is worried sick about, and I don’t mind admitting it. Earthquakes! And in the last few years these earthquakes seem to have got more and more frequent and 96

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now it looks as if the cave, our only home for fifteen generations from the original crew, is going to collapse about our heads and squash us all flatter than those funny little mushrooms that sometimes grow on the tops of rocks.

Frankly, it’s all too terrible,’ and with that Black-eyed George looked as if he was about to burst into tears again.

Now Fred had gone very quiet for the last few moments.

Thinking hard.

As the pirate put his head in his hands in despair at their problems, Fred stepped forward in his most confident manner, slapped George on the back and said: ‘There there, cheer up, Mr. Black Eye. You’ve met Tobias Brown, Inventor Esquire, but what you probably haven’t realised is that he is a genius. Oh yes, quite a brilliant man. And I am sure by teatime tomorrow he will have come up with a plan, no, probably at least ten plans all of ways to get us out of this fix. Isn’t that right, Mr Brown?’

All eyes turned to Tobias, who was sitting on a rock looking very uncomfortable.

‘Er,’ he said.

As you can imagine, there was a bit of a pause, and some of the younger pirates began to shuffle and sniff. This made Tobias look even more worried. He beetled his brows and scratched his head and rocked about on his feet for a bit. Just when Fred thought that he had made a mistake telling everyone that Tobias would save them, Mr. Brown cleared 97

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his throat.

‘Er, well, I think I know why the roof is caving in,’ said Tobias helpfully. He might have been trying to play for time before he was expected to think up a plan, but everyone gathered around eagerly, including Fred, who had been wondering all along how the cave existed at all, all the way down here…..

‘We’re completely surrounded by water,’ he kept saying to himself. ‘Surely that water would come in and we would all be drowned. But the pirates have been down here for centuries, and apart from them being off their rockers, why haven’t they drowned yet?’

‘Many millions of years ago,’ Tobias was telling the pirates, his voice sounding like a school master’s, ‘when the earth’s crust was still forming and cooling down from the sea of molten rock and lava, which was slowly replaced over millions of years by the seas, which you gentlemen and, er, ladies are more used to travelling on, this whole cavern was created, probably by an underground river. This whole place would have been full of millions and millions of gallons of rushing water. Now that the water is receding, as it has been for thousands and thousands of years, the cave has been drying out. I am afraid that the more it dries out, the more the rocks start to crumble, like a sandcastle left in the sun will eventually dry out and fall down. I am afraid, my dear Pirates, that this cavern is eventually going to dry up 98

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completely and cave in.’

‘What does that mean?’ said someone at the back ‘It means,’ said Tobias, trying to sound patient, ‘that large rocks are going to start falling on our heads pretty soon unless we can think of a way out.’

As soon as he finished saying all of this a strange thing happened. Tobias stopped what he was doing suddenly and looked up at the ceiling that flickered in the firelight. Green light from the Tinseldown glowered in the cavern behind them, as the Invisible Sea lapped gently against the shoreline.

Everyone went quiet and a strange smile spread across Tobias’s face. Fred recognised that smile. It meant that Mr. Brown had had an idea. He wasn’t so sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

‘By Jove, I think I’ve got it,’ he suddenly shouted and everyone jumped.

‘HE’S GOT IT!’ they all shouted in capital letters at once.

‘By crikey I have!’

‘WELL GO ON THEN, TELL US.’ The pirates were enjoying this.

‘Okay, I will.’ He licked his lips. ‘You think, George, that you are surrounded by water.’

‘That’s right,’ said George, proudly, as if repeating something he had been told many times before and had come to believe, ‘water below and above, trapped like rats in Davy Jones’s locker.’

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‘Poor old Davy Jones,’ thought Fred. ‘Poor rats too: it might be very stuffy in his locker. Especially if his trainers smell anything like mine.’

‘Well, you’re not!’ said Tobias quite definitely.

‘NOT SURROUNDED BY WATER!’ cried everyone.

‘WE CAN’T BELIEVE IT! THE MAN’S MAD. HA HA HA HA, IMAGINE, IF THAT’S TRUE, THEN WE’VE BEEN DOWN HERE FOR NO REASON FOR THE LAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS. HA HA HAR!’ ‘That’s absolutely the case,’ said Tobias again.

‘HAR HAR HAR,’ continued the pirates. ‘YOU THINK THAT WE WOULD BE THAT STUPID?’ ‘Well, let me ask you one thing, smarty pants,’ said Fred, wanting to defend Tobias, who was getting treated rather unfairly in his opinion. ‘How do you think you can breathe?’

‘Well with our mouths of course,’ said George.

‘And our noses,’ cried someone else helpfully.

‘And our ears,’ cried someone else, who was probably Colin.

‘Yes,’ said George, ‘and with our noses. We breathe with both of them. What a stupid question. You’ll be asking us where all the rats went to next. Ha ha.’

‘What rats?’ asked Fred curiously.

‘The rats that came down with the ship. They’ve been with the pirates ever since. Sort of like pets except they’re edible.

And then suddenly a few months ago, when the earthquakes 100

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started getting really bad, they all disappeared. Just upped suddenly and left.’

‘Fred, I think, has got it,’ said Tobias quietly. ‘George, you may breathe with your mouth, but where do you think the air comes from in the first place?’ At this, George went bright red; he wasn’t used to people asking him difficult questions, and he got flustered when they did.

‘Well, um,’ started George, ‘well, that one’s easy. It, um, comes from all around.’

Fred quickly brightened. He had got it too! And the more he thought about it, the more he knew what Tobias was trying to say, and that Tobias had got the problem of their escape from the cave just right. He jumped into the middle of the circle.

