Pyro Watson and the Hidden Treasure Read Free Page B

slipper-clad feet as she was dangled, closer and closer and closer, to her doom.
    â€˜Save me!’ she cried. ‘Help!’
    The pirates laughed. ‘HA HA HAHAHAHA HAAAH!’ They leaned over the gunnels and dunked her just low enough to let the waves splash at her. ‘Give up the map, me lovely!’ they shouted. They didn’t know where it was but they bellowed and brayed just the same. ‘Or it’s shark bait you’ll be!’
    Simeon saw her sweet hands clutched tightly to her heart. He saw her eyes, wide open and full of fear. He saw the dreadful circle of hungry sharks.
    â€˜Never!’ she cried. ‘I’ll never tell where it is!’
    â€˜Bring her up, you fools!’ Simeon roared as, with one mighty blow, he sent the miserable Roaring Roy Bistro skidding along the deck. Before Bistro could find his feet, Simeon was on him, wrapped around him like an octopus holding a clam. ‘Tell them, Bistro!’
    Bistro didn’t.
    Simeon squeezed tighter. ‘If you don’t, she’ll disappear under the waves and so will the treasure map! It will be gone forever!’
    The pirates stopped laughing. One of them scratched his head and the other his jaw while they tried to think hard about the map that was down there, snugly tucked inside the maiden’s brain.
    â€˜He’s got a point, Cap’n,’ said one.
    â€˜Yeahs,’ said another. ‘It’s like she’ll be in the shark’s belly and so will the map.’
    Another pirate stepped back from the side and said, ‘Somebody’ll have to go over and make her tell us where it is, won’t they, Cap’n?’
    Roaring Roy Bistro twisted around. ‘It’ll be you …’ he cried as he hauled himself and Simeon to the railing. ‘Over you go, Simeon!’
    And with a quick, slick, two-steppy step Simeon found himself hanging by his heels above the ocean, the maiden and the ship-slapping waves.
    â€˜You’ll never win!’ he cried. ‘I’ll get you for this!’
    One heel started to slip. One heel and then the other.
    San Simeon glanced around him. Sharks to the left, sharks to the right, pirates armed to the teeth above him and a fair maiden with a map below him.
    A fair maiden swinging on a rope.
    A glint appeared in Simeon’s eye. ‘Aha,’ he muttered. ‘San Simeon lives to fight another day!’
    First, though, he had to make his plan work.

Pyro was beginning to think he’d need a map of the camper before he could get started. At home he would simply have opened the drawer of his desk and everything would have been there. His drawing pencils, from 2H all the way up to 8B, lived in a metal tin and his coloured pencils lived in a circular plastic tube. Gel pens, which were not his favourite because they often left giant blobs very unexpectedly, were kept at the back of the drawer, and markers, the non-fluoro ones, lived on the left-hand side of the shelf. Pyro’s dad once brought home a giant-sized pencil case from one of his trips away, but Pyro preferred to keep things as they were when they were first bought.
    â€˜All my mates had pencil cases full to the brim when I was at school,’ his dad had said.
    Pyro could have said that they still did. ‘I like them to stay in their own special packets,’ he said instead.‘They get broken and the drawing pencils make black marks on the others.’
    â€˜Perhaps he could use your pencil case for something else,’ his mum said. ‘You know how particular he is.’
    Pyro’s dad said a few words about boys who were particular and it was high time Pyro joined the Limpton Raiders Junior Team and got out a bit more.
    â€˜We can’t all be famous footy players, can we?’ his mum had said.
    Pyro hadn’t said anything but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be any sort of a footy player let alone a famous one.
    He was pretty sure his dad