Ahoy, me mateys!
Yer cap’n apologizes for leavin’ ye hangin’, so to speak. Last she wrote, she was tellin’ ye about bringin’ the injured T. Rex to the beach so she could treat his burned foot on the boat. But Boogie the Ghost Pirate’s ship drifted towards shore, blocking the way! And Dumple the One-Eyed Pirate passed out in the sand. So things were lookin’ grim for old Captain H. Tanny.
Also, yer cap’n has never before seen the likes of Boogie the Ghost Pirate in the flesh (or spirit). So this business was extra scary for yer cap’n. But nobody will get in the way of helpin’ an injured person (or T. Rex), or my name isn’t Captain H. Tanny!
So yer cap’n stood as tall as she could and hollered, “Argh! Boogie! Ye best be leavin’ us alone now, so we can get on our way!”
The spooky ship, with tattered sails rippling in the wind and skulls decorating the bow, slid into the shore. A gang plank fell out and landed onto the sand with a thunk. Yer cap’n squinted, but couldn’t see inside the dark, shadowy ship.
“Boogie is always out to get me,” yer cap’n explained to the T. Rex. The dinosaur squeezed yer cap’n’s hand for support.
After what felt like a long time, a fog crept out of the ship’s doorway and a figure followed. Boogie the Ghost Pirate was all bones and fog, and his head was a ghoulish skull with a pirate’s hat atop. The bony skeleton of a parrot sat on his shoulders, flapping wings that had only a few ancient feathers still stuck to them.
There was no tellin’ what Boogie would do when he got close, but yer cap’n is not proud to admit, young adventurers, that she quaked in her boots.
“I’m warnin’ ye, Boogie!” yer cap’n said. “Don’t come any closer, or else!” She held on tight to the Book of Explosions, since that’s what Boogie had come to get. It was the most precious treasure a pirate could own, and yer cap’n had worked so hard to get it.
The T. Rex saw the fear in yer cap’n, and stood up big and tall, glaring at the Ghost Pirate. Dumple started to wake up again, and yer cap’n helped him up to his foot and peg leg. “Dumple, this is no time to mess around! Boogie is coming at us, quick!”
Dumple looked up to see the Ghost Pirate drifting closer and closer over the sand, since ghosts don’t need to walk. He then looked over at the T. Rex, who looked so big and frightening. The T. Rex stood taller than ever to let out the loudest, fiercest roar any living person had ever heard. Dumple immediately collapsed back to the sand, unconscious again.
Even though that was the loudest sound a living person ever heard, Boogie, a ghost, was unafraid. He kept drifting closer. The T. Rex whimpered like a frightened puppy during a thunderstorm.
And that’s when an idea came to ye cap’n, young adventurers. Since everything written in the Book of Explosions seemed to come to life, Captain Tanny decided to write somethin’ in the book herself. She took out her trusty pen, which she always carried, and quickly wrote, Boogie the Ghost Pirate couldn’t hurt Captain Tanny, Dumple, or the T. Rex. And something funny happened to the spooky pirate. He couldn’t drift any closer to ye cap’n or her friends! It looked like the ghost was trying to walk into an invisible wall.
The T. Rex smiled. “Yay!” ye cap’n said.
You can probably guess the rest, young adventurers. Boogie had no choice but to turn and go back into his ship and sail away, taking all the scary fog with him. The sun came out again. It was a beautiful day. Soon Dumple woke up, and together we all went aboard the ship and treated the T. Rex’s burn. The T. Rex didn’t want to go back to the woods after that. It seemed as though Dumple and ye cap’n had made themselves a new friend.
Captain H. Tanny