Billy and the Pirates

Billy woke up and sat up in bed. He thought he had heard someone singing. Who would be singing at this time of night? He

pulled the pillow over his head and tried to go back to sleep. There, he heard it again.

He had to find out where the singing was coming from before it woke up his parents. He turned on the lamp next to his bed

and rummaged in a drawer for a flashlight.

The first place he looked was under his bed. All he saw was an old sneaker he had lost months ago. He reached under the

bed and pulled the sneaker out.

He looked in his closet. The door squeaked when he opened it. He stopped to listen but the singing wasn’t coming from the

closet. Nothing was there but his clothes and his roller skates. He had forgotten to put his skates in the garage where they

belonged. He threw the sneaker in with its mate and closed the door. Again it squeaked.

He opened his bedroom door and the singing got louder. He went to the top of the stairs and listened. The singing was

even louder.

He went downstairs and looked in the bathroom, and found where the singing was coming from. The tub was half full of

water. A pirate ship was floating in it.

Mean looking pirates scampered through the rigging and manned the guns. The pirate captain had a black patch over one

eye and a wooden leg. He was standing on the deck singing, “Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum.” He waved at Billy.

Billy said, “You’ll have to stop singing or you’ll wake up my mom and dad. They’ll come down and sink you, or pull the plug.”

The pirate captain laughed but stopped singing. He told his crew to be as quiet as they could be.

Billy went back to bed. When he slept he dreamed he was a pirate.

The next morning, when Billy looked in his closet both his sneakers were lying there, side by side. When he went downstairs

the bathtub was empty. Standing in the soap tray was a pirate flag.