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Captain Foster. This would not be easy, as none of them knew a great deal about sailing, and the pirate ship was quite a large one.
    “You go up and start pulling on those ropes,” Lucy said to Sam. “Hermione and I will …”
    She stopped. While everybody had been sitting down to their popcorn feast, the ship had continued on its way. This meant that the pirates must have left somebody in charge of the ship – somebody who was not in the galley!
    Lucy quickly looked through the galley window. The room was now almost completely full of popcorn, and so it wasdifficult to tell exactly who was there. There was Bert – or a bit of him – and there were Stinger and Charlie, up to their necks in popcorn, and that arm over there, waving and pounding away to no effect, looked like a part of Bill. And of course Tommy could be made out in another pile of popcorn, or at least his stomach could. But there was no sign of Ed.
    Lucy turned to Hermione and began to tell her what she had discovered.
    “Ed must be at the ship’s wheel,” she said. “We should have thought –”
    She was interrupted by an angry shout. There at the other end of the deck, shaking his fist in their direction, was Ed.
    “What’s going on?” he shouted. “Where’s everybody? Why have you closed the galley door?”
    The children stood stock still. Ed was now running towards them and nobody had any idea what to do. It would be impossible for them to resist him, as the pirates, even if lazy, were all remarkably strong. Ed would quickly overpower them and release the others, and then …
    Biscuit leapt out and stood in front of Ed, growling and barking as fiercely as he could. Ed stopped where he was and looked down at the plucky little dog.
    “Get out of my way, you stupid little animal,” he snarled.
    Biscuit did not take well to being talked to in this way, and he let out a low growl.
    Ed now drew back a leg and aimed a hard kick in Biscuit’s direction. With most dogs, that would have worked, but Biscuit, of course, moved sideways. Ed did not expect this, and suddenly found a determined little dog latched painfully on to his leg.
    “Ow!” shouted Ed. “Get your dog off!”
    Sam ran forward.
    “Pull, Biscuit!” he shouted. “Pull as hard as you can.”
    Biscuit responded, and tugged ferociously on the pirate’s leg. For a moment it looked as if he would just not have the strength to do it, but then, quite slowly,Ed toppled over and landed with a crash on the deck. This gave Sam his chance. Seizing a coil of rope, he wrapped it round the dazed pirate and rolled him over and over, until he was completely tied up. Only then did Biscuit let go of Ed’s leg.
    Lucy and Hermione ran up to see that the hapless Ed was firmly secured. They were both experts in knots and they made quite sure that whatever Ed did, he would not be able to free himself.
    Then they all looked at one another and smiled. The first stage of the plan had worked very well. They were very pleased with this, of course, but they all knew that a major test lay ahead.

9
    Sailing Homewards
    Turning the ship round was not easy. With a sailing ship, you can’t just turn the wheel and leave it at that – you have to allow the sails to fill with wind, and that is a fairly tricky piece of work. It is also quite dangerous. If you turn thewrong way, the ship can go right over on its side and capsize, and that’s the end of the voyage.
    Lucy took the wheel to begin with, while Hermione and Sam busied themselves with the sails. They had to prepare all the ropes and scurry up masts to make sure that the sails were all ready. Then, when Lucy gave the order, they had to pull hard on several ropes to bring the billowing sails under control.
    When everything was ready, Lucy shouted out, “Ready about!” and everybody sprang into action. For a few moments the great ship seemed to lose speed as she turned into the wind, then, when the windcaught the sails again, everything began to tilt in an