One day during a terrible fight, Mr Roger and his crew, were attacking the good ship Red Sky because there was treasure on board, or so they had been told. To Mr Roger’s horror, the Red Sky began to slowly sink before he had been on her to grab the loot.

They tried every trick they had learned while sailing the high seas and the low seas, the seven seas and the five seas, but still the sinking ship sank. Down she went, with a gurgle and a plop. The pirates were soon after her, splishing and splashing and swimming down to the bottom of the sea to see what they could see.

Soon they found the treasure box and brought it back up to the Fish Finger.

But poor Captain Roger. What a shock he got, because when they opened the treasure chest, he found nothing but a box full of sea shells and some shelves to display them on.

“What are we to do,” Mr Roger wailed to his first mate.

The first mate knew that the only person on the ship who had the answer was old Angus MacPherson, a wise old salty sea dog who had sailed on the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, as well as the Orange River and the Yellow River.

So the first mate went to Angus and this is what Angus told him: We should sell the sea shell shelves ourselves and the sea shells themselves should be sold by sea shell Sheila and sea shore Shirley because they sell sea shells while sitting on the sea shore.”

For some reason, the first mate got this message terribly mixed up and was made to walk the plank.

After that, things were never quite the same on the Fish Finger. Mr Roger realised just how much he used to depend on his first mate to keep the Fish Finger ship shape. Soon he decided that there wasn’t enough excitement and adventure in being a pirate, and that’s when he decided to become a schoolteacher.

Just one thing more, don’t ever let him know that you know that he was a pirate, because once he knows that you know he was a pirate, he might just make YOU walk the plank.

So if you know that he knows that you know that he was a pirate, it’s time for you to move to another school.

Pirates is an extract from The Adventures of Yellow Owl and His Friends (c) Frank Beattie