Captain Felix woke up to the sound of seagulls flying around the ship. He cursed at them and continued to lie down where he was in hope of finding the sweet embrace of sleeping again, but his efforts were futile. He finally got up after rolling from one side to another in bed for a while. He started to put on his clothes on. Just as he was putting his tri-cornered hat, he heard the watchman on top of the mast crying,

“Ship! There’s a huge, gigantic, gargantuan, enormous ship ahead!”
The captain rushed out of his cabin and got out on the deck. His crew was a mess! A bunch of them were playing cards on port side, a few of them were chanting pirate songs and a group was gathered close to the rudder, making fun of all those silly words the watchman had used.

Captain Felix yelled,

“Arrr! Get yourselves together ya big herd of useless anchovies!”
The crew immediately stopped what they were doing and lined up in front of the captain as he climbed on the poop-deck.

“Ahoy, maties!” he yelled “Are you ready for a plunder?”

“Aye aye, captain!” they answered.

The captain continued “I know you would be. Listen to me people and listen to me good, this is the only ship we’ve seen out in the open sea in months. We’re out of gold! Arrr, if we don’t find anything to plunder in this ship we’re as good as dead. So keep your minds on the booty we’ll make. Are you with me, men?”

“Aye aye,captain!” the crew cheerfully replied, some of them pulled out their swords and gave a battle cry. One of them fell overboard in his excitement. The captain’s assistant Mr. Shappy ran to the captain and enquired,

“Should we turn to get him back overboard again, captain?”

“Who was that anyway?”

“Belt-notch Harry, the watchman, sir,”

“Nah, leave him. Didn’t like him anyways. Arr!” Captain Felix said.

Captain Felix’s ship, the Sea Chestnut, closed in towards the ship ahead. When they got close enough, the captain pulled out his telescope and examined the ship. “Knowledge” was written on the rear end of the ship. The captain called Mr. Shappy next to him and asked,

“Can you read the writing on the back of the boat?” and handed Mr. Shappy the telescope. Mr. Shappy observed the writing for a moment and then said

“I think it says ‘Knowledge’ captain,”

“What does that mean, matey?”

“I don’t know captain; I’ve never seen that word before,” Mr. Shappy answered.

Preparations for the plunder were made; the captain had his place at the rudder, the black flag which had a skull on it was fluttering above the main sail, the men had their swords ready and the cannons were sticking out of the body of the Sea Chestnut. The captain managed to get the body of his ship and the enemy ship parallel to each other and then the crew hurled ropes with hooks on the tips of them to the enemy ship to pull it next to the Sea Chestnut. When the distance between the two ships were close enough, the pirate crew hopped on to the boat and looked around for someone to fight, but there wasn’t anybody on the ship, so they directly started to rummage all the chests, drawers, wardrobes and boxes they could find on the deck and the cabins below to look for things they could steal as booty. After a while, Captain Felix ordered his men to come back to the Sea Chestnut and tell them what they had found.

“Books, captain! Nothing but books! We searched and searched, but nobody could find a piece of gold, nor a grain of diamond,” one of the sailors explained.

“Barnacles!” the captain bellowed “So this ship was useless, eh? No wonder nobody was on it. Arr. Let’s sail on people,”

“But captain,” one sailor said “What do we do with the books? And what about the new ship? What was its name, know-leedgey? Something like that?”

“Arr, leave them behind matey, what’s the use of those books,” Captain Felix answered and they were off, looking for more ships to plunder.

A few months passed. They still hadn’t found a ship to plunder. They were almost starving. They were living on some coconuts they saw once in a blue moon that were floating on water. One day, the new watchman who replaced Belt-notch Harry screamed,

“There’s a… a… what was the thing that floated on water?”

“What do you mean boy? A coconut?” Mr. Shappy sighed,

“No, bigger,”

“A ship?” Mr. Shappy asked in hope,

“Yes, yes! A ship! A few miles behind us!”

When the crew heard that, they all got excited. Captain Felix, who was sleeping in a corner of the deck woke up from his heavy sleep and asked what was going on. He also went berserk when he heard the news. There would be no more coconuts. They would go to shore and eat as much as they could with the money they were about to plunder. The captain ordered the crew to slow the ship down so that they could be next to the ship behind them.

The strange thing was, the ship started to become more familiar to his eyes as the distance between them got shorter and shorter. Soon, a voice the captain knew he had heard before called from the nose of the enemy ship,

“Whoah, look at that pitiful, feeble, pathetic group of pirates,” It was Belt-notch Harry, the sailor who had gone overboard a few months ago, and he was standing on the ship full of books, Knowledge. The captain and his crew’s mouths fell open. How could have he turned into a captain of a ship from a simple sailor who fell overboard.

“I know the question all of you lot are asking yourselves, I’ll answer it for you,” carried on Belt-notch Harry “I watched you as you went in that ship to get the booty inside, but when you left without taking anything, I got curious. So I swam towards the ship and climbed on to it. The minute I saw the ship full of books I knew that I had finally found my heaven on earth. Before the ones on this ship, I only had one book. It was a thesaurus. That was where I learned all those new words I used while I was watchman.

“Anyways, I quickly learned how to make a ship sail, navigation and all the things a captain needs to know to manage a ship. I got to shore and hired myself a crew, a crew way better than yours because I had read about how to pick a good crew. I just can’t believe you could be so stupid, Captain Felix. You didn’t even think of taking the ship with you and selling it? Ah, who cares? It was for my benefit anyway,” Captain Harry demonstrated. Captain Felix replied, still in shock,

“Umm, okay… but why did you come to see us?”

“Well, I’m just going to invade your ship and then sell the Sea Chestnut down at the harbor. Oh, maybe I’ll sell you guys as slaves too. And I’ve always wanted your hat for myself, Felix,” said Captain Harry.

Mr. Shappy stepped over next to Captain Felix and murmured,

“I believe we’re in deep, deep whale muck captain,”

“Arr, I believe we are,” gulped Captain Felix.

Captain Harry easily invaded the Sea Chestnut and took over everything, including Captain Felix’s hat. He took the Sea Chestnut and its crew to the harbor and sold them all for a good price. The crew and the captain of the Sea Chestnut became insane because of this incident and wherever they went, they repeated the words “Knowledge is King”