Kidnapped! Read online

  HUGE WOOFY APPLAUSE!! HIP HIP WOOFAY!!!

  In a trice Trevor had tied the rope round the table, the one that I had been gripping with my teeth. The slack ran out, the rope went taut, there was a terrible jerk as it tightened and a dreadful ripping noise as the table was torn completely from the floor. It went whizzing up through the air but was too big to go through the ceiling flap and so it jammed tight.

  We weren’t going any further down the river. The rope held. The police-legs tied the other end to one of their cars and slowly, bit by bit, we were pulled back to the bank and out of the river. We were SAVED!

  I jumped on to solid ground. Phew! I went straight across to Barbarossa. ‘You were – extraordinary,’ I told him. ‘You’re a hero.’

  ‘I prefer being ze pirate,’ he growled.

  ‘Yeah, we’re ze pirates,’ said Bish.

  ‘I’m –’ Bosh began.

  ‘Shut up!’ we chorused.

  ‘But why did you save us?’ I asked.

  The pirate chief studied his paws while he thought. ‘It was exciting,’ he said in a low voice. ‘And I … like you. I didn’t want anyone to get ’urt.’

  ‘But you almost ate me when you chased me from Madame Crêpe’s garden. You had all your teeth showing and you were slavering like a werewolf.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to eat you. Madame was zere. I ’ad to make it look like I was ze fierce monster.’

  ‘But you’re in a gang,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Ze pirate gang,’ put in Bish.

  ‘Shush,’ Barbarossa and I snapped back, and he did. Barbarossa shrugged and went on. ‘I was bored. Nothing to do all day. Zen my mistress, Madame, she start stealing things and it goes more exciting. I zought I could do zumthing like zat so I make pirate. Zen you arrived on ze campsite and everyzing change because you’re so – different. ANNOYINGLY different! I was trying to make my life exciting, but you, you are exciting. Zat’s how I want to be.’

  I looked at Barbarossa. He was quite cute really. All he wanted was something to do. I felt I should show him how grateful I was for saving us all, so I bit his ear and said he was a cauliflower but he just looked puzzled. Very puzzled.

  11 Croissants! Baguettes! Postcards!

  All around us the two-legs were patting each other on the back and yakking frantically at each other the way they do when there’s a bit of drama going on and then it’s all over. They talk about it. For hours. I just go to sleep. Trevor and Emilie were checked over and found to be shaken and a bit damp but otherwise all right.

  ‘Trevor saved us,’ Emilie said, clinging to her hero. ‘He was amazing.’

  ‘He’s a star,’ said all the big two-legs, even the police, but they said it in French. Pascal told me.

  ‘Actually,’ I felt I had to point out, ‘it was Barbarossa who saved us. He risked his life to jump on to a sinking caravan.’

  ‘Be quiet, Streaker,’ ordered Mr Trevor’s dad.

  Which just goes to show how ungrateful those two-legs can be sometimes.

  A police van turned up and guess who they had inside? Madame Crêpe and Mini. Their car had been stopped at a roadblock further on. It turned out that Madame and Mini had been planning to sell all the stolen equipment so that they could have some plastic surgery done.

  ‘All we wanted was to look like ze film stars,’ wept Madame. ‘We wanted to go to ’ollywood and sweep down ze red carpet with everyone staring at us and saying, “Ooh la la, zey are so beautiful, I wish I was like zem.” Now zat will never ’appen.’

  Madame seemed quite harmless without her big frying pan. Mini was beside herself. ‘My dreams ’ave been shattered,’ she dribbled through her tears. ‘I was planning to take ’ollywood by storm.’

  I looked at all of them and sighed. They’re such messy things, those two-legs. They make everything in life so complicated when it’s really very simple. They’re always dreaming of being something else. Why can’t they just be themselves? Like me!

  You don’t need to be beautiful to be happy. You don’t need to be a film star or famous or important or anything like that. All you need are a few sausages. Or pies. Or pizzas. Burgers. Ice cream. Roast chicken. Kebabs.

