10

Captain Calico Kettle found the red rogue wind exactly where the smuggler’s book said he would and told his crew to sail straight into it.

“This, my hearties,” he said, “will be a storm to remember.”

The red rogue wind began to puff its cheeks in fury, rain danced shiny over the decks of the Kettle Black, and the further into the storm the ship sailed, the more the red rogue wind raged until waves rose to the size of mountains. The gale turned sails to rags and snapped masts, tearing the rigging into spiderwebs. Thunder roared and rattled, lightning flashed across the elephant-gray sky.

The pirates on the Kettle Black clung on for dear life. Captain Calico Kettle ordered everything but essentials to be thrown overboard. Barrels, cannonballs, sacks of potatoes all went into the sea, and Septimus was expecting that he and the hens would be next when a gust of wind blew the ship into a wall of water. It swept the boat up and brought it crashing down again. All on board were certain they had hit the rocks, and just when they feared the ship was lost, they found themselves in a kipper-calm sea beneath a picture-book-blue sky. It was quiet except for the call of the seagulls.

“I think,” said Captain Calico Kettle, as he looked through his spyglass, “we be in uncharted waters.”