‘Yes,’ Fred said confidently, turning around slowly to face all of them, ‘but air can’t just make itself, because all the air in here would be soon used up. You would all suffocate after a few days. Instead you’ve lived down here for centuries and the air is still as fresh as a daisy.’

‘Well, um, er, um,’ said George, and all the other pirates sat around and scratched their heads. Colin scratched his nose.

‘What’s a daisy?’

‘The air must be coming from somewhere,’ carried on Fred, feeling cleverer by the minute.

‘Well done, my boy,’ whispered Tobias, ‘a great piece of 101

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logic.’

‘Yes, that’s all very well but where’s that somewhere?’ continued George, looking triumphant as if he had just won the argument. Just then a voice came from the back.

‘From outside of course.’

Everyone turned around and stared. ‘What?’ they all said at once. Turning to face Colin, Fred knew and Tobias knew at that moment that they had convinced them. What they couldn’t believe was that Colin had got the point first. From what Fred had heard, he hadn’t had a good idea for over ten years. But Colin scratched his ear again and repeated quietly: ‘From outside.’

There was a long, long silence and Fred knew he had their attention. All the pirates had stopped chuckling and saying things like: ‘What idiots, they must think we’re barmy. I don’t think much of these modern folk,’ and were now listening with rapt attention.

‘So you must be able to get outside from here. What’s more, it’s probably the same way out that the rats used when the earthquakes started and they felt threatened. You’ve heard the expression, rats leaving a sinking ship. Well, the rats probably knew there was a way out for ages.’

‘Well, why didn’t they tell us?’ asked Colin.

‘Quit while your ahead, Colin!’ said everyone; they were beginning to see what Tobias and Fred were getting at too.

Fred carried on: 102

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‘Well, they saw no need to leave until things got risky.

After all, all this time they have had everything they needed.

Food, a place to stay and besides, rats are natural burrowers, they love dark holes. It’s where they normally live. Isn’t that right, Mr. Brown?’ said Fred turning to Tobias.

‘Yes. I think that one day Fred will make a very fine scientist himself. He is absolutely right. The rats have escaped and it’s up to us to find where they went. You see, it’s obvious that there are two entrances to this place. The one full of water that your ancestors were dragged down by the crab and another one that isn’t, probably up through the large cavern somewhere. After all, this was once an underground river and rivers have to go somewhere. Look, I’ll draw you a picture.’ And, borrowing a sword from one of the pirates, he traced out the diagram you can see here.

‘Yes. But beggings your pardon,’ said George, ‘We know

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these caves like the backs of our hands. Every one of us has been exploring when we were lads and lasses and in hundreds of years no-one has found a proper way out.’

‘Of course, my dear foolish man. Of course they haven’t found a REAL way out. At least, not a real way out for a man. But imagine you are the size of a rat. Did you know that they can squeeze through holes less than the size of a ten pence piece? That’s two shillings to you,’ he added.

‘So you’re saying that to get out we have to squeeze through a hole no bigger than young Tom’s hand?’

‘What I am saying,’ said Tobias, raising his hand for quiet, ‘ is that once we have found the hole the rats went through, we work out a way that we can get through it. And, what’s more, I think that I’ve got the answer right here.’

‘Where?’ everyone asked.

‘Right here. In fact, you’re sitting on it.’ Tobias pointed a long bony finger at the barrels that they had all been sitting on for the past hour. On the side of each was a large white stamp, with writing on it.

‘GUNPOWDER,’ he said very firmly.

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Chapter Thirteen

Escape One thing about pirates is that once they are convinced about something it is very hard to stop them believing it. For example, if you were to convince a bunch of pirates that gold really existed at the bottom of a rainbow, then before you knew it you would have hundreds of them streaking around the countryside muttering into their beards, carrying buckets and spades looking for rainbows and crocks of gold. That’s just how pirates are. And that’s how pirate captains like Deaf Bill managed to persuade so many men to leave their nice snug homes in the heartlands of sunny old England and go travelling off to faraway places, many of which hadn’t even got proper names yet, all in search of treasure that hardly ever existed.

The fact that Fred and Tobias had discovered a crew of pirates, or at least their ancestors, who had really and truly got themselves a hoard of treasure and had kept it, what’s more, which made them fairly amazing pirates, all things considered.

But they were still pirates nonetheless, and once they had decided that holes in the cave really did exist then there was no stopping them being helpful trying to find out where they were. Although the cave was well lit by the Tinseldown, 105

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Tobias still insisted that the exploring parties carried torches of dried seaweed lit in the end of stakes, like an oldfashioned burning torch. When asked why, he explained his plan to them.

It was very simple really.

Obviously the way out had been covered by fallen rocks over the centuries – however, a few cracks where air escaped still existed, but too small for the pirates to have noticed before. The rats had managed to find these holes, when they worked out that the cavern roof might collapse at any moment, and had used the holes as an escape route. All they needed to do though, said Tobias, was follow the smoke made by the torches. The smoke would go the same way as the air, and therefore would go through the passageway out.

Once they had discovered this, then Tobias planned to take the gunpowder and pack it around the hole. Then they would make a small trail of the gunpowder leading away from the barrels and light it. Once lit, he was hoping that it would blast through enough rock to get them out.

It was quite a good plan. Fred even said he’d seen it work in at least two or three films he had seen. It was also the only plan they had.

Fred even went on a few of the expeditions really just as an excuse to explore the caves. Tobias said that he could, as long as he stuck close to the pirates and promised not to get himself lost or in any sort of trouble, which Fred thought 106

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was a bit rich. Over the next few days they set out with packs from the main cavern straight after breakfast and went exploring, their burning torches lit, the pirates carefully following the trails of smoke. It was actually much harder than they had thought at first. Most of the time the smoke didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular and when it did, it seemed to be going straight up into the cavern roof.

