"Ooh!" yelled one of the pirates "Looks like this boat's going down."
"Well fancy that," Pink Beard thought aloud.
"Abandon ship!" He yelled.
"Oooh, someone has pinched our rowing boat. Swim for it chaps!"
Roger thought this was great fun and was chuckling away as the pirates jumped into the water.
"Ah har ha, ha, har," he laughed.
"Got 'es swimming cosy wi’ 'e," he cried out. "Ah har, har, look at 'em splashing about."
What Roger did not realise was that all the splashing was being caused by a shoal of Barracuda that were busy eating the pirates as they tried to swim. When Roger did realise what was going on it was too late to save them. All that remained of the pirates was a load of bones on the sea bed.
"'E's got ta see the funny side," Roger said to his crew, "but we aint gonna be paid wi’out Pink Beard’s head."
Luckily, Julian was an excellent swimmer, so he dived down to the bones and recovered Pink Beards head.
"Not much of it left captain, but you can still see a little of the pink beard. Oh, and as you thought it was all such jolly fun, I picked up these for you, a pair of funny bones."
"Ah har, har, ho, ho, ho, what a fine lad 'e be Julian."
The Wood Pigeon was soon re-floated, and Captain Roger ordered the crew to tie a tow rope to ‘The Ever So Nice Little
Boat With Pretty Sails’ and they set sail for Portsmouth. It was time to collect their reward and plan the downfall of Red Beard.
As they approached Portsmouth, Roger summoned the ships carpenter to his cabin.
"Chippy," he said, "I wants 'e ta make a small raft, paint it black an' nail Pink Beards bones to it. Then hoist it up ta the top o' the mainmast, so's all Portsmouth can see that we's got him."
The crowds lined the harbour walls as The Wood Pigeon sailed into Portsmouth. Roger climbed the mainmast and was waving to the crowd, above him hung Pink Beard’s bones, the skull and crossed funny bones, so that the crowd could see that Pink Beard was dead. As usual, Roger was chuckling away to himself.
"Look," someone in the crowd called out, "at the top of the mainmast, it's Roger, what a jolly fellow he his."
"Hurrah for Jolly Roger," another cried out, "hip, hip!"
"HURRAH," the crowd responded.
"Hip, hip!"
"HURRAH."
"Hip, hip!"
"HURRAH."
And so it was that Roger became the legendary ‘Jolly’ Roger.
After the Wood Pigeon docked, Roger and Julian took ‘The Ever So Nice Little Boat With Pretty Sails’ to the ship shop to be sold, with the proceeds to be given to the wives of lost sailor’s charity.
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