The Great Treasure Hunt, page 4
But on his way back down to the shelf, Button had caught the back of his jacket on an old picture hook and now he was hanging helplessly on the wall.
“Oh, crumbs, not again,” he said out loud to himself.
He looked over the shop. It was one of those perfect evenings. The moonlight was pouring in through the window and shone a silvery blue over the ship in the bottle. Everything had been calm until now. He tried to shake himself free, but it was no good.
High above Button, something had awakened in the dark. Mr. Dregby, the house spider, was keen to make a snack out of Button. He’d had his six eyes on the boy for some time. And now he could see that his perfect meal was hanging there beneath him, waiting.
“The young ones are the juiciest,” Mr. Dregby cackled in delight.
Button heard a scritching sound above and he looked up in alarm. A tangle of long hairy legs and beady eyes was rushing toward him.
And then, all at once, he felt himself being pulled by the legs. He slipped clean out of his jacket and landed in a heap on the floor, on top of his rescuer. She let out a muffled “YELP.”
It was his best friend, Lily, the youngest of the pirate crew. She jumped to her feet, waving a long darning needle in Mr. Dregby’s direction. The spider scuttled grumpily back into the darkness above the shelf.
“Thanks!” said Button as he straightened himself out. “That was close.”
He looked up to see his coat was still hanging on the hook.
“You’re not supposed to go wandering off on your own,” Lily said. “It’s dangerous!’
“I was looking for an adventure,” Button replied.
“You shouldn’t wish too hard for an adventure,” said Lily. “You just might get one. . . .”
Much later, Button emerged from the ship, feeling calmer. He climbed out of the bottle’s glass neck and dropped down on to the shelf.
He took a good look around the shop. All was quiet again. From his pocket, Button pulled out a pirate flag, which he unfolded and tied between a candlestick and a pin in the wall.
“Captain’s orders,” Button explained to a nearby beetle. “It’s my job to fly the skull and crossbones, and keep this shelf polished and scrubbed as properly as the deck of the ship.”
Pepper Jack, the leader of the mangy gang of mice who lived behind the junk shop baseboard, was watching Button from a distance, his mouse ears pricked. He nodded to Blue Vinny and Fleabag, two of his gang, as they waited in the darkness. Their mean eyes shone back at him through the black.
But Button couldn’t see the mice. Instead he took a seat on a small cotton reel and kicked off his buckled shoes. Jones, the ship’s cat, was curled up nearby, in a peaceful snooze. Lily was warming her hands at the stub of a lighted candle and quietly singing a sea shanty to herself.
The captain of the ship, Captain Crabsticks, was having a rest on an open page of his favorite book, Treasure Island. He was tired after a day on the hallway shelf reading Domestic Pest Control and The Pocket Encyclopedia of Trees, which wasn’t pocket-sized at all. Especially not when you are two inches high.
“Arrr, there you are, me hearties,” said Old Uncle Noggin as he hobbled along to join his shipmates. He took a sip from a steaming bottle cap of hot chocolate and pulled his blanket over his knees. He was sitting on his favorite seat, a dish sponge. “Are you ready for a good old pirate story?”
“Of course we are!” cheered Lily. She and Button loved Old Uncle Noggin’s pirate tales, even though they weren’t quite sure they were true.
“Is it made up?” Button asked. He was still undecided about the story of the cockroach who ate Captain Crabsticks’s parrot, and the one about the pirate who sailed to the land of “next door” in a margarine tub . . . It was always hard to tell.
“Never you mind, young Button,” muttered Old Uncle Noggin. “Tonight I’m telling you the story of Blackbeard’s ghost, and how he went searching for his missing head and found it bobbing around in the water like an empty barrel, glowing in the dark.”
All eyes and ears were fixed on Uncle Noggin. The crew were so taken with the terrifying story of Blackbeard and his ghost, they weren’t aware of a very real terror that lurked nearby.
They didn’t hear sharp claws scratching their way up to the shelf, or the whoosh of tails whipping through the air.
They didn’t see the sharp teeth and long twitching snouts that cast spiky shadows across the candlelit walls.
And that was exactly what the baseboard mice wanted!
Continue Reading…
The Great Cheese Robbery
Chris Mould
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRIS MOULD went to art school at the age of sixteen. During this time he did various jobs, from delivering papers to washing dishes. Chris loves his work and writes and draws the kind of books that he would have liked to have on his shelf as a boy. He has won the Nottingham Children’s Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Greenaway Award and commended for the Sheffield Book Award. Chris has also worked for the RSC, the BBC, the FT, and many other famous initials, as well as for Aardman Animations, where he did character and environment development work on the film Flushed Away. Chris is married with two children and lives in Yorkshire.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This Aladdin paperback edition September 2019
Copyright © 2016 by Chris Mould
Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder Children’s Books
Published under license from the British publisher
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Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hachette Children’s Group
Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.
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Cover designed by Tiara Iandiorio
Interior designed by Mike Rosamilia The illustrations for this book were rendered in pen and ink.
Library of Congress Control Number 2019930887
ISBN 978-1-4814-9124-2 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-9123-5 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4814-9125-9 (eBook)
Chris Mould, The Great Treasure Hunt
