I’m woken by the cranking whirr of Jag flat out winding the torch. The torch splutters a weak light that sets dots floating in front of my eyes.
‘Someone’s following us!’ he says.
I’m on my feet, blinking into the dark, my head swirling with the dream I jus’ had that I was fishing and pulling up shark babies that were wailing like real babies for their mama. ‘Tack and hoist the jib sail full!’ I say. ‘Don’t shine a light to show where we are!’
In my sleep head, I can’t help thinking that the wailing baby sharks has brought the mama shark down on us.
I crank the winch to bring the boom around for a tack. Then the wailing starts for real. Or did it jus’ get louder?
Jag gets the light swinging around to where the wailing’s coming from. It passes over a glint of metal and a head in the sea.
Jag swings the torch back, and it’s the wet shaggy head of Pirate Bradshaw, knife clenched between her brown teeth, wailing like ten thousand night birds, arms outstretched, the swell lifting her up to grab on to the back of our boat. Behind her there’s the sound of sails collapsing. That waloompf sound heavy canvas makes, and the faint whiteness of the hull of the pirate’s yacht.
I gasp so hard I almost swallow my tongue. Jag whimpers and drops the torch. It rolls around shining on a flat bare foot landing on the deck and a rush of water dripping off clothes.
I release the boom and pull the wheel to swing the boom across the deck, hoping to knock her off.
Jag’s too busy backing across the deck to see what I’m doing, so I tackle him to the floor, and when the torch rolls around again, the old pirate hag is gone. But there wasn’t a splash. There wasn’t an angry wail. I don’t think she’s gone back in the sea.
When the boom swings back, she’s clinging to it, hands and feet, like an upside-down possum.
‘Now, now,’ she says. ‘No need to be like that.’ She drops to the deck. I leap to my feet, and I’m looking around for Saleesi in the rolling torchlight. Where is she? How do we get rid of this old pirate?
Jag and I back around the wheel and the pirate follows.
‘You took my salvage,’ she says. ‘I reckon you owe me a debt.’
‘This ain’t salvage. This is my boat,’ I say.
‘A kid can’t own a boat. I jus’ lost me a good deckhand. I reckon it’s gonna take two to replace her.’
‘Tell her,’ Jag whispers, maybe thinking we can trade Saleesi for our own lives.
‘Tell me what?’ the pirate asks.
‘If you don’t get off right now, I’ll set my croc on you,’ is what I tell her.
The pirate flicks the torch up with her bare foot into her other hand and shines it over to the net.
As the light slides over the hull, a hand picking up a coil of rope is lit up and then vanishes. Saleesi!
The croc’s eyes glow in the light. He’s squashed hard up against the hull, pretending to be a log once more.
‘Grab on to something!’ I say to Jag. We both grab the wheel.
And I wait for that bump against the hull of Licorice that might be the shark, but it doesn’t come.
‘That bony stretch of leather don’t scare me,’ the pirate says. ‘Now, let’s see. You stole my salvage, and sunk my other salvage, it’s two years’ work you owe me.’
‘It ain’t salvage, it’s thieving!’ I say. ‘Salvage is when you take stuff no one else owns!’
She spins the torch on my face and pulls out a rope. Before I know it, she’s looped Jag’s wrist to the wheel, the torch now in her teeth and that knife at my nose to stop me from moving. I’m imagining spectacular moves where I get the knife and free Jag and do bad things to her with it. Me who hates killing fish! But in the light of the torch it seems she’s already bleeding from under her hair, dark red lines running down and mixing with the sea water on her wrinkly face. She gets Jag’s other wrist tied to the wheel, reaches up and wipes the blood from her face and stares at her fingers, rubs them together and twists them to catch the light. It’s red alright. Even smells like blood.
‘Did you get bit?’ I ask.
Then two feet land squarely on the old pirate’s shoulders, knocking her to the deck, me leaping away from that falling knife. Saleesi appears out of nowhere.
I dive for the knife, but the pirate pushes me off and stands up with it in her hand. The torch rolls across the deck.
Saleesi, who’s tied herself to the mast by a rope around her waist, is on her feet facing the pirate. Her with the pirate’s big knife, and the pirate with the smaller one, looking like they’re ready to battle.
‘You!’ the pirate shouts. ‘You owe me a rudder.’
‘A rudder, Pirate Bradshaw?’ Saleesi says, and slides her cutlass away into her belt. ‘I got you a rudder, a whole boat, two crew and a decent croc dinner to boot. I reckon me and you is square.’
‘I tol’ you!’ Jag says to me, wrestling with the rope around his wrist.
