My hamster is a pirate, p.1
My Hamster is a Pirate, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Books by Dave Lowe
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Have you read all the Stinky and Jinks adventures?
About Dave Lowe
About The Boy Fitz Hammond
Copyright
Books by Dave Lowe
The Stinky and Jinks series
My Hamster Is a Genius
My Hamster Is a Spy
My Hamster Is an Astronaut
My Hamster’s Got Talent
My Hamster Is a Pirate
My Hamster Is a Detective
The Incredible Dadventure
The Mumbelievable Challenge
The Spectacular Holly-Day
To my nephew and niece James and Edith –
ahoy there, me hearties!
And with thanks to Miri and Rebecca for all the ideas.
THE JINKS FAMILY
Me, Lucy, Mum Dad and Stinky
Chapter 1
We were having egg and chips when my dad coughed. At first I thought he might have got a chip stuck in his throat. But no – he was coughing to get our attention.
‘Your mum and I have got some great news,’ he said.
‘Are we finally getting a pony?’ squealed Lucy, my little sister.
‘A baby brother?’ I asked.
‘No and no,’ Mum said, very quickly. ‘Absolutely not.’
Dad said the next bit really slowly, leaving a big gap between each word to get us even more excited: ‘We. Are. Going. To …’
‘The ballet?’ gasped Lucy.
‘The moon?’ I said.
‘The beach!’ Dad announced. ‘For a holiday. Tomorrow!’
He grinned and waited for us to whoop with joy.
We didn’t.
‘But I’ll miss my dance class,’ Lucy moaned.
She tap-danced a lot. A tap-tap-tapping sound came from her bedroom pretty much all the time. Living with Lucy was like living with a moody woodpecker.
‘It’s only for one week,’ my dad explained.
‘And what about Delilah?’ Lucy asked. Delilah was her cat. ‘What will we do with her?’
‘She’ll be fine,’ my mum said. ‘We’re taking her to a cattery.’
‘What’s a cattery?’ asked Lucy.
‘It’s a place where they look after your cat while you’re away. It’s like a hotel for cats.’
Lucy’s eyes lit up.
‘That sounds great,’ she said. ‘Can I stay there, instead of going on holiday with you?’
‘It’s for cats only,’ said Dad, frowning. ‘Not for cats and people.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, most normal kids are actually excited about going on holiday. What about you, Ben? You’re hardly jumping for joy either.’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Inside. It’s just – what will we do about Stinky?’
Stinky was my pet hamster, and I was the only one who knew that he was a genius – a genius who got really bored when he was alone, even for one day.
‘I didn’t even think about Stinky,’ Dad admitted. ‘Can’t we just put a whole carrot in his cage and leave him here?’
I shook my head and, luckily, Mum shook her head too.
‘And I guess we can’t ask the neighbours to look after him,’ Dad added. He was right about that. We had the worst next-door neighbours in the world.
‘Is there such a thing as a hamsterery?’ Lucy asked.
‘A what?’ said Dad.
‘A hamsterery. Like a cattery, but for hamsters.’
My dad shook his head and chuckled.
‘It’s a very good idea though – a holiday home for rodents. We could open a business and call it the Hamster Hotel. The Mouse House! The Guinea Pigsty! The Rattery!’
‘You’re not helping, Derek,’ my mum said.
‘Can we take Stinky with us, Mum?’ I said. ‘Dad? Please? He’ll be no trouble.’
My parents looked at each other. Dad shrugged.
‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ Mum said.
‘Woo-hoo!’ I said, and straight after tea I rushed to tell Stinky the good news.
He didn’t look nearly as excited as I’d hoped though. In fact he looked a bit grumpy.
‘Come on, Stinky! A beach holiday! It’ll be awesome! The sun on your fur! The sand between your tiny toes!’
‘But I won’t be on the beach,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll be stuck indoors in this cage. And in any case, why would I want to go to the beach?
There will be seagulls and crabs – neither of which will ever have seen a hamster before. They won’t take long, however, to work out that I look like a very tasty meal indeed.’
‘But you were saying only yesterday how boring your life is, Stinky. A holiday might be full of adventure.’
‘Adventure?’ he said with a sigh. ‘Like what, for example?’
‘We could search for buried treasure. I’ll take my bucket and spade, just in case.’
He groaned.
‘You’ve been watching too many movies, Ben. I expect that you think we’ll discover a treasure map and “X” will mark the spot.’
I shrugged. ‘You never know,’ I said.
Chapter 2
Every time we arrive on holiday, the first thing that my mum does is have a cup of tea. The first thing that my dad does (after making my mum a cup of tea) is go out and get a local newspaper. ‘To get a flavour of the place,’ he says. ‘To see what’s going on.’
The first thing that Lucy and I do, however, is burst through the door of wherever we’re staying and race each other to get the best bedroom. I’m nine and she’s seven, so I always win.
Not this time though.
This time Lucy ran in ahead of me, because I was carrying the cage with Stinky inside, and if I dropped him, he would never let me forget it.