  That’s what I think.

  Anyway, the silver shell got towed back to the campsite. It wasn’t too badly knocked about, just the odd dent here and there and guess what? There was a red canoe stuck underneath it. There was! It must have got caught up in the caravan wheels when we were floating down the river. Mr Trevor’s dad gave it back to Madame, who had been taken to the campsite by the police to show them all the stolen goods in her garden.

  ‘You wanted your canoe back,’ he told her. ‘Here it is.’

  Madame Crêpe gazed at all the holes in it and said it looked more like a watering can than a canoe so maybe she’d grow some runner beans in it.

  ‘I didn’t know zere was anyone in ze caravan when I took it,’ she confessed. ‘I would never have taken it if I’d known. Of course, if it had just been ze dogs –’

  I never heard what she said next because Pascal put his paws over my ears in case I was offended. He’s thoughtful like that.

  In the end the police-legs decided they wouldn’t send Madame and Mini Crêpe to jail because everyone had got their stolen things back. The police-legs even found Pascal’s dog bowl but they never worked out how it had got there and Pascal and I were keeping quiet. We owed the pirate chief.

  So instead of going to jail, the police-legs ordered Madame and Mini to offer an apology to the campers by cooking a huge feast for everyone except themselves – because the police-legs had also put Madame Crêpe and Mini on a special diet of beans and cauliflower. Woofy ha ha! (Except that they had the last laugh because the vegetables made them both HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE!)

  So everything came out right except that the two-legs were so busy congratulating themselves they forgot all about us dogs.

  So I told them.

  I said, ‘Just a minute, mateys. Barbarossa should get a medal for being so brave and saving us, and Pascal and I should get medals too because we discovered the stolen things and who the thieves were.’

  And did we get medals? Of course not. Instead, Mr Trevor’s mum told me to be quiet and to stop interrupting everyone and would I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? Well that wasn’t very nice, was it? I don’t know why we bother hanging around with two-legs at all and we probably wouldn’t if they weren’t quite so good at cooking.

  A couple of days later it was the end of our holiday and we had to say goodbye to the campsite and that meant saying goodbye to Barbarossa and Pascal too. That was sad, especially for Pascal and me.

  ‘I shall never forget you,’ I said. ‘You must come to Britain some time.’

  ‘Maybe you will return next year?’ Pascal suggested and I smiled and nodded because maybe I will but of course I don’t know what’s going to happen from one minute to the next in my life. I mean one minute I’m almost being barbecued and the next I’m in a caravan floating down the river. And of course there was all that business over being jabbed with the Eiffel Tower. I’m not sure I want to go through that again unless Trevor Two-Legs has got some more jam doughnuts.

  Then I saw Barbarossa standing away from everyone a little bit, with his gang of two. I trotted over to say farewell. He told me I was the most wonderful dog he had ever met.

  ‘You’re nice too,’ I told him because he was. ‘You were a great pirate.’

  ‘So was I,’ said Bish.

  ‘I was ze alien,’ Bosh pointed out for the last time.

  ‘You were certainly on anozzer planet,’ grunted Barbarossa and that made us all laugh.

  I have no idea what things will be like when we get home. I think Trevor Two-Legs might have a few problems. Do you know how many postcards he sent Tina while he was in France? NONE. He’s going to have fun explaining that one to Tina. Not to mention Emilie, who kissed him goodbye and told him she would come and see him. In Britain.

  As for Mr Trevor’s dad,
he didn’t manage to get one single game of golf all the time we were there. Poor man. Maybe we shall have to come back to France and the campsite after all. Croissants! Baguettes! French sausage! CHOMP CHOMP, YUM YUM!

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  First published 2014

  Text copyright © Jeremy Strong, 2014

  Illustrations copyright © Rowan Clifford, 2014

  Cover illustration by Nick Sharratt

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-141-34420-1