Chapter 1

T he whale gave an enormous burp. She had been feeling queasy for several weeks, as if she had swallowed something bad. And she had. She had swallowed the McNasty twins, who were the nastiest pirates ever to sail the seven seas.

The McNastys were Gruesome and Grisly. And that was just their names. They were also greedy and grouchy and grumbly and very, very grubby.

They never changed their underwear and they almost never brushed their teeth. If they did, they sometimes tried to use the same brush that they used to brush their hair. The brush was covered in grease and grime and tasted of earwig droppings.

The McNastys hated brushing their teeth. They also hated all children, and they hated two children in particular: Tat and Hetty, who had stopped them from finding the lost treasure of Little Snoring.

It was because of Tat and Hetty’s courage and resourcefulness that the Ghastly McNastys were stuck inside the belly of the whale with no way of getting out. They had tried tunneling out using their hairbrush but without success because whale blubber is very thick.

It was stinky and slimy inside the whale. In fact it was so slimy that the McNastys kept falling over on their bums, which made them more bad-tempered than ever. They took all their bad temper out on Captain Grisly’s teddy bear and their parrot, Pegleg Polly.

The whale gave another ginormous BURRRP! It was so loud that many thousands of miles away icebergs wobbled and penguins lost their footing and fell off them, and they had to find some very tall ladders to climb back up.

The whale burped again.

“Sweaty socks!” shrieked Captain Gruesome as he slithered along the entire length of the whale’s enormous belly.

“Squeaky underpants!” yelled Captain Grisly as he was swamped in a tidal wave of the whale’s digestive juices. He grabbed his teddy for comfort.

There was a terrible sound as the whale gave a gigantic belch, and the McNasty twins found themselves hurtling up the whale’s throat, past her teeth and out through her mouth in a massive plume of hot breath and sea water. They were followed by Pegleg Polly (who disliked the McNastys as much as anyone and everyone).

Such was the force generated by the whale’s burp that the McNastys sailed through the air for miles and miles, eventually landing with a terrible thump on a beach with dazzling white sand. A flock of passing seagulls took the opportunity to poop all over the McNastys — something they had been dying to do for years but hadn’t dared before.

“Ugh,” yelled Captain Gruesome.

“Yuck,” wailed Captain Grisly.

The McNastys lifted their heads and looked warily around.

“Where are we?” asked Gruesome. His head felt as if an elephant had done a tap dance on it.

Captain Grisly saw the white sands, the rolling green hills, the lighthouse and the Big, Scary, Very Dark, Dense Forest Where No One In Their Right Mind Would Want To Go.

“We are exactly where we want to be,” he said with a wicked grin.

“At the Captain Syd Memorial Bank on the day they are handing out free money, gold bars and unlimited ice cream?” asked Captain Gruesome hopefully.

Captain Grisly shook his head. “We’re back where we began, in Little Snoring.”

Captain Gruesome looked scared. “I don’t want to meet those horrible children again or that exceptionally nasty cat called Dog,” he whimpered. “And I don’t want to walk through the Big, Scary, Very Dark, Dense Forest Where No One In Their Right Mind Would Want To Go, because it was horrid. And there were spiders, which I loathe as much as children. I don’t want to end up inside a whale again either. It is not a sensible way to travel.” He sighed. Captain Gruesome hadn’t felt so miserable since the day his brother had given him a bag of what he had told him were chocolate raisins and later confessed were rabbit droppings — but only after Gruesome had gobbled them all up.

Captain Grisly glared at his brother, who he thought was being a great big wimpy cupcake. “Are you a pirate or a great big wimpy cupcake?” he demanded.

Captain Gruesome looked down at himself. “I’m a pirate, you bumbling idiot,” he screeched. “And no self-respecting pirate would pass up an opportunity to get his hands on Captain Syd’s lost treasure.”

His piggy little eyes gleamed. “Where is it?” he said, looking hungrily around.

Captain Grisly pointed up the beach to a small shop. Outside there was a sign advertising the latest edition of the Little Snoring Gazette. When they got closer, they saw that it read:

“Sweaty socks! Let’s go and find it immediately before those vile, villainous, treasure-snatching children and that cat called Dog get there and snaffle all the emeralds and ingots and pearls,” said Captain Gruesome, greed overcoming his fear.

“Squeaky underpants! Let’s hurry,” said Captain Grisly. “When we’ve found the treasure, we’ll take our revenge on those horrific children and their cat, and feed them to the sharks.”