The Polar Bear Explorers' Club by Alex Bell (books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

He was right about it tasting terrible, but he was also right about it warming them up. Soon they were even able to remove their cloaks and one or two of their top jumpers. Stella was particularly pleased to get down to her third jumper because it was one of her favourites – Beanie’s mum had made it for her and it was powder blue in colour with a big polar bear stitched on the front. Stella noticed that Beanie, too, wore one of his mum’s creations – a bright green jumper with a stitched narwhal.

‘So, you came across a frosty camp, eh?’ the captain said cheerfully. ‘I s’pose they lured you in with promises of tea and cake and whatnot and then wanted you to go off to bed?’

‘Yes. But why would they do that? Why go to all that trouble to be friendly just to turn on us a few minutes later?’ Shay asked.

Captain Ajax shook his head. ‘Don’t you know nothin’? Frosties bite people when they’re asleep because they don’t feel it then. Come the morning they’ve got full-on frostbite and it won’t be long before the fingers fall off. And that’s what the frosties want.’

‘But why?’ Stella said, flipping her long white plait over her shoulder. ‘What do they want fingers for?’

Captain Ajax looked surprised. ‘To eat, of course. Fingers is food to them.’

Stella was horrified. ‘Can’t they just get the magic eggs to conjure up fingers?’ she asked. ‘The frosties said it would create any food we wanted.’

Captain Ajax shrugged. ‘Perhaps fingers ain’t food to a magic egg neither.’

‘Well,’ Shay eventually said. ‘That thing Ethan did with the tiny arrows came in pretty handy, didn’t it? I mean, the polar bean thing was a bit weird, but the arrows were excellent. Maybe we should take him along with us on our next expedition after all. If he can learn to stop moaning all the time, that is.’

‘Seems like he must be pretty good at exploring, if you ask me,’ Captain Ajax put in. ‘I never heard of anyone tangling with a screeching red devil squid and living to tell the tale. Biggest monster that roams the Poison Tentacle Sea, that is. Biggest one I ever saw was a twenty-foot whopper! Snatches sailors straight off the deck of ships when they stand too close to the edge. Once it’s got you in its tentacles that’s that. You’re toast.’ He snapped his fingers.

The sudden sound jerked Ethan awake and he sat up on the couch with a cry: ‘Don’t chop them!’

He lifted his hands up in front of his face and sighed in relief at the sight of his fingers, all still there, all still intact. But then he turned his head to look at the others and the expressions on their faces made him panic all over again.

‘What’s the matter? Why are you staring at me like that? It’s my toes, isn’t it? Oh Gods, they’re all gone! You’ve chopped them off!’

‘Settle down, kid. No one’s chopped nothing,’ Captain Ajax said.

Ethan narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s a double negative,’ he said. ‘So do you mean that you have chopped all my toes off, or do you just have terrible grammar? Because, technically, “no one’s chopped nothing” actually means that everyone has chopped everything. So—’

‘For goodness sake, Ethan, we never even touched the axe!’ Stella said.

Ethan visibly paled at the word. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Let’s not talk about that axe. Ever again.’

‘We used the moustache wax,’ Stella said. ‘Turns out it cures frostbite. Luckily for you, Beanie had some on him and was the only one of us who listened to the captain.’

‘Just remember your promise,’ Captain Ajax said. ‘Not a word in the Flag Report. Say you found out about the moustache wax by accident. I ain’t never going back to that way of life.’ He shuddered. ‘Wouldn’t have been so bad if I could’ve just transported the thieves, but the Crown wanted me to return all the stolen loot as well. I mean, all of it! Had to travel half way round the world, most times, across every one of the Seventeen Seas. And just you try returning a stolen treasure map to a heat-crazed captain of a pirate galleon. More likely to threaten you with a cutlass than say a nice civilized thank you.’ He frowned at Ethan. ‘But there’s some folk you just can’t do favours for.’

‘Why does my head hurt?’ the magician said, wincing.

‘Oh,’ Stella sighed. ‘We might have dropped you on the table. But it was an accident, a real accident. It definitely wasn’t accidentally on purpose.’

Stella felt she was somehow making it worse because Ethan gave her a suspicious look, but rubbed his head and kept his mouth shut for once.

‘It’s time for you lot to be on your way,’ Captain Ajax said, collecting up their mugs. ‘I said you could stay till the skinny one woke up. Well, now he’s awake – talking and charming us all with his endless gratitude – so that means you gotta go. I can only keep that lot outside in check for so long. They’re not a bad bunch really, but there’s only so much temptation they can resist, and they’ll have the shirts off your backs if you stay much longer.’

The explorers hurriedly stood up and reached for their cloaks. They’d already lost half their provisions – the last thing they needed now was to have the rest of their stuff stolen by a motley crew of bandits and outlaws.

‘So how did you get away from that screeching red devil squid?’ Captain Ajax asked as they walked out.

Ethan stiffened. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? We can see the scars.’

Ethan scowled and yanked his sleeves back down to his wrists. ‘My scars are none of your business.’

‘The way I figure it,’ the captain went on, quite unperturbed, ‘is that to escape a monster like that either you’re the luckiest fella alive, or the most fearsome magician who ever lived.