Tobias told them not to worry: when they found a real current of air, then they would be sure.

In the meantime, Fred stuck close to Tom, who was about the same age as he was, and who would have been the ship’s cabin boy, had they still had a ship. Tom was short and stocky, with wiry red hair, and he stamped around with a big grin on his face for much of the time. He obviously felt very at home in the cave and enjoyed showing Fred the different things. At first Fred found it difficult keeping up with him.

Tom had been exploring for years, and he could jump from rock to rock in much the same way as a mountain goat can climb all the steepest slopes. ‘Come on young master Fred,’ he would say, grinning like a pumpkin, as Fred stumbled after him, ‘keep up or you’ll get lost and the Tiger Headed Snakes will get you.’ At first Fred was surprised that anything lived down there. But he soon discovered that the cave was simply teeming with life – though much of it was invisible for most of the time, lurking about in the shadows and under rocks.

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The Fire Salamander (or Sand Duck, to give it its common name) was one creature he did see from time to time. It could be seen creeping about under rocks, glowing bright red to scare off attackers. If Fred had not known better, he would have believed that it really was glowing red hot and that it was not just the colour of its skin. The pirates generally saw it as a sign of good luck and left it alone out of respect.

There was also the Yellow Bat, which Fred was sure did not exist anywhere else at all apart from the cave. He reminded himself to look it up in his encyclopaedia if he ever got out of the cave in one piece. The Yellow Bats lived at the far end of the underground realm. Fred had always thought that bats were rather ugly beasts, with nasty red eyes and pointy sharp teeth for biting people’s ears. The Yellow Bat was a lovely gentle creature, though. It had beautiful large brown eyes that Tom said were completely useless and that most bats were blind. Fred knew this already but was careful not to say anything that would seem like showing off. He didn’t want to put Tom off taking him around the caves, and Tom was obviously very proud of showing Fred that he knew a thing or two.

Tom caught a Yellow Bat one day for Fred. The little animal did not look worried at all. It lay in Fred’s hand, its watery brown eyes staring up at him. Fred could not believe how soft its fur was. Through the palm of his hand he could 108

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feel its little heart beating quietly away.

There seemed to be two types of fish, apart from all the shrimps and mussels, which the crew liked to boil up and eat on a bed of dried Tinseldown. One they called Cod, which swam around close to the shore line of the Invisible Sea, but it didn’t look like the cod Fred was used to and he rather suspected that the pirates had made the name up because they felt homesick for the real thing. It was quite tasty diced up into cubes and fried. The other type of fish was much larger and needed to be caught further out. The Pirates had built themselves a six-man rowing boat out of some of the wreckage they had salvaged from The Crosspatch Peccadillo.

They would go on two-day trips to catch a fish they called a Bleu-urgh-yuk, and when Fred saw one he could easily see why. The first thing he said when he saw one being pulled out of the water by Ben Cutter (his hook made him a sort of one-man fishing rod) was ‘Bleu! Urgh! Yuk! What’s that?’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ replied Ben Cutter, laughing so loudly that the cave walls boomed and echoed. ‘It’s actually called a Bleu-urgh-yuk, on account of it being so monstrously ugly. Being under the water all the time means that looks really aren’t that important, because you don’t go out to parties much if you live in an underground sea. On the other hand, being so disgusting-looking might be nature’s way of saying ‘Don’t touch me; I’m so ugly I can’t be good to eat. You’ll be sick all over your feet if you do.’ This is just 109

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a trick though,’ carried on Ben Cutter, taking his hook and gutting the big fish expertly with the sharp end. ‘The Bleuurgh-yuk is simply melt-in-the-mouth scrumptious when grilled, and very good for eating when dried, that’s why we always take it with us on expeditions.’

The most exciting animal, though, was the Tiger Headed Snake.

Tom told Fred all about it one evening, after a long day’s hike in search of the passage out.

The Tiger Headed Snake was the most dangerous animal in the caves. Over six feet long and thicker, said Tom, than the leg of a full grown man, it lived in the shadows of the outer regions of the cavern and only came out at night. It was called the Tiger Headed Snake because of the very large head, which was much larger than most snakes, and the strange black and yellow stripes, just like those you see on tigers in India, which ran down its thick muscular body.

Over the years several of the sailors had fallen victim to its night-time excursions, and probably countless rats too.

One minute one of them would be sleeping soundly in their hammock, the next there would be a slither and a thump, followed by a deadly hiss, and that would be the end of the unfortunate pirate - swallowed in a single gulp.

The other thing that was the Tiger Headed Snake, although terribly dangerous, was the most delicious thing in the cave to eat. It was even nicer than the Bleu-urgh-yuk. The 110

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pirates loved it!

It seemed odd to Fred that he and Tobias both thought of them still as sailors, since none of them, nor their parents, nor their grandparents, nor even their grandparents’ parents had ever so much as been to sea in their whole lives. But the way the pirates behaved, and the fact that all their customs and habits had been passed down the generations for centuries, had kept them thinking and talking like the real thing.

Fred began to see that the place with its strange animals and the pirates with their stories by the fireside were in actual fact all part of one big community, just like the one at Creake Castle and the village. They all felt very much at home there, because it was their home, and he wondered what they would make of modern life. He had told some of them stories in the evening, helped by Tobias who, Fred was beginning to realise, loved to be in the spotlight almost as much as he did.

They spoke about planes and cars and even trips to the moon. Hearing Fred’s stories, the pirates’ eyes would go round as saucers in the firelight but after a few minutes they would shake their heads and laugh at one another, saying stuff like: ‘Well, I’m blessed if I don’t think the young master is making it all up!’ and ‘Upon my word, I never heard such a thing.’

