The pirate captain was a wicked and ruthless man. He and his crew attacked countless ships, plundering their treasure, and they made everyone on board walk the plank until they fell off the end and the sharks—which were always waiting—said 'Yum!'

One day, they captured a ship with a young lad aboard. 'We need a new cabin boy,' said the captain. 'He'll do. Put him to work!'

The new cabin boy had to work like a dog, day and night. He was only small, and soon it was obvious that he wasn't up to it. When the captain found him asleep from sheer exhaustion, he was furious. 'He's useless!' he roared. I’ll have no shirkers on my ship! Fetch the plank, me hearties—the sharks can have him!'

The boy wept and pleaded, but to no avail. He was prodded out on to the plank at sword point, and down below in the sea the sharks waited and said, 'Yum!'

As he fell off the plank and splashed into the sea, the heartless captain laughed. 'We'll find plenty more where he came from!'

They sailed on, looking for more ships to plunder.

Then on the third evening the wind dropped and the pirates were becalmed. As it grew dark, thick fog came rolling in, shrouding them in eerie grey. The sea was flat, and the only sounds were the creak of masts and rigging and the dull, damp flapping of the sails.

Suddenly the captain heard a splashing noise below him, as if the water was churning and bubbling. He looked over the rail . . . and screamed in terror.

For, climbing up the ship's side towards him was the ghost of the cabin boy. His eyes glared with a cold and terrible light. And behind him, dripping with water and draped with seaweed, came all the ghosts of all the captain's other victims.

The cabin boy laughed a horrible laugh, and his voice rang out in the fog: 'Fetch the plank, me hearties!' he cried to the ghostly sailors. And down below in the water, the waiting sharks said