After I put the cage onto the bedside table of the smaller bedroom, I sat on the bed and waited for him to come out of his little house.
‘Hey, Stinky,’ I said. ‘We’re here.’
When he finally poked his head out, he sniffed a lot and scrunched up his face. The sheet of newspaper that lined his cage was dotted with lots of little hamster poos.
‘My cage needs cleaning out,’ he said.
‘I did it only yesterday,’ I reminded him.
‘I poo more when I’m nervous,’ he explained. ‘And, with your dad driving, there is a great deal to be nervous about. Unlike you, I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. And another thing –’
Stinky suddenly stopped talking because my dad himself came into the room, waving the local newspaper and grinning.
‘Look what I’ve seen,’ said Dad, thrusting the paper into my hands.
I groaned.
Mum was brilliant at making costumes, Dad loved competitions and Lucy adored dressing up. This was a terrible combination, as far as I was concerned. Last year, for a birthday party, we’d gone as Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I was Baby Bear, in a bear outfit with a nappy on. It was all very, very embarrassing.
‘Come on, Ben,’ Dad said, ruffling my hair. ‘It’ll be fun! And, speaking of fun, let’s go to the beach! You’ve never really arrived at the seaside until you’ve dipped your toes into freezing cold water.’
I got changed into my shorts and, before I left, I cleaned out the cage and used a fresh piece of Dad’s newspaper to line it. This cheered Stinky up – a little bit at least.
When we came back from the beach, three hours later, he was like a different hamster. He was pacing excitedly in his cage and, when I held out a couple of shells for him to inspect, he wasn’t at all interested.
‘Never mind shells, Ben,’ he said. ‘I have a feeling that there might be some actual treasure around here. Buried treasure.’
I stared back at him in disbelief.
‘Didn’t someone tell me that people only found buried treasure in movies?’
‘Well, that’s what I thought. While you were playing in the sand, however, I did a little reading.’
He tapped a paw onto the piece of newspaper that was under his feet, and I read the headline through the bars of his cage.
‘There once was a man,’ Stinky began, ‘by the name of Algernon Pickles, who lived very close to here, and who, twenty years ago, robbed a jeweller’s in this very town. He stole eight pink diamonds, each of them only as big as the nail on your little finger, but worth a great deal of money. The police caught him a few weeks later and sent him to jail. But they never found the diamonds.’
‘He must have sold them,’ I said, ‘before the police got him.’
‘Perhaps. But people were sure that he’d buried them and that he was waiting until he was released to go and dig them up. Here’s the twist though – he died suddenly in prison one day. He was killed in an unfortunate broccoli-related accident.’
‘Broccoli?’ I said. ‘I’ve always told Mum it could kill me! I was right!’
‘Anyway,’ Stinky continued, ignoring me, ‘when they were cleaning out his prison cell, they found a single piece of paper in his drawer.’
‘A treasure map!’ I said. ‘I knew it!’
Stinky rolled his eyes.
‘Of course it wasn’t a treasure map. If it had been a treasure map, don’t you
‘I suppose so.’
‘On that small piece of paper were these words, in Algernon Pickles’s handwriting: “Crime never pays”. And that may well be true. But that is not what interests me. What interests me is what was on the other side of the note. Something rather odd.’
‘Odd?’
‘A shopping list.’
I frowned.
‘What’s so strange about a shopping list? My mum and dad make them all the time.’
‘Do you think there are any shops in prison?’ Stinky asked. I shrugged. ‘Of course there aren’t,’ he said impatiently. ‘Being in prison isn’t like being on holiday, you know. Prisons are not nice places at all.’
‘Well, I know that. Apparently they even make you eat broccoli.’
‘So,’ said Stinky, ‘if there are no shops in jail, why on earth would Algernon Pickles have a shopping list?’
‘Maybe he was writing down all the things he’d buy as soon as he got out.’
‘Perhaps. But the newspaper doesn’t mention what was on the list. And furthermore, he wasn’t due to be released for a very long time. This is what I think: that the shopping list might be a code – a code which tells us where to find the diamonds. And you, Benjamin Jinks, need to go to the museum to find out.’
Chapter 3
While we were all having breakfast the next morning, Dad asked us what we’d like to do for the day.
Mum said she was going to do a bit of work on the pirate costumes she was making for the fancy-dress disco, and then spend the rest of the day lying on the beach, reading a book and stuffing her face with chocolate ice cream.
Lucy said she’d like to practise some new dance steps after breakfast, before cooling down with a swim in the sea.
‘And you, Ben?’ asked Dad.
I said: ‘I want to go to the museum.’
Everyone stared at me. My dad paused his spoonful of cornflakes just before it got to his mouth.
‘The where?’ he asked, frowning, as if he’d misheard.
‘The museum.’
Lucy giggled.
‘There’s an exhibition on, about local crime,’ I said.
My dad shook his head in disbelief.
