Pyro Watson and the Hidden Treasure (2 page)

Mr Stig wasn't kidding. He really couldn't swim. And he hadn't made much of an improvement by lunchtime, either.

For a little while it looked like he was really catching on. His face was going in-two-three and then turning out-two-three and he wasn't sinking. He was actually moving and Pyro and Auntie Mor were calling out to keep going and don't stop.

‘Take your hands off the bottom now!' yelled Auntie Mor.

Mr Stig said it felt better if he left them there. Auntie Mor told him he'd be in strife if he met a big hole.

‘It'll be fine!' Mr Stig called back.

It wasn't really fine and Mr Stig disappeared for a few seconds. He came up spluttering and splashing about and Auntie Mor said it was just exactly what she was talking about.

Mr Stig said if he was meant to swim he'd have gills, not lungs. And Auntie Mor said that gave her a wonderful idea and she was going to buy him some goggles and a snorkel and some water wings.

‘We'll buy some for you too,' she told Pyro. ‘And then you'll be able to float around and look at the fish.'

Pyro wasn't sure about fish, especially when they were swimming under him and probably knew a whole lot more about fishy-type dangers than he did.

Like sharks and where they'd most likely be hiding.

Pirates were probably good swimmers. Pyro wasn't sure. It was something he'd have to find out as soon as he got back home. You'd reckon they would be, he thought to himself. It'd be a bit of a worry if you spent your life on the ocean blue and one slip meant you were in it and gone forever.

Did they wear swimmers? Pyro hadn't seen pictures of pirates with swimmers on but that didn't mean they didn't own them.

San Simeon looked at the pirates. They were splashing and jumping in and out of the waves that lapped the
sandy shore of the Caribbean Island. Their clothes were scattered in untidy piles all over the beach. Boots and shoes were left where they'd been dropped. They'd be in trouble if sand crabs decided to make a home of them. It gave San Simeon an idea.

Quickly he searched around the mangroves that grew on the other side of the sandhill. It was lucky it was late in the day and the tide was low, as thousands of blue-backed sand crabs huddled around, making sand-crab patties as they hollowed out new homes.

Simeon swooped. ‘Grab as many as you can, me hearties!' he called to his crew who'd crept along the beach in search of their brave captain. ‘There'll be one less pirate ship on the high seas tonight!'

Using their hats and moving as quickly as possible, because sand crabs are fast little creatures that dart off in every direction when you least expect it, the crew of the good ship
Olga
rounded up as many as possible.

‘Now,' whispered Simeon as they lay, belly down, on the crest of the hill. ‘You and you and you, me brave hearties, are going to grab their clothes and run to the south. You and you, me scurrilous lads, are going to tip these crabs around their boots.'

The pirate fighters laughed.

It was a good plan. When the pirates ran up the beach to retrieve their clothes the sand crabs would scuttle up their legs and give them a scare into the bargain.

‘That'll teach ‘em to take fair maidens as hostages!'

It was a nasty habit of pirates to take maidens and children and just about anybody as hostages to work for them. Then they'd sell them for slaves to people who were probably not too fussy about buying second-hand stock. It was a cruel habit and San Simeon and his crew were kept busy rescuing all sorts of unfortunate hostages, not always just fair maidens.

‘What if they don't pull their boots on?' one newer member of the
Olga
asked. He'd not been there long enough to know how very devious their captain was.

‘Oh, they'll pull ‘em on all right,' Simeon answered. ‘Feel how hot that sand is!'

It was true. The pirate fighters were clad in all their pirate-fighting finery and the sand was merely warm as it pressed against their velvet trews and floral vests.

‘Yo ho ho!' laughed the crew.

They laughed even louder when the pirates, with their clothes and their wet undies and their bare feet, were all lined up in chains along the shore.

‘One less pirate ship to darken the waters!' smiled San Simeon as he sailed off to the horizon.

A cloud, small and dark, blocked his vision. ‘Of course,' he added in a serious voice, ‘the Dreaded Roaring Roy is still at large …'

 

‘You'll turn into a prune if you don't get out of that puddle soon,' Auntie Mor was saying as she picked up towels and shirts and thongs. ‘What d'you reckon? Ready for some lunch?'

Pyro hauled himself out of the sandy pool. The tide was coming in and filling up all the hidey places under the casuarina trees that lined the inlet. They'd have been great places to hide treasure if it wasn't for the tide.

‘Always check above the high water mark!' San Simeon reminded his men when they were on a mission to find stolen treasures.

‘What's wrong with under those trees?' a newcomer asked.

‘Aha! There's many a pirate's been left on a desert island with naught but a bottle of water for company who'd made that mistake. The tide, boy, the tide! Always remember the tide!'

 

‘It's quicker if we cross over there,' Auntie Mor was saying as she set off down a small embankment. ‘It'll save us walking all the way around the top.'

‘There's some stairs over this way.' Pyro pointed to a steep stairway that had been built a little further along.

Waves were already lapping against the rocks and sending long, silent surges into the bank. ‘You'll get wet,' Pyro called. ‘And it's all boggy over there.'

‘Nonsense.' Auntie Mor headed off.

So did Mr Stig.

Pyro didn't like the look of the bog that was quickly forming around the deeper rocks. It looked very sucky and he had a sneaking suspicion that underneath that sand would be black ooky mud.

Always remember the tide!
‘The tide's coming in!' Pyro yelled.

It didn't take long to get to the top of the stairway. There was time for Pyro to hurry around to the other end of the beach where Mr Stig and Mor were trying to scrape the mud off their legs.

‘You'd reckon someone'd put a sign up telling you not to cut across that bit of swamp!' Auntie Mor said.

Mr Stig pointed out the stairway that was built into the side of the bank.

‘I think we were supposed to use that,' he said.

Auntie Mor told him nobody loved a smartie pants and if he was so clever about deciding which way they should have gone, perhaps he'd speak up sooner next time.

Pyro went with them to the camper and helped with lunch. Afterwards Mr Stig sat with the paper and studied the form while Mor took some photos and then found her book.

San Simeon wandered alone across the dunes. It was lonely when his lads were away. The time, he decided, should be put to good use. You never knew when it
might be necessary to find a hiding place or a lookout, and this part of the world was quite unknown to him.

He set off.

As he went he thought a parrot would be a nice thing to have. It could sit on his shoulder and he could teach it all sorts of famous sayings. He would think further about it while he searched out the hidden secrets of this strange land.

 

There were some excellent hiding places and even a tree with a rope attached that would let you swing across the narrow channel instead of wading through the muddy part. A rowing boat was lolling around in the little waves and the bridge further along would be great for leaping off, if that was something you needed to do. Which Pyro didn't.

The town was beyond the bridge and, back the other way, some picnic tables and benches and barbecues perched on the escarpment that led down to the inlet and the ocean.

And Pyro had explored all of it and it was still only two o'clock.

Auntie Mor had given him a postcard and suggested he write a letter to his mum. She said it mightn't be a
good idea to mention getting stuck in the bog as she knew Deirdre wasn't too fond of dirt.

‘And she especially wouldn't like to think I was dragging you into quicksand! Just give her my love and tell her to give Nan a kiss from me and fill up the rest with the swim we had this morning.'

Pyro did.

And then he took out his pirate book. He liked treasure maps and the way little lines ran all over islands and around palm trees with an ‘X' marking the spot where the treasure was hidden.

He checked out the side window of the camper. The ocean was on the right. He looked across to the little
swimming cove where the waves slapped sweetly on the shore. That was round the corner and to the left. How many paces would that be? And then, further back where the boggy beach was, how far back there? And what were the landmarks?