Then Fred would get to thinking about the world up there and about the castle and his parents. It seemed he had been down quite some time now and they must be worried sick.

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They might even think that he was dead! He had found the remains of Deep Blue’s radio, washed up on the shore one day and tried using it, but the radio was broken and all he got was crackles and pops. He found himself thinking a lot about green fields and blue skies and seeing the sun, and suddenly one day when he woke up he found that he had been dreaming about school and even the thought of going back for the new term seemed quite nice.

Fred realised that he was homesick and he wanted to get back as soon as he could.

It was just as well, then, that they had a breakthrough in their plans to get out of the cave.

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Chapter Fourteen

Blasting One day Tobias and Fred had gone out slightly earlier than usual with George and Tom and a few other pirates. They had decided, that day, to go high up into the main cavern to an area they had not been to before, to check for exits. Truth be known, they’d been sort of avoiding it because getting there was extremely hard; not only were there dozens of steep climbs, with the constant risk of small avalanches to plunge an unsuspecting pirate to his or her death, but it was wellknown that higher up was where some of the weirder and more dangerous creatures lurked.

The going was pretty tough, and they only got to where they were heading at about lunchtime. George called a halt next to a ledge of flat smooth stone and a small pool of water, and everyone sat down with sighs of relief, wiping the sweat from their eyes and taking off their shoes to wriggle their toes in the cool clear water.

They had hardly even begun to share out the rations of food when Fred felt a slight tremor underneath his feet. He stopped chewing his fish and listened for a few moments.

Nothing happened and nobody else seemed to have noticed anything, so he shrugged his shoulders and carried on eating.

For a bit everything was quiet. Just then Tobias stopped and 113

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jumped up. ‘Did you feel that?’ he said, turning around to the company. People stopped eating immediately.

‘Feel what?’ said Mabel the Ladle.

‘That,’ said Ben Cutter jumping up from his chair and looking at the floor as if it had just jumped up and bit him on the bottom. Obviously Mabel still hadn’t felt a thing.

‘How do I know what that is unless you tell me what you’re talking about?’ she said crossly.

Just then there was a definite rumble in the cave and then a tremor that shook the floor.

‘Oh, that,’ said Mabel.

‘I think,’ said Tobias slowly, ‘that we should take cover.’

Without warning the whole of the cave started to shake and rumble, like an enormous hungry stomach. The ground at Fred’s feet seemed to be trying to shake itself apart in lumps, and he could barely see two feet in front of his face, things were beginning to shake so much. It was like living inside a food mixer. ‘Run for your lives!’ someone shouted, and the next thing he knew, strong hands were pulling him upwards towards a small shelf of granite that provided shelter from the rocks that were tumbling down amongst the pirates. Fred found himself safe inside next to Tobias as the cave really began to shake. He took a quick look around and counted five, then six, then nine faces. Good: it looked as though everyone had got in safely.

As rocks continued to fall, Fred felt his nose and mouth 114

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become clogged up with dust. It seemed to be getting very hot and very hard to breathe. No wonder people panicked in an earthquake and did silly things! This, Fred could say to himself with absolute certainty, was absolutely no fun at all.

Then, just as suddenly as the rockfall and the quake started, they stopped.

There was silence for a few moments and then Fred heard someone cough and spit. It was George. ‘Urgh aaargh, yuk plah.’

‘Oh I say,’ said Tobias.

‘Achooo!’ sneezed Mabel, pulling her head out from a pile of dust and rubble.

‘What are we going to do now?’ asked George, turning to Tobias. ‘If you ask me, your plan ain’t working.’

‘Hear hear,’ said a few of the pirates.

‘We might all just as well stay put where we are and save ourselves the bother of going tramping around in the middle of earthquakes like a bunch of fools!’

‘Hear hear,’ cried the same pirates again, at which point some of the others, like Tom, stood up. Tom said to George: ‘Begging your pardon Captain, but at least Mr Brown has a plan. We’ve been stuck down here for hundreds of years without a chance of getting out, and I for one think we should at least keep on trying for as long as we can.’

‘The boy’s right!’ cried Mabel and suddenly all the pirates began shoving and pushing one another, their faces going 115

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red, arguing about what to do next and all shouting at once.

Tobias went very red too and started to say something.

Meanwhile though, Fred had crawled out of the overhang and was looking at what was left of the rock face in front of them as the last of the dust settled.

‘Hold your horses everyone!’ he said. ‘I think you may want to come and have a look at this before you all start killing one another.’

Everyone stopped coughing and arguing amongst themselves and turned around to see what there was to see.

There, in the middle of where there used to be a wall, plain as the nose on George’s face or the hook on Mr Cutter’s arm, was a hole, and through the hole Fred could smell fresh clean air. He felt the wind on his face and imagined grass and trees just the other side. He spun round shouting for joy.

‘Hooray, we’re saved!’

Indeed, as the smoke eventually cleared and the pirates and Tobias clustered around, it became obvious to everybody that it was indeed a hole, and, more importantly, a hole that certainly hadn’t been there before.

‘Fred, my boy,’ said George, ‘go up there and take a look.’

‘Right ho, Captain.’

‘Be careful!’ shouted Tobias after him. ‘The rocks have already fallen once. There may be one or two that are still loose.’

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Tobias was right: as Fred went scampering up the pile of rocks and rubble left by the earthquake, a hail of small stones and rocks fell on the assembled band, covering them with dust all over again.

‘Like the gentleman says, be careful now,’ said George, coughing and spluttering.

When Fred eventually got to the top Tobias shouted up, ‘What do you see?’

‘A hole,’ replied Fred.

‘Yes yes, we can see that,’ he replied impatiently, ‘but what sort of a hole?’

‘Well, the usual sort of hole really,’ cried Fred back down the cavern, ‘you know, stuff like rock all around it and a big black bit in the middle with nothing there. A hole. You know.’

