Henry was a pirate. He announced this to his parents over breakfast on Monday.

“I can’t go to school” said Henry. “I am a pirate.”

“Do you want soldiers with your dippy egg?” said Mum.

“Pirates don’t eat soldiers. In fact Pirates don’t eat dippy eggs” said Henry, he crossed his arms and looked suspiciously at his breakfast.

Mum was packing cheese sandwiches and an orange into his lunch box. It had a picture of a skull and cross bones on the front. “This Pirate does” she said.

At school, Miss Crabtree was tidying up the book corner. Henry asked “do you have any books with maps in please?”

“Well, we do have an atlas if you want to look?” said Miss Crabtree. “There are lots of maps of all the different countries in the world”. She took it off the shelf and opened it.

Henry lifted up his eye patch and screwed up his face. “Does it show me where the buried treasure is?”

“I don’t think so” said Miss Crabtree.

“That’s no good then” said Henry shrugging his shoulders. He went off to bury his orange in the sandpit. He stuck a red crayon on the top so he knew where it would be at lunchtime.

That evening, Henry took his sister’s toy pony and teddy and made them walk the plank………….into the bath.

Splish! went the toy pony. Splash! went Ted.

“They wouldn’t tell me where the treasure was” said Henry. “I was trying to make them spill the beans.” His sister went downstairs in a huff.

A few minutes later, Dad appeared at the door and said “I found this. Does it belong to you?”

It was a folded piece of paper, a little crumpled and a little torn round the edges. Dad opened it up to show Henry. There were lots of circles, arrows and dotted lines, and words like Shark’s Tooth Rocks, Booby Trap Point and Crab Island.

And there, in the corner in big red letters were the words TREASURE MAP.

Henry leapt out the bath, still covered in soap suds and grabbed a towel. He left soggy footprints on the carpet leading down to the cupboard under the stairs.

“Aha!” he cried, as he pulled out his bucket and spade. Then he ran into the kitchen and grabbed two spotty tea towels from the kitchen drawer and ran back upstairs to his bedroom. He tied one round his head and the other in a knot round his neck.

“Put your pyjamas on” shouted Mum. “It can get cold at sea”.

“Anchors Aweigh!” cried Henry. Dad jumped on board, just in the nick of time.

First they had to steer clear of running aground on the treacherous Shark’s Tooth Rocks. It took both pairs of hands at the ship’s wheel. Then they had to tread very carefully over Booby Trap Point. Dad almost set off a trap that nearly left then up to their necks in sand. Crab Island was full of giant crabs that had a taste for Pirates and they almost got lost if Henry hadn’t spotted the ship’s mast peeking over the palm trees.

Finally, they reached the flag that marked where the buried treasure was. Henry and Dad started digging with the bucket and spade. They dug so deep that the hole was almost as big as Henry. Finally, his spade hit a wooden chest. The two of them managed to lift it out and Henry forced open the lid with his spade.

Something was glinting and shining inside. Hundreds of glistening gold coins!

Henry and Dad stuffed their pockets with the treasure and hurried back to the ship. They tiptoed past the giant crabs that were now sleeping. Their snoring was so loud that it shook the island. They crept past Booby Trap Point, looking out for hidden traps and they navigated their way back through Sharks’ Tooth Rocks.

By they time they reached the shores to put anchor, Mum was waiting with a glass of milk.

“It’s very exhausting being a pirate” said Henry.

Then he thought for a moment and said “Tomorrow I think, I‘ll be an astronaut!”