Imagine my delight when one morning, while observing the local wildlife with the Old Man, we happened upon what at first appeared to be some discarded litter, but turned out to be an old map. It must have been lying there, under that bush, for ages. It was torn, faded and stained, and had a piece missing. On studying it, we realised that some familiar places were marked upon it. There was the campsite and a place call 'Mill Bridge' which must be the bridge across the long creek. Then there was a church by a bay called 'Safe Haven', which was where our own boat was anchored!

There were other places named on the map, places of ill omen: Black Jake's Castle and Captain Flint's Castle, with the waters of Battle Bay stretching between them, and Black Rock acting as a warning to any who would dare to brave those waters. As if to give further warning, there was a wreck in the 'Great Sea'. North of the Great Sea was the Great Grey-Green Greasy Limpopo River, where lay a ship's graveyard, and a place called Smuggler's Inn. This was obviously an area of dare doing and swashbuckling! Most importantly, however, were a number of places marked 'X' which were obviously places of buried treasure, though the Old Man warned that there might not be treasure at all the locations. Did the missing piece contain even more precious information? And where was it? I showed the map to Cap'n Brian, and he confirmed that it was indeed a true treasure map. I was given the impression that he would have liked it for himself, but he wasn't going to get it! I wonder if he had the missing piece.

We decided to explore the Great Grey-Green Greasy Limpopo River first, as the other treasure locations were worryingly close to the pirate's castles and Battle Bay. We set forth the next day with a fair wind and tide. We crossed the great sea from where we could spy Captain Flint's Castle and, near to that, a place with great big ships that the Old Man called 'Armada Bay'. We sailed north and entered the Limpopo and glided gently up the river, accompanied by Cap'n Kevin, our ally, on his boat. It was quiet and eerie as we passed the old ships left rotting at their anchors, probably never to sail again. Once we fancied we saw crew on board one ship, and wondered if we were seeing the ghosts of old sailors. I'd hate to be here at night! We gave the Smuggler's Inn a wide berth, and continued upstream.

As we moored for a rest, some boats passed us in a hurry, headed upstream. We knew them, and we didn't doubt that they had heard of our find and were seeking to follow us to the treasure. They didn't have the map, but Cap'n Brian had seen it, and if they saw us recover the treasure, they might try to take it from us. We continued on behind the others to keep an eye on them. As we reached one of the locations marked on the map, the rest of the fleet continued upriver. Delighted at having tricked the others in this way, we quickly beached our boat and began searching for the treasure. I searched one end of the beach while the Old Man searched the other end. After a while the Old Man shouted that he had found something. As I came to look, I saw that the ground was marked with an 'X', worn faint over the years. We dug there and began to find precious coins of the realm adding up to the princely sum of 29 pence.

Loaded with our spoils, we quickly cast off and headed downstream again. Before long, we saw the other boats on our tail. They had discovered our trick and knew that we had the treasure! They gave chase; at the head of the pack was Percy the Pirate, the scourge of all honest treasure hunters. I pulled out my dagger, the Old Man had his cutlass, the eye-patch was on and we were ready for battle! Percy chased us and twice tried to ram us, but the Old Man out-manoeuvred him and we showed him our heels, but not before one of his crew threw something at us. We ducked and narrowly missed being hit. When we looked in the boat, we found what had been thrown. It was several pieces of treasure, gold-wrapped sweets. Very nice they were too. Percy either had a renegade in his crew, or was trying to bribe us to part with our map.

They continued to chase us and we were forced to pull into Smuggler's Inn, a traditional neutral ground where all fights are forgotten for a while. There we ate, drank, rested and swapped insults before continuing our journey home. We were away quickly enough that we didn't have to worry about the pirates, so we sailed over to the wreck, where the masts of some great ship were still visible above the water, but now marked with triangles and painted black and yellow, to warn sailors to keep clear. We were the first to arrive at Safe Haven, where we anchored and went back to base camp. We never did find the missing piece from the map.

Captain Declan (ghost-written by the Old Man)