‘Spare me,’ groaned George to himself and then shouted up at Fred: ‘Can you get through it, that’s the important thing?’

‘No, it’s too small,’ replied Fred.

‘What about digging some of the rock away?’

So Fred struggled for a bit with the rubble around the hole and shook his head.

‘No, can’t shift it either way. But it definitely goes a long way in and I can feel a fair old wind coming in. Just a minute.’ Fred brought the torch further around towards the mouth of the hole and peered about. ‘Yes!’ he cried after a 117

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lot of pushing and grunting, ‘it opens up a bit further along and it looks as if the tunnel gets wider.’

‘That’s it!’ laughed Tobias. ‘We’ve found it. We’ve found it!

We’re saved, saved!’

‘All right, all right,’ said George, ‘keep your wig on, Sir, if you don’t mind me saying. What you don’t seem to realise is how are we supposed to get out. We’ve found the entrance to the tunnel right enough but how on earth are we going to get through a hole that not even young master Fred can squeeze through? Begging your pardon of course.’

‘That’s easy,’ answered both Fred and Tobias at once.

‘We’ve already told you. Gunpowder!’

‘Are you mad?’ said George. ‘I thought you was joking the first time.’

‘Well,’ said Fred, who was now perched on a solid bit of rock above the pirates looking pleased with himself, ‘you’ve got barrels and barrels of gunpowder back at the main camp.

It’s been down there for centuries but everything is perfectly dry. There’s no reason at all why it wouldn’t work. In any case it’s our only chance. One or two more earthquakes like the one we’ve just had and the whole cavern might cave in completely.’

‘But what about the explosions?’ said George, not looking at all convinced. ‘Won’t they just cause another earthquake like last time? We might all be killed or get trapped and die like rats caught in a bag. Oh! We’re doomed.’

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‘Oh! Don’t be such a misery guts,’ cried Tobias, cutting in, in a voice that made everyone jump. Black-eyed George, or Captain George to you, wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. People waited to see which bit of Tobias Brown George was going to cut off first. There was a long silence, as everybody held their breath.

But strangely, nothing happened and Mr. Brown carried on regardless: ‘Fred’s right. It’s our only chance. And in any case, we will all be here at the edge of the tunnel when it goes, so if there is going to be an earthquake we can make our escape quickly, before everything falls on our heads.’

People held their breath again. But George didn’t do anything nasty to Tobias. Instead George thought for a while instead and then nodded his head slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re both right.’ All of a sudden a strange thing happened; he rubbed his hands together and looked around at the rest of the pirates. Fred thought that he looked more confident than he had done so for days. Suddenly sure of himself. Just like a real pirate captain.

He paused and took a deep breath. ‘ALL RIGHT YOU MISERABLE LOT OF LANDLUBBERS!’ he bawled.

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE ALL WAITING FOR? YOU HEARD THE MAN – AND DON’T YOU GO FORGETTING THE TREASURE. NOT A SINGLE SOVEREIGN, D’YER HEAR? WE’RE OFF TONIGHT. BILL, TRILL, GILL,’ he pointed at the triplets, ‘go down 119

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and get a length of rope and all four barrels of gunpowder.

And be sharp about it. It’s time we learnt what land was like on the surface, not stuck down here like a bunch of cockroaches! Myself, the professor, young Tom and Fred will stay up here until you get back. Mabel, you’re in charge until then. We’ll have to have everything ready in the next few hours. The sooner the better, wouldn’t you say Mr. Brown?’

‘Absolutely, absolutely,’ cried Tobias, as pirates shot off in every direction.

Before they knew it everyone was back. It had taken only one trip to gather up everything that they needed. If they got through the hole in one go, Tobias guessed they only had a couple of miles to go to get to the surface. All they really needed was a few water bottles, a clean pair of socks and, of course, the treasure. They had divided it up into packs, so that each pirate could carry their share easily.

Everyone seemed very excited. Fred thought it was odd that they didn’t seem to be a bit sorry to be leaving the Cavern. After all, it had been their home all their lives. He supposed that pirates were naturally wanderers and so nowhere was ever really home to them, because they were always off somewhere different. Not a bad way to live, he thought. At least you didn’t have to bother about who did the washing up.

With the help of Colin, Tobias and Fred heaved the barrels over to the far side of the hollow, where the hole was.

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They packed four huge barrels in, Colin’s massive arms lifting them as easily as if they were empty and not packed to the brim with gunpowder, and then they took one of the smaller barrels and got Ben Cutter to use his hook to drill a hole in the side of the old oak. As soon as the hole was cut, black powder started pouring out. Just as Fred expected.

Tobias told everyone to stand well back, under cover of a particularly large and thick rock. He then made sure that the barrels were packed in tight, and as he walked slowly away, he made a trail of gunpowder about as thick as his finger, all the way back to where the others were waiting.

Tobias looked around and took a match out of his pocket.

He struck it on the stone and shouted: ‘Heads down everyone. There she blows!’ He lit the trail of gunpowder, and before they knew it a stream of smoke and a fizzing sound with lots of sparks ran along the cave floor to where the barrels were waiting.

Then, just as it got there, the fizzing sound stopped.

Everybody who had been holding their breath sighed in disappointment. But just as Fred was about to think the flame had gone out, it started again. This time it seemed far louder. Then came the bang.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sound of the explosion when the barrels finally caught and exploded. It was as if two planets had suddenly decided to collide with one another and then have a loud party to celebrate. Fred 121

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thought the top of his head was going to fly off.

Like the earthquake, there was a tremendous amount of dust and rubble and this time a lot of smoke too.

Gradually the smoke cleared.

