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alarming way.
    “Pull away!” Lucy shouted. “Haul in the sails!”
    Sam and Hermione tugged and pulled for all their worth. At first it seemed as if they were getting nowhere, and the ship leaned further and further over. A few small waves came over the deck now, and lapped at their feet, but they did not let up. Slowly the sails came under control and the ship began to right itself.
    “Well done!” shouted Lucy above the wind. “Now let’s keep her like that.”
    They made good progress. There was a fresh wind behind them and the shipcut through the waves like a dolphin. Now that the sails were in the right position, Sam and Hermione had less to do, and they could sit on the deck, watching the blue ocean go by. Biscuit enjoyed the open air; he had been fed up with hiding in the cabin, and he was very happy to sit up on the prow, feeling the salt spray on his whiskers again.
    Ed, of course, stayed exactly where he was, safely tied up on the deck, and in the galley the remaining pirates floundered hopelessly in their mounds of popcorn. Tommy had eaten quite a bit of it while he was trapped, and now had awell-deserved stomach ache. The others just passed their time in moaning and arguing about whose fault the whole thing was. Bert blamed Stinger, and Stinger blamed Bert, saying that he was not quite so clever as he had thought he was. Mrs Bert blamed both of them, and Bill thought it could all be put down to Mrs Bert’s allowing the children to use the galley in the first place.
    “And now we’ll all be going to jail,” moaned Bert. “That’s a terrible end to a great career in piracy!”
    “And I hear the food’s not very good in jail,” said Tommy. “Dry bread and things like that.”
    “Better than Mrs Bert’s potatoes,” said Bill. “I could never stand those potatoes, to tell the truth.”
    “You ate enough of them!” shouted Mrs Bert, pushing a heap of popcorn away from her face. “You never turned down second helpings.”
    And so it went on: moan, moan, bicker, bicker.

    They sailed all afternoon and into the night. There was a bright moon out, and the children were perfectly able to see where they were going. Lucy handed over the helm to Hermione, and she in turn handed it over to Sam. So they all took turnsin keeping the ship on course, all the way until morning.
    By Lucy’s calculations, they were now not too far away from the place where the pirates had first seized them. Sam was sent up to the crow’s nest, the little basket up at the top of the highest mast, where he could sit and keep a lookout.
    If he saw anything, he would shout out to the deck below and the ship could change course.
    Sam’s shout came about two hours after breakfast, which was some rather old ship’s biscuit that they’d found in the hold. Lucy was at the helm and Hermione sitting on the deck below. They bothheard Sam’s call, though, and looked up to see he was pointing.

    “There she is!” shouted Sam. “I’m sure it’s the popcorn ship.”
    Lucy swung the wheel round and Hermione and Sam adjusted the sails. There was a better wind in that direction, and the ship shot forward like a rocket. Soon they were close enough to confirm that it was indeed the popcorn ship, and a few minutes after that they lowered the sails and glided slowly up to the drifting ship. Biscuit, seeing his master’s boat, was almost hysterical with excitement, and it was as much as the children could do to stop him from jumping overboard and swimming the lastlittle distance. Then at last they were there, and they gently nudged up to the popcorn boat and tied their ship to its side.
    Captain Foster was very tired, and very thirsty. “Quick,” he said weakly, as they untied the rope around his chair. “Get me some lemonade from the cupboard.”
    He drank and drank, and then ate the ship’s biscuit that they had saved for him.
    “My goodness, I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I had almost given up hope.”
    As the Captain