I jump awake at a weird bang and a rattle. This time, I’d decided to nap, safe in the hull on my mattress. I might’ve run into something! I scramble out jus’ as a woman screams.
It’s morning, and standing on my netting is a woman with a big hat pulled down hard over her long scraggly grey hair, surprised eyes bulging out of her tanned and wrinkled face, waving a big knife.
There’s a white yacht sailing nearby, all fibreglass patches of grey and cream and cracked wooden decking. ‘Get off my boat!’ I yell.
She looks at me like she din’t expect to see a person.
‘Call it off!’ she screams, and takes a sideways dancing step away from Uncle Croc.
‘No!’ I say. ‘You get off my boat right now or I tell him to attack!’
‘Saleesi!’ the woman calls, and a girl pops her shaved bald head up from behind the wheel of the yacht she’s steering alongside Licorice.
‘Hold on!’ the girl calls. ‘I’ll get to whomping that rascal soon as I tie off.’
‘Now!’ the woman screeches at the girl, then turns back to me. ‘We’re salvaging this abandoned boat, so you and your pet gator need to get off!’
‘Ain’t no way I’m losing Ma’s boat and getting into the sea with sharks,’ I tell her. ‘You leave right now or I tell my croc to bite your leg off.’ I can’t believe she thinks I have a pet croc.
‘Well, if you don’t want to get off my salvage, you can work for me,’ the woman says, and puts her hands on her hips.
And Uncle Croc’s waving his jaws around, but he ain’t attacking like I spect. I lean over to check he’s not got his legs caught again, but it seems like he’s figured out the netting now.
‘Get ’er!’ I yell at him.
Uncle Croc thrashes his tail like he’s got a mind to eat this old lady but she’s too fast for him. She makes two giant leaps across the net and then she’s over the wall and standing in front of me.
‘You can’t salvage this boat, coz it’s mine!’ I tell her.
‘Well, ain’t you precious,’ the old woman says, and smirks. ‘Likely you stole it from some fisher village up the coast and I’ll be able to trade it back and live a fine life for a while, thank you very much.’
‘It ain’t stole. It’s my ma’s boat and she’ll come looking for it real soon.’
She grabs my hand and turns it palm up, runs her grimy rough hands over it. ‘You ain’t got no ma. Look at them rough hands, them bruises, look at that graze on your head. Ain’t no one looked after you in a while. But don’t worry, little wormy-mouth, you’re in Aunty Bradshaw’s family now.’
I pull my hand back. ‘That’s not true! This is my boat, and I’m taking it home to my ma!’
‘Saleesi!’ the woman yells, and the girl from the yacht swings in on a rope and lands on the deck in front of me, hands on hips. This girl is taller than me but skinny and built of muscles. ‘Yes, Pirate Bradshaw?’
‘Pirate?’ I ask. She’s a pirate? Me and my boat are now in pirate hands?
‘She’s jus’ funning. I ain’t no pirate,’ the old woman says, and pulls me close, breathes a hot fishy-stink over me. ‘Now you wanna join my crew and work your passage back to land or you want to get off here?’
‘I ain’t getting off!’ I say.
‘Good choice. Welcome to the crew. Saleesi will take you aboard while I tie off my salvage.’
‘This ain’t your salvage!’ I say to Pirate Bradshaw’s back, coz she’s already reaching for Licorice’s tie-off ropes.
Saleesi grabs my arm with fingers like wire and wraps a rope around my middle. ‘Ain’t no point in arguing with her. You’ll give her a headache and then she’ll be mean as a cut snake to both of us,’ she says, hitching the rope up to my armpits.
‘But she’s stealing my boat,’ I say.
‘Yep, she stole my boat and prolly et my da, so you’re not so bad off, eh?’ She blinks her dark eyes jus’ once, like she got some emotions buried about that. I don’t think that old pirate ate her da, but maybe she’s on my side.
‘Then help me stop her,’ I whisper.
‘Ain’t no stopping her. I’m not even sure she’s flesh and bone like the rest of us. Come on.’ Saleesi hoists me up onto Licorice’s seat. ‘Monkey on up the side of our yacht,’ she says.
I don’t wanna, but Saleesi’s rope is hooked around a pulley on the mast of their scrappy yacht and whether I want to climb or not she’s hauling me up, and I gotta jus’ use my hands and feet to keep from being dragged up the hull of their boat.
I land on their splintery deck and work at the rope under my armpits, coz I gotta get back to Licorice. I gotta go on and look for Jag. I got no choice.
Then I’m hauled up again for jus’ a moment and Saleesi swings in beside me.
‘I gotta get away. I gotta rescue my friend,’ I whisper.
‘S’you who needs rescuing right now. Quit flapping yer gums and get these sails hauled up before she gets back on board.’
‘I ain’t hauling your sails. I’m getting out of here!’ I climb back over the yacht’s railing.
‘More front than a Jakarta sea wall, you,’ Saleesi says, and gets busy hauling the rope.
I leap for Licorice’s hull but my shirt is yanked back, collar tight across my throat. Out of nowhere a hand swings me by the shirt in a choking, armpit-cutting circle back onto the yacht. I’m dumped on my butt before I can even take another breath.
Pirate Bradshaw stands over me. ‘I thought we had an agreement? You crew for me, I take you back to land. You skiving off already? I’m gonna dock your pay. You owe me two hours work.’
‘I din’t cost you two hours!’
‘Punishment. Don’t let me catch you skiving again or I’ll take what’s left of your hair to sell at the market.’
I look at Saleesi. She shrugs and points at a slack rope. I run and pull it tight, cleat it off and tie the ends out of the way.
‘Much better,’ Pirate Bradshaw says. ‘Now I want this whole deck sanded and oiled before we hit shore. The slower you sand, the slower I sail. If you don’t do it at all, we’ll be at sea until you’re older than me, lovey!’
The deck wood is white with age and cracked and splintered like it never met a coat of oil in its life, a bit like the old pirate’s face. ‘It’s going to take days!’ I complain.
Saleesi shakes her head at me.
Pirate Bradshaw squints. ‘Is you moaning at me, you little wormy-mouthed boat-thief? Me what takes you in, gives you a home and a bed and a real job?’
‘She ain’t moaning, Pirate Bradshaw,’ Saleesi says quickly.
‘Shuddup. She can answer. She’s done nothing but stand around flapping her gums.’
‘Where’s the sandpaper?’ I say. ‘I’m itching to get started.’
Pirate Bradshaw shoves Saleesi in the stomach, making her go, ‘Oof!’ and bend double. ‘She’s quicker than you,’ Bradshaw says to the back of Saleesi’s bald head. ‘You wanna watch she don’t steal your job.’
The old pirate reaches under the seat and throws a pile of sandpaper, most of it used already, at my feet. I drop to my knees and grab a hunk and rub at the splintery deck boards.
Saleesi kneels beside me and picks up some sandpaper too.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.
‘You ain’t done it. She wants me to hate you, so I’m gonna yell at you now,’ Saleesi whispers. Then she yells, ‘Shuddup!’
Pirate Bradshaw takes the wheel and chomps on salted sardines as she steers the yacht in a direction I guess as north, looking at where the sun is.
I keep glancing back at where Licorice Stix is jerking along through the waves behind. I could run and dive and be on her in seconds, but how do I stop Pirate Bradshaw from jus’ taking her back off me?
‘Stop looking at yer boat and planning things,’ Saleesi whispers.
‘I’m not,’ I say. But I is. Maybe the old pirate will go to sleep and I can sneak away. Sail off in the dark. Licorice Stix is hard to see in the dark.