And as it did so they all peered carefully over the top of the rock and were greeted by the sight of a large open hole, wide enough to drive a small car through. The pirates let out a cheer and started dancing around. But before they could really start to celebrate, Tobias stood up straight and shouted: ‘Wait!’ Everybody stopped what they were doing.

‘Listen,’ he continued, cupping his ear. From deep below in the cave they could hear a rumble of falling rocks.

‘It’s the earthquake!’ George shouted. ‘Scarper! Run for your lives!’

Before Fred knew it they were all up and running; someone, probably Colin, grabbed him from behind and lifted him over the rubble left by the blast and through the hole. His feet hit the ground already running. He sprinted along, until his lungs felt that they would explode. Through the dark tunnel that Tobias had said would be there, and upwards where he could feel the air getting fresher.

Gradually the noise of the earthquake got quieter until it was just a distant rumble, and then no more than a whisper.

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Chapter Fifteen

Sunlight And quite unexpectedly they came around the corner of the tunnel and there they were, standing in the sunlight on a beach, as bright blue waves with white foam at the ends crashed against the shore and people lazed around on the beach, built sandcastles or just paddled about a bit.

They stood there squinting in the sunlight, especially the pirates, who were not used to direct light. Fred could hardly even begin to express the happiness he felt at finally being out of the tunnel. He looked around, drank in the air and charged into the sea. Then he looked around again. What were all those people doing there? ‘It must be August Bank Holiday!’ he said to Tobias, who was wandering about blinking almost as much as the pirates. ‘I’ve got to be back to school in a few days. And guess what? I couldn’t care less.’

Then, as if in a dream, everyone on the beach seemed to stop what they were doing and turn to look at the pirates, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere and were standing on the sand dressed in old-fashioned costumes, carrying swords, and baskets overflowing with what looked suspiciously like a lot of gold and fine jewels.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to Fred to pass in a 123

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daze. At first the children and most of the adults had thought that they were in fancy dress. A few of the bank holiday beachgoers even came up with the idea amongst themselves that they were part of some circus act who had escaped and were trying out the easy life by the sea for a while.

‘Show us a trick!’ they cried. So Ben Cutter showed them his corkscrew hand and the crowd clapped with delight.

Then George, not to be outdone, put a sword between his teeth and stood on his head, so they clapped even harder.

And before they knew it, they were all taken along by the crowd to the harbour master, a big, gruff fellow, with large brass buttons on his jacket and a shaggy beard. He looked the pirates up and down, made a few calls on his ancient telephone, and decided that Tobias and Fred were normal (relatively) and that the pirates were probably not illegal immigrants, stowaways or men invading from France. He was a bit worried about where all the treasure had suddenly sprung from, and about the pirates’ cutlasses and knives, which he said they must put away for safe keeping, as they didn’t want any more accidents like the one Ben Cutter had obviously had; and he then sent them all down to the local police station to make a statement.

Well now, things only began to happen faster and faster after that. By then a local reporter had arrived, and whilst waiting for statements they gave interviews about where they 124

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had come from and how they had got out. At first nobody believed them, but gradually, after it became obvious that they were sticking to the same story, and that none of the local loony bins had had a single person escape recently, the police began to believe them and piece the incredible story together.

The pirates couldn’t believe it either. They were full of about as many questions as the reporters and the people in the town who had gathered around the police station to see them. Bank holidays can get rather boring and this beat building sandcastles and getting candy floss stuck in your ear by a long way. Eventually the police decided to let them all go for the night. There was a man from the government coming down on an early train from London in the morning to sort it all out anyway.

Just as they were leaving the police station they were accosted by a short fat man in a light blue suit. ‘Hello, my most kind and, er, gracious visitors,’ he said, bowing low to the pirates, who just stood and stared. ‘Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Thomas Feathercap, Tom to my friends. You are new in Tigermoth and the Feathercap Inn extends a warm welcome to you and invites you for an all-expenses stay at the hotel, for as long as the, er, Authorities require your presence here! The Feathercap, let me add, has been in the family for generations and has, I am proud to say, lodged some of the most famous smugglers 125

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and pirates on the south coast since the Seventeenth Century.

We would be delighted to have you, as ancestors of our original customers. And besides,’ he said turning to Fred with a wink, ‘it’s getting to the end of the season and we could certainly do with the publicity. Har har! What’d yer say then fellows?’

For a moment the pirates just stood there. George rubbed his beard, ‘The Feathercap, you say?’

‘Yes that’s right, been in the family for generations. Can’t seem to find anyone to buy it as a matter of fact. Ha ha. Just a joke. Perfectly comfortable for all that, even if the roof is falling in a little bit.’

‘You wouldn’t have been known as ‘The Four Feathers in a Cap’ by any chance?’

‘Well, er, yes, as a matter of fact, that was the original name,’ said their new acquaintance, looking surprised. ‘It was left to our side of the family when one of the other side decided to go off and seek his fortunes on the high seas. Been with us as a matter of fact ever since. Why do you ask?’ At this point George paused.

‘Well, it’s like this,’ he said slowly. ‘The other side of the family weren’t called Timpson, were they? And the chap who went off to fight didn’t go by the name of Deaf by any chance, did he?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, they did. It’s all in the family records, I found them last Christmas whilst going through 126

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some old wooden chests in the attic.’

It was at that moment Fred noticed something about Tom Feathercap and George. Not so much a real likeness, but there was something very similar about the way each one stood, and they both had the same pot bellies and square stubby fingers. ‘Yes,’ thought Fred as he suddenly began to realise something. George walked over to Mr. Feathercap and looked him up and down. Then he burst into a huge roar of laughter that made everyone jump. Next to one another, it was plain to see they looked like twins.

‘COUSIN!’ ‘Cousin?’ asked the Innkeeper.

