'Boat ahoy!' cried the voice again. 'Row in at once! D'ye hear? Row in at once or I shall fire on you.' Marah didn't answer. 'Present arms!' cried the voice again after a pause; and at that Marah bowed down in the stern sheets under the gunwale. 'Fire!' said the voice; and a volley ripped up the sea all around us, knocking off splinters from the planks...For the next half-hour we were just within extreme range of the carbines and musketoons. During that half-hour we were slowly slipping by the long two miles of Slapton Sands. We could not go fast, for the only sail was a coat, and, though the wind was pretty fresh, the set of the tide was against us. So for half an hour we crouched below that row-boat's gunwale, just peeping up now and then to see the white outline of the breakers on the sand, and beyond that the black outlines of the horsemen, who followed us...When Jim Davis stumbles upon a smuggling ring his life takes a terrifying new turn...He is press-ganged into joining a fierce band of smugglers led by Marah, a frightening and sea-scarred buccaneer. Under Marah's watchful eye, he has many hair-raising adventures and close escapes while learning about the perils of the sea and living the life of an outlaw.

 

There are 32 pages in this book. This book was published 2002 by Chicken House Ltd .

Michael Morpurgo has brought together poems by writers as diverse as Spike Milligan and Stevie Smith, John Lennon and Jo Shapcott. John Masefield was a novelist, journalist and poet. He won the Edmond de Polignac prize in 1912, and was appointed Poet Laureate in 1930 - a role he performed for the next 37 years. Masefield wrote 21 novels, including two children's books featuring Kay Harker, The Midnight Folk (1927) and The Box of Delights (1935). He died in 1967, and his ashes were interred in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.