Nicholas Nosh and his pirate
crew are prisoners aboard Captain
Stinker’s Dirty Dog – the smelliest,
most disgusting ship ever to set
sail. Can Nicholas find a way to
save them all?
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012
Text copyright © Sherryl Clark, 2013
Illustrations copyright © Tom Jellett, 2013
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eISBN: 9781742538099
ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON
For Mia and Dion. S.C.
For Joshua and Aiden. T.J.
Chapter 1
Nicholas Nosh, the littlest pirate in the world, was planning a huge party for
his birthday. He’d sailed to faraway lands and now he
was heading home in the Golden Pudding.
Gretta, his first mate
and cook, had been preparing lots of party food. The Pudding’s hold was full of cakes, pies and sausage rolls.
They’d been sailing for
two days and nights when, before dawn on the third
day, everyone was woken
by a terrible smell.
‘Eeuuwww,’ said Gretta. ‘Maybe some of our food
has gone rotten.’
Nicholas went up on deck. The smell was much worse there, and the lookout
pirate had fainted.
As the sun rose, Nicholas saw a huge brown ship, the Dirty Dog, bearing down
on them. The smell was overpowering. Even with
his bandana over his face, Nicholas felt sick.
‘Ahoy!’ called a rough
voice from the Dirty Dog. ‘Surrender or be sunk!’
‘Man the cannons!’
Nicholas ordered.
Nobody moved. His crew were all lying on the deck,
looking green. Gretta sat
by the ship’s wheel, holding her tummy.
Within minutes the Dirty Dog had come alongside
the Golden Pudding. A
large pirate jumped across, followed by his men.
The big pirate’s tummy
was so huge that he
needed three belts to keep
his pants up. He and his pirates were covered in dirt. Their hair was greasy, and there were food dribbles on their shirts.
‘I’m Captain Stinker,’ the pirate said. ‘And I want
your treasure. Hand it over.’
Chapter 2
When the pirates searched
the Golden Pudding, all
they found was party food.
Captain Stinker’s eyes lit up. ‘I’ll take that,’ he said. ‘Men, store it in my cabin.
And I’m short of crew,’ he
said to Nicholas, ‘so I’ll take
all of you, too.’
Nicholas and his crew
were herded onto the Dirty Dog. The Golden Pudding
was left to drift away,
empty.
Nicholas felt terrible
that they’d been captured
without a fight. He counted
the Dirty Dog’s pirates.
‘There are only six of them,’
he whispered to Gretta. ‘We could tackle them easily.’
‘The stench is too bad,’ Gretta said. ‘I feel so sick
I can’t even pick up my cutlass.’
Captain Stinker came
along the deck, followed
by dozens of blowflies. ‘Get working!’ he shouted. He pointed at Gretta. ‘You can
be our new cook. Make me some breakfast.’
Nicholas and his crew staggered to their feet and began trimming the sails. Everyone had to sit down
and rest for a few minutes when the smell became too disgusting.
‘How can you stand it?’
Nicholas asked Pong, one
of Stinker’s pirates.
‘It saves us needing to
fire our cannons,’ Pong
replied. ‘No one fights back, and Stinker gives us lots of treasure.’
‘We’re really sick of
porridge, though,’ said
Smelly, another pirate.
Nicholas was about to ask why when a large rat ran
over his foot.
‘Arrrggghh!’ Nicholas
could fight pirates of any
size, but he hated rats.
‘Shiver me timbers!’ he growled. ‘I’m really mad
now. I’m not putting up
with this!’
Chapter 3
The first thing Nicholas
had to do was get rid of
the rats. Down in the hold, behind piles of treasure,
he found two large empty barrels. He made holes in
the tops, and then he put in lots of rotten food scraps.
Soon the barrels were
full of rats. They climbed
in through the holes and couldn’t get out.
When Nicholas went to
the galley, Captain Stinker was there. He had sausage-
roll crumbs in his beard.
‘Cook, I want pancakes
for lunch,’ Stinker said to Gretta. ‘Piles of them.’
‘What about your crew?’
Gretta asked him.
‘They can have porridge,’ Stinker said.
He stomped off.
‘Stinker has been eating
our party food,’ Gretta said
to Nicholas. ‘He’ll need another belt soon.’
She had scrubbed the
stove, and the galley looked very tidy.
Nicholas looked around. ‘What can we use to clean
the rest of the ship?’
Gretta searched through
the
pantry. ‘Here’s a barrel
of vinegar. That’ll do.’
But when Nicholas took
the vinegar and some old scrubbing brushes up to the top deck, Captain Stinker yelled, ‘I don’t want
a clean ship!’
‘Why not?’ Nicholas asked.
Captain Stinker leaned down to Nicholas and
grinned. His mouth was
full of black teeth and his
breath stank like dead
fish. Nicholas staggered backwards, trying not to
throw up.
‘My smelly ship is my
secret weapon. Nobody can fight it,’ Captain Stinker
said. ‘Get that vinegar out
of my sight!’
Nicholas went back to
Gretta. ‘We have to get
Stinker out of the way so
we can clean up,’ he said.
Gretta held up a sack of prunes. ‘I’ll make pancakes with these. He’ll be on the toilet for at least a day.’
Sure enough, her plan worked. Stinker gobbled
down five plates of prune
pancakes. Soon loud groans could be heard coming from
his cabin.
Nicholas and his crew set
to work. They fed all the
rotten food scraps to the
rats in the barrels. They
washed the ship with salt water and then scrubbed
it with vinegar. With the promise of a nice lunch,
Stinker’s pirates helped,
too.
Gretta made everyone toasted cheese sandwiches.
‘Mmm, lovely,’ Pong said.
‘Why do you eat porridge
all the time?’ Gretta asked.
‘That’s the only thing I
can cook,’ Smelly said. ‘Our cook jumped ship. We were hoping the captain would share his food with us, but
he won’t.’
Gretta made a big lemon
tart and everyone ate two slices. Afterwards, Gretta persuaded all Stinker’s
pirates to have a bath, put
on clean shirts and trousers, and brush their hair.
‘I’d forgotten how nice a clean shirt is,’ Pong said.
When Stinker saw his spotless ship, he was
furious. He ordered his men
to open the barrels of rats
and rotten food, and tip
them all over the deck.
‘Your cook can make my dinner,’ Stinker said to Nicholas. ‘And after that
I’m going to throw you all overboard. I want my ship back the way it was!’
Nicholas racked his
brains. How could he save
his crew?
Chapter 5
Gretta cooked ham and
eggs, and Stinker took a
huge plateful back to his
cabin. He’d made his pirates
put on their dirty clothes
again, and eat porridge
for their dinner. They sat grumbling over their bowls.
‘The party food must be nearly all gone now,’ Gretta told them. That made them grumble even more.
Nicholas had an idea. He whispered it to Gretta, and then they started talking
very loudly.
‘I love your meat pies, Gretta,’ Nicholas said.
‘Lovely gravy and tasty
meat with a splash of
tomato sauce. Mmm.’
Pong, Smelly and the
others started to drool.
‘My favourite food is
apple sponge cake,’ Gretta said. ‘Crunchy apple slices,
and sugar topping with
fresh cream. Yum!’
One of Nicholas’s crew joined in. ‘No, the best
thing of all is chocolate
cake with cherries and
nuts, and smooth, creamy icing.’ He licked his lips.
So did Stinker’s pirates.
‘What about Gretta’s
freshly baked bread
with strawberry jam?’
said Nicholas. He rubbed
his tummy. ‘Oh, I’ll miss
that the most.’
‘You can cook all those
wonderful things?’ asked Smelly.
‘Of course,’ said Gretta.
‘But soon we’re going
to be thrown overboard,
so I’ll never be able to cook scrumptious, delicious food ever again.’
‘No,’ said Nicholas. He sighed. ‘You might have
lots of treasure,’ he said
to Stinker’s pirates, ‘but you’ll have to put up with porridge forever.’
The pirates looked at
each other in horror.
A plate came flying out of Stinker’s cabin. The crumbs
of a chocolate cake were
stuck to it. He’d been eating more party food!
At the other end of the
ship, Stinker’s pirates went into a huddle. Nicholas and
Gretta waited, holding their breath. In super-fast time,
the pirates came back.
‘If you promise to cook all
those things for us,’ Pong
said, ‘we might change
sides.’
‘Might?’ Nicholas said.
Smelly smiled. ‘There’s another condition. I want Gretta to teach me how to cook.’
‘How about I invite you
all to my birthday party as
well?’ Nicholas said.
It was a deal. The pirates’ mutiny took no time at all. They put Captain Stinker
in a longboat and towed
him behind the ship – a
long way behind, because
he was so smelly.
Stinker’s pirates put on clean clothes again, and
then everyone sat down
to eat freshly baked apple cake. Pong presented
Gretta with a lovely gold necklace as a thank you.
While Nicholas set a
course for home, Gretta
began to teach Smelly how
to cook. At first he burned
a few things, but he soon
got the hang of it.
The next day they found
the Golden Pudding.
Nicholas made Pong the
new captain of the Dirty
Dog, and Smelly baked
a cherry pie to celebrate.
When they reached port, Stinker’s punishment was
to have three baths in a
row until he was clean.
After that, he was given
nothing but porridge to eat.
And he didn’t get an invitation to Nicholas’s birthday party, either!
From Sherryl Clark
I’ve always thought there might
come a time when Nicholas and
Gretta are captured! Who might
be clever enough to do that? Well, nobody, unless they had a secret weapon. And then I thought about
how a really bad smell can be so powerful that you can’t do anything except maybe faint. Of course,
someone who has that kind of
secret weapon just has to be called Captain Stinker!
From Tom Jellett
I suppose we can’t blame Captain Stinker for being a bit of a
smellypants. I mean, if he’s at sea
for a long time, he can’t have too
many showers, or change his socks every day. I bet his ship would be
even smellier if he fed his crew only baked beans, or if he left the milk
out for a few days. I did this once,
and that REALLY STINKS.
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