‘Yes. Don’t you see? My name is Timpson, descended from a long line of Timpsons, formerly owners of the Four Feathers in a Cap, Tigermoth, Devon. That means we’re cousins!’ Now it was Mr Feathercap’s turn to look George up and down.

‘By my barnacles, I think you’re right!’

‘COUSIN!’ they both cried out at once more and fell into each other’s arms. At this the crowd went wild and everyone started to clap and cheer. Tom Feathercap turned around and faced the crowd.

‘Everyone, to the Feathercap Inn. It’s time we celebrated!

Drinks are on the house!’ He paused for a few seconds, looking at the size of the crowd. There must have been about a hundred people watching. ‘Um, for the first five minutes 127

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only,’ he added with a nod at the barmaid.

And with that they all went off: the pirates, Tobias, half the town of Tigermoth, and of course Fred.

Once at the hotel, beer was served in huge frothing pint mugs and everyone talked at once for at least the first hour and a half.

Fred was just standing on a table acting out how he had fought off the Thingamajig, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Tobias. ’Fred,’ he said, ‘would you care to step outside for a moment? I’ve got some people who would like to see you.’ So Fred stopped what he was doing, politely excused himself to his audience and followed Tobias through a low door that led out into the garden.

And there, standing in the sunset looking relieved, worried and angry all at the same time were Fred’s parents, Sir and Lady Longshanks.

I won’t go into the details of their reunion. It’s always embarrassing when you’re a stranger at a station or an airport watching people meeting for the first time in a long time. Needless to say Fred was hugged and told off and then hugged again. Fred’s father grumbled a bit about Tobias being irresponsible and whatnot, until Fred’s mother pointed out that he had himself given permission and anyway, added Fred, it was only meant to be for one afternoon, not for nearly three weeks as it turned out. Then Fred said that it wasn’t anybody’s fault about the mud sucking them down 128

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and being attacked by a Giant Crab Octopus Thing. At which point Fred’s mother fainted, so Fred of course got told off all over again for upsetting his mother twice in one day.

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Chapter Sixteen

Tobias Brown, Pirate Esquire And so that was the end of the adventure for Fred.

Well, almost. He returned to Creake Castle to find that he and Tobias were celebrities. Not only had they broken the record for the deepest dive in a submarine, but they had also discovered a long-lost colony of pirates.

Scientists and anthropologists were very interested for a while and wrote lots of long boring articles with lots of words starting with ‘Socio’ in them. Fred and Tobias were interviewed for the local and national papers and George and his crew even went on chat shows in America and became multi-millionaires.

After a while, as all things do, it all quietened down. This was a good thing, as Fred had decided getting your picture in the paper could be quite boring.

As for the pirates and their treasure, the man from the government decided that it still belonged to the government and it was about time that they had it all back. The pirates were a bit disappointed, as they had been looking forward to spending it for nearly three hundred years, but soon realised 131

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that what with all the TV appearance fees and the fact that they were allowed to keep their cutlasses and guns, since they belonged to them, they were all very rich anyway. They sold the swords and guns for a fortune to private collectors, and even released a pop song, which did very well in the charts, although it did sound a bit like a sea shanty.

Even the Queen gave them a special Honesty Prize medal at Buckingham Palace for handing back all the gold. Ben got so excited he even had his hook polished, and George made sure that he had a couple of really good black eyes to show off on his visit to the palace. Fenny was the star of the visit though. She looked like a princess, Fred decided as he watched it on television. Kit, who had come back, and watched the footage in the Study with Fred, looked quite cross for some reason Fred was about three years too young to fathom.

So more months passed and soon the holidays came again. Fred had come home and even the lake where it all began didn’t look anything special anymore. Even the window that Tobias Brown had crashed in at had been properly repaired so you could hardly see any on the original damage. Fred wished he had a souvenir of the voyages of Deep Blue, although he had some amazing stories to tell Kit. Then one day, when he came down to breakfast, he found a card with a red sticker saying SPECIAL DELIVERY waiting for him, leaning against the marmalade pot. ‘What’s 132

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this?’ he asked Mrs. Bee the housekeeper.

‘Well, at first I thought it was a hippopotamus disguised as a small white envelope so that it could get into my kitchen and steal the turnips I was saving for your birthday, then, as it wasn’t moving, I decided it was probably just a letter.’

‘Oh very funny,’ said Fred. He opened the envelope carefully and out fell what looked like a railway ticket. Inside the envelope was a card, just like the one he had received all that time ago from Tobias, with the address printed in the top right-hand corner. In small neat handwriting that Fred immediately recognised, he read: ‘Stop what you are doing at once! Come to Tigermoth.

Meet by the quay 2.30pm. SHARP. Tobias Brown, Pirate Esquire.’

Fred leant down and picked up the ticket that had fallen by his feet into some butter. He wiped it and saw that it was a return for that day.

The next hour passed in a flurry of asking permission and getting things together and promising to be back by tea or this time he would be grounded until he was at least twentyone, and the next time Fred drew a proper breath he was sitting on the train watching the frost-tipped winter fields go by in the late autumn sunlight.

Once at the station, Fred asked a guard the best way to the quay and set off on foot, wondering what he was going to find. As he came around the corner, the sea air smelling more 133

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and more fishy with every step, he saw it. The largest, most impressive old-fashioned sailing ship he had ever clapped eyes on. Huge sails shimmered in the winter sun, and up and down the polished wooden decks familiar faces from the cave could be seen rolling barrels and pulling ropes. At the front end, in gold lettering, was painted The Crosspatch Peccadillo II. ‘Cor blimey!’ said Fred.

