Free In an Adventure With Napoleon by Gideon Defoe, Richard Murkin

flow through his pen. This worked slightly better and before long he had drawn a monster with eight or nine googly eyes, tentacles, plenty of fangs and scales rather than skin. There was no time to colour it in, but the Captain figured that a monster might be scarier in black and white because it was ‘stark’. Just as the Governor was telling them to put their pens down, he quickly sketched a few more heads – a dragon, a cat and a hen – sat back and folded his arms.
    ‘Gentleman, if you could reveal your monsters,’ said the Governor, a serious look on his face. The Pirate Captain pushed his picture forward as boldly as he could.
    ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it hasn’t got a name.’
    Seeing the Captain’s drawing Napoleon suddenly screwed his sheet of paper into a ball and, with a sort of strangulated yelp, flung it into the Governor’s fireplace. Then he sat back and mopped his brow.
    ‘What on earth are you doing?’ asked the Captain, shocked.
    ‘I am sorry, Pirate Captain,’ said Napoleon, shaking his head and suppressing a shudder. ‘But my picture was so terrifying that had anyone, other than I, Napoleon, looked upon the thing, it would have caused
their hearts to explode
. That’s how scary it was. It’s almost as if my skill as a draughtsman had actually summoned a demon from the occult realm.’
    Several of the assembled islanders ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at this.
    ‘Well then,’ said the Governor. ‘I suppose we must declare Napoleon the winner. For though your picture is very good, Captain, it hasn’t made anybody’s heart explode, thank the stars.’
    ‘Don’t feel bad, my friend,’ added Napoleon consolingly. ‘It is only because of my iron constitution that I was able to withstand it myself. More quail’s eggs?’
    16 Things don’t always go smoothly with girls. Famously, when Napoleon first tried to make love to Josephine he was bitten on his leg by her pug.
    17 If you are in a room with only 23 people there is a 50 per cent chance that one of them shares your birthday.

Eight
SNAKES
AMOK!

    ost of the pirates were in the kitchen having afternoon tea. Some of them were balancing pieces of toast on top of each other, because they’d discovered that balancing things was one of the very few perks about being on dry land. The rest were taking it in turns to heave heavy sighs.
    ‘Oh, come on, lads. You know I don’t usually object to a bit of theatrical sighing, but it’s getting quite tricky to read my newspaper.’ The Captain waved his copy of the
St Helena Gazette
at them. ‘You keep blowing the comics section away.’
    ‘Sorry, Pirate Captain,’ said the pirate in green, who was absent-mindedly carving a little picture of a starfishinto the kitchen table. ‘It’s just I think we’re all missing the piratical life.’
    ‘Not this again. If it really means that much to you we can always go and pirate some rocks or moss or something,’ said the Pirate Captain magnanimously.
    ‘It’s not the same on dry land,’ muttered the pirate with a nut allergy. ‘Without the romance of the sea, pirating just seems like quite antisocial behaviour.’
    ‘If you go about with that kind of negative attitude then of
course
everything looks grim. You have to try to see the natural beauty in things.’ The Captain pointed out the window, towards where two goats were stood shivering on a grassy knoll. ‘Look, over there. Those two goats. Clearly very much in love with each other. Doesn’t that touch your soul?’
    A few of the pirates peered at where the Captain was pointing.
    ‘Why is the big goat biting the other goat on the thigh?’ asked the albino pirate.
    ‘It’s an affectionate love bite,’ the Captain explained.
    ‘Oh! Now the little goat has responded by trying to hit the first goat round the head with a hoof,’ said Jennifer.
    ‘He’s stroking her. That’s a goat caress,’ persisted the Captain.
    ‘And now a whole load of other goats have