Dedicated to my wonderful brother

⚠ Warning: this book is very exciting and hard to put down. If you find yourself in this case, the book you are reading is cursed with hardtoputdown powers. If you find your book like this, DO NOT WORRY. You can cure it immediately by putting it down

Caption: 10-year-old Pakish would have loved to stay in their small cozy cottage off the coast of the Caribbean sea. After all, why should you move? Why would you want to move? As they sailed off to sea in their small boathouse his heart pounded, knowing that this may be the adventure of a lifetime.

Chapter 1
The waves crashed against our boathouse. Even when it was the worst rain or thunder, Mom would always say, “Isn’t this fun, honey?” and I glumly nodded, trying to be thankful.
As my mother and father tucked me into bed, we heard a strange noise from above.
“What’s that, Mummy?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, leaving my room to go check. When she came back, she said there was nothing. But then it got louder and louder and LOUDER until our boathouse sank down beneath the sea. My mother and father swam up to the sea. But they were not with me because I was asleep. Little did I know, I was sleeping on a pirate ship.

Chapter 2
I was told to swab the deck and do all of the chores that the pirates didn’t like. If you thought this was miserable, it got way worse. Instead of sleeping on the hammocks with the real pirates, I slept in a bucket.
“We have no room,” they would say. But I doubted that was true, because one night when they thought I was asleep, they talked really loudly about what to do with me.
“We should throw him out! He’s just a worthless boy who eats and doesn’t pay for food,” one pirate, Snoozy, said.
“No. He does our chores. The reason you, Snoozy, don’t feel it is because you’ve been faking knee pains!” another pirate, Hickalmen, said.
“All of you are wrong!” The meanest pirate, Cabooche, said. “We should make ‘im do chores and not feed ‘im! This way he’s payin’ us!”
“Cabooche is right! We will do that.”
And with that, I fell asleep. After all, I didn’t need to have more worries on my back.

Chapter 3
I was scared because of what happened last night. Not feeding me? I was just a lonesome boy whose home had a hole poked in it by the pirates! They are one hundred percent going to jail, and I will escape the ship eventually.
Later that night, while the pirates were asleep, I pulled the anchor off and snuck into a lifeboat. I rowed to land while they rowed to death.
You see, at that time I was ten, and I didn’t know there was always one pirate awake. So, as I rowed to land the pirate came after me. And, as luck would have it, the pirate on watch was Cabooche.
“Hey kid,” he said so loudly it woke all of the other pirates up. Hickalmen had a horrible sense of time. In fact, because Cabooche talked so loud, Hickalmen thought Cabooche wanted him to wake up. So, when he thumped out of the cabins, he demanded breakfast. But there was none. So, he literally smacked Cabooche to make breakfast fast. I laughed so hard I forgot I was trying to escape. Since my laughter was so loud, Hickalmen saw me. And then, I knew I was in big trouble.

Chapter 4
I had been caught. And I can tell you, it wasn’t fun. I was whipped three times by Cabooche. The worst thing was that now I had to sleep in their hammocks so that they could keep an eye on me. And I can tell you the pirates are so stinky.
It was the worst living with them. I now found out that I didn’t even get to sleep in a hammock — I had to sleep on their dirty clothes. I would rather sleep in the hammock than this. But I would also rather live than die because I refused to sleep on the pile of dirty clothes. So yeah, there were some big decisions that I had to make.
My back ached so much from the lashes that I got, and the Pirates didn’t even have any sympathy. They were the opposite of sympathetic. They made me do more chores even though my back hurt. I felt like I would snap in half.

Chapter 5
I decided to get revenge on Cabooche. And it was so cool. He was such a scaredy-cat. I found a sea wasp jellyfish — aka the most dangerous thing in the Caribbean. It stung him, but he thought it just magically appeared on the ship!
So now, Cabooche was on the hammock. He was whimpering in pain and it was so funny. He went, “Aah Ooh! Yowza! Zowie!!!” So that was probably the highlight of my day. And surprisingly, I didn’t get in trouble! It was the best. But the bad thing was that I had to help him. At least I got revenge!

Chapter 6
I was officially a pirate. You might be wondering why there’s no exclamation point at the end of my sentence. That’s because it wasn’t a good thing. But I wasn’t Pirate Cabooche or Pirate Snoozy. I wasn’t Pirate Hickalmen or Pirate Pakish. I was Pirate Boy.
At least my role of being a “pirate boy” was not to steal gold and jewels from other ships.
I was no captain, first mate, or gunman. Cabooche was captain. Hickalmen was quartermaster. Snoozy was a gunner. And the other pirates — Gustavo, Juceng, and Juan — were also gunmen. Lady Ella and Navarou were sailing masters. Lupalo was the first mate. And I had the most dangerous job: a powder monkey. I did all of the dangerous work. And I would most likely never get upgraded. So that was my dangerous life.

Chapter 7
Fine. I’ll answer you. Why was my font like this? Because I had been shot. No, this was not my ghost, it was me — but me with blood all over myself. And being bloody was no fun.
The pirates didn’t take care of me. Not at all. And guess what? They still made me do chores. Seriously. I. Am. Living. On these pirates. It was the worst.

Chapter 8
Yes, yes. I know you may be wondering — who shot me? Well, since I was a powder monkey, I helped the ship and made things go faster. The other ships wanted to kill me so things would get worse for the ship.
Lady Ella said she would help me escape the pirate ship, but with one condition: she would go to land with me. When night fell, Lady Ella voluntarily said that she wanted to be captain on watching. So as we went, she steered us to land! But then I saw the smirk on her face, and I realized she was faking. She was going to give me lashes! I’m innocent! I thought as the rope hit my back.

Chapter 9
Today, I escaped. Well, I didn’t know if I would escape, but I hoped I would. In the middle of the night, Hickalmen was on watch. As you know, he had a very bad sense of time. So when I got up, he thought I was just going to watch and do chores. So, he waddled to the cabin. Finally! The ship was all mine. I steered us to land, but then the boat hit a rock. Water started gushing in, and pirates started rolling off their hammocks.
I swam towards the closest rock then hopped on to it. There were some pirates awake, and they saw me. But there was one problem: they didn’t know how to swim! Quickly, they constructed a raft made from wood planks from the ship. Then, they saw me, and I explained everything to them. And then Hickalmen got punched off the raft, never to be seen again.
As Hickalmen plunged down, he said, “I will come again.”
I screamed to all of the pirates, dead or not, “LOSERS!” and then swam to land.