‘Ahoy there, me hearty!’ he heard a familiar voice cry and as Fred looked up he saw George, complete with a new suit and red neck scarf, leaning over the gunwale. ‘It’s lucky you came when you did. We’re just about to slip anchor. We didn’t think you’d make it to say goodbye. But Tobias was sure you would.’

‘Goodbye?’ stammered Fred. ‘George – where are you going?’

‘Ho! I can see it’s come as a bit of a surprise, me lad. Well, it’s like this, you see. We’ve been landlubbers for too long now. We’re pirates, which means we’re sailors. The best there is. It’s in our blood and we can’t help it. Even though we ain’t been to sea for generations.’ Fred could feel himself nodding dumbly. ‘Anyways, we’s made pots of money, except it’s not made out of gold doubloons anymore, but plastic, which means you don’t have to bury it to keep the likes of us from stealing the stuff.’

‘Get on with it,’ thought Fred.

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‘….and since pirating is out of the question, we thought we’d buy a ship and go to sea anyway to see the world.’

‘Yes, but what’s all this about Mr. Brown?’ asked Fred.

Just then Tobias himself appeared at the railing, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Peering over the edge, he saw Fred on the quayside.

‘Fred, Fred my boy. I knew you’d make it.’ Black-eyed George turned around.

‘Oh and I nearly forgot, young Fred. Let me introduce the Ship’s Inventor. Tobias Brown. Whom I believe you know.’

‘Tobias,’ said Fred suddenly feeling very disappointed, ‘you’re going too. In fact everyone’s going except for me.’

‘That’s not true,’ started Tobias.

‘Hi Fred,’ came a voice from the deck as he passed. It was Mr. Feathercap, the Innkeeper from the hotel.

‘Er, well,‘ continued Tobias, looking a bit embarrassed, ‘I suppose that everyone is.’ He paused. ‘But look here. I’m afraid you’ve got to go back to school. That’s what growing up’s all about. It can’t all be adventures.’

‘I know,’ said Fred and shrugged. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.’

‘No, I suppose it doesn’t,’ carried on Tobias, looking at his young friend from high up on the deck, ‘but we’re only going for a year or two.’

‘WHAAAT?’ thought Fred. ‘That’s half a lifetime.’

‘And anyway, we’ll be sending you postcards and 135

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whatnot.’

‘Thanks a bunch!’ Just then Tom appeared from somewhere on the deck.

‘Fred, we’re off to sail the high seas!’ His voice could barely conceal the excitement he felt and Fred began to feel bad that he was so jealous. They’d been stuck down in a cave for three centuries after all. It was their turn to have bit of fun. At that moment a whistle went off.

‘We’ve got to go now, Fred!’ shouted George as The Crosspatch Peccadillo II began to move away from the quay.

Mabel the Ladle appeared looking over the gunwale alongside Fenny who was still looking lovely.

‘Bye Fred, don’t forget to eat well!’ She said, smiling sweetly over the railings as Ben Cutter appeared.

‘Here’s hooking at you. Har har.’ Fred felt a lump in his throat and thought he was about to cry as he raised his hand and waved.

‘Cheerio, old chap,’ cried Tobias walking down the deck waving a strange-looking pirate/inventor’s hat at Fred as the ship drifted along, slowly picking up speed. ‘Thanks for everything! You were the best co-adventurer ever! So long!’

And so Fred watched the boat go.

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Chapter Seventeen

The End Fred went for a walk along the beach.

He wandered along the shore line picking up pebbles and occasionally throwing them into the sea, whilst thinking some rather dark and gloomy thoughts. It wasn’t fair that he had been left behind; he hoped the ship sank or that they all got eaten by something with tentacles.

After some time he chanced to look up. The place on the beach looked familiar. Climbing up behind him was a yellow sandstone cliff and a hole.

It was the entrance to the tunnel where they had come out last summer bank holiday.

Without really noticing it, Fred found himself remembering all the things that had happened since that long hot summer that had seemed to stretch out endlessly before him. Tobias’s plane crashing through the window, the peculiar little workshop at the cottage, and the first time he saw the pirates. He remembered with a shudder the slugs and the Thingamajig and with a smile the gentle lapping of the waves on the shores of the Invisible Sea as the pirates sat around and told one another stories. He thought about the treasure, now lying in a museum, and about Deep Blue lying 137

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there miles down in the cave.

The entrance was all blocked up now and he couldn’t go back there, even if he had wanted to. But who knows? One day in hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of years’ time, the entrance might open up again and reveal the pirates ship, the strange luminous lights of the Tinseldown and Deep Blue. There might even be a boy about his age with them.

Gradually Fred felt much better. That was it really! Other people’s adventures led on to adventures that you could have and then leave for other people to carry on in turn. Just like a sort of cosmic pass the parcel. Just as the pirates’ adventure all those hundreds of years ago had led Fred and Tobias down into the cave, in a few hundred years’ time people would go down into the deep caverns miles down and have an adventure themselves when everything would be exciting and new again.

Fred sighed. It was important to know who you were.

Tobias was an inventor who’d recently invented the hardest thing of all. Himself. He had finally realised that he was a pirate after all.

Deaf Bill, Black-eyed George, Mabel and the whole crowd of them. Well, they were pirates too. Even though they hadn’t as much seen the sea until a few months ago, they had more salty water flowing in the veins of their little fingers than Fred had in his entire body.

And Fred? Well, Fred knew that he was Fred and, for the 138

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time being, that was all that mattered.

He looked out to sea and saw the white sails of The Crosspatch Peccadillo II disappear slowly beyond the curve of the horizon and he wondered whose adventure he would come across to carry on in the coming weeks.

Then he sighed contentedly and turned back towards the town as the winter sun made patterns in the sand.

Fred always thought, very sensibly, that the rest of his life was something well worth looking forward too.

THE END (just like I said)

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