The Octonauts and the Pirate Ship Predicament (complete)

Chapter Five

"I have a little bit of a smaller crew than yours, I must admit, maties," Hector explained as a pretty white cat came out of the ship and winked at the Octonauts accompanied by a friendly wave. She wore a light pink hat cocked at an angle on her head and a light grey eye patch. "This is Annabel, she's our accountant and photographer. She takes care of the money, amongst other things."

"You're a photographer too?" Dashi inquired, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the camera looped around Annabel's wrist.

Annabel nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! I love photography, and I got my camera when I was fourteen. There's always so much to photograph on a pirate ship!"

Kwazii grinned. It was evident that she and Dashi were going to get on well.

"This is Kan," Hector continued as a dog came out after Annabel, wearing again a hat and a black eye patch. "He's my second in command." Kan smiled good-naturedly.

"And our engineer is Nut," Hector finished, gesturing to a final person inside. "No one really knows his real name, so we call him Nut. He does - or at least tries to do the repair work on the ship." Hector's smile seemed to fade in intensity a little as 'Nut' scurried out of the cabin, looking cautious and twitchy. He was a light grey beaver, also wearing a faded eyepatch and looked terrified of everyone as he looked around with wide eyes. "He's falling a bit behind on duties at the moment."

Tweak grinned. "Don't worry, I know how that feels. Nice to meet you, Nut. I'm the engineer on the Octopod."

Nut looked at her with even more fear-filled eyes; he was visibly shaking.

Hector sighed in slight exasperation. "I apologise for my colleagues behaviour. He's very twitchy and doesn't like visitors much."

"That's fine, me hearties," Kwazii smiled. "Nice to meet you all."

Hector returned the smile. "It's just good to see another pirate on these waters. We've been sailing in this ocean for, what, half a year now, and we haven't seen another pirate ship or even a fishing boat since we arrived. We would go to another ocean, but I'm afraid our ship is in a state of current disrepair, so it can't make long voyages just yet. We're working on it though."

"I'm sure it won't take too long to fix," the Captain assured them. "A couple of months ago our ship broke down quite badly, when we hit some choppy waters, but Tweak was able to fix it - after some slight malfunctions."

Hector murmured something that no one quite caught. To Kwazii's pricked ears it sounded something like: 'competent'. Then he straightened up with another wide smile. "I'm sorry. It's been so long since we had visitors, I sometimes forget myself. Would you like anything to eat? Drink? We haven't got much, but we'd be happy to provide for you."

"That's fine," the Captain smiled. "We have a team of mostly qualified cooks on our ship. Instead, how about you visit us? That way, we're not impeding on your limited resources, and you can see our ship."

Kwazii grinned widely. "That'd be awesome!"

Hector bowed slightly. "In that case, we accept your invitation."