‘We’re on holiday, Ben,’ he said. ‘An actual beach is just out there. The sea is blue. The sun’s shining. And you want to go to a museum?’
‘Yes, please.’
He sighed.
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If it rains.’
Mum put down her cup of tea and frowned at Dad.
‘We should be encouraging Ben,’ she told him. ‘He hardly ever wants to do anything educational.’
‘The beach is educational,’ said my dad. ‘All those pebbles. Shells. Crabs. It’s nature, right on our very doorstep.
But then Mum gave Dad one of her special looks, and we all knew he’d be taking me.
In fact, my dad took me to the museum straight after breakfast.
It was a small building, and the sign on the door said that entry was free, which made my dad a tiny bit happier. He was a very big fan of free stuff.
When we walked in, the grey-haired man who worked there – who’d been dozing in a chair – woke up with a start.
He was tall, wearing a name badge, and looked very surprised to see us.
Ted Slim rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat. ‘Welcome,’ he said, in the whispery voice of people who spend a lot of time in libraries and museums. ‘We don’t get many visitors on beautiful days like today. Most people are out relaxing on the beach.’
‘Of course they are,’ my dad said, looking at me and shaking his head. ‘Why wouldn’t they be?’
‘We came to see the crime exhibition, please,’ I said.
The museum only had one room, and Ted Slim pointed us in its direction.
‘If you have any questions,’ he said, ‘I’ll be right here.’
And then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
The first exhibit was an old fake banknote in a glass display case. Next was a newspaper report from a kidnapping one hundred years ago. After that was a ‘Wanted’ posted.
But it was the next exhibit that I’d come to see – the Mystery of the Missing Diamonds.
In a glass display case was the newspaper article from the day after the robbery. Next to that was the front page of the newspaper from a few weeks later. Then came a photo of Algernon Pickles himself and, finally, the note.
When my dad wandered off to look at something else, I tried to slide open the glass top of the cabinet, so I could flip the note and read what was on the back. But it was locked and there was no way to open it. I walked around the case, disappointed, looking for another way in.
There was a small round hole, in the back of the case, just big enough to fit a ping-pong ball, but much too small for my hand.
My dad was getting fidgety. We left soon after.
I hadn’t given up hope of reading the shopping list, though. Because I had a plan.
The hole in the back of the case might have been too small for a hand. But it was just big enough for a hamster.
Chapter 4
‘Absolutely not,’ Stinky said, as soon as I got back to our room and told him about my incredible plan.
‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘You’re clever, and clever people love museums.’
‘That may be correct,’ he sniffed, ‘but I’m not a person, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’m a hamster. And clever hamsters keep well clear of museums. Because, Ben, the only animals you will ever see in museums are ones that are stuffed. And I,’ he added, ‘most certainly do not want to be stuffed.’
‘I thought you might be excited. It’s an adventure! And in the newspaper it said that the diamonds are all five carat. You love carrots, Stinky.’
He rolled his eyes.
‘If you could spell properly,’ he said, ‘you’d know that it’s an entirely different word. “Carat” – C–A–R–A–T – means how big they are. A five-carat diamond, for example, is –’
‘As big as five carrots?’
He sighed. ‘If I agree to go with you,’ he said irritably, ‘will you stop annoying me right now, and leave me alone so I can have a nap? And get me five actual carrots?’
‘Sure!’ I said. ‘So you’ll do it?’
He nodded reluctantly.
‘But first,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to get Dad to take me to the museum again, and he didn’t even want to go the first time.’
‘I can’t believe I’m going to do this, but – go now and ask your dad if he’ll take you back there tomorrow if it rains.’
I did. Dad took one look out of the window at the clear blue sky, grinned and said, ‘Sure.’
Then I went back to Stinky.
‘Now what do I need to do?’ I asked him.
‘Nothing. It’s going to rain tomorrow.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s instinctive, Ben. Animals are far more sensitive to changes in the weather than humans. Birds, for example, know that wet weather is coming a long time before people do. Dogs start barking well before a storm. And as for hamsters, we get this tingling sensation in our fur when rain is on the way.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Really?’
‘No,’ he said, poking a paw at the sheet of newspaper lining his cage, ‘I just read tomorrow’s weather forecast in the paper, right here.’
Chapter 5
Stinky was right. It was pouring the next morning, and Dad and me were dripping wet as we walked into the museum.
‘You again?’ Ted Slim whispered, rubbing his eyes. He’d been dozing in his chair again. ‘You’re my best customers, you two.’
‘He’s doing some kind of project,’ my dad said, pointing out the pen and the little pad of paper I was holding.
‘Well, I’m here if you need me,’ Ted Slim said with a yawn. ‘I’m just going to study the backs of my eyelids for a moment.’
Then he rested his head on his hand and closed his eyes.
‘Now, that’s a job I’d like to have,’ Dad whispered to me. ‘Never a moment’s excitement. Lots of time to have a nap or do the crossword. Speaking of which, I’ll just be over here with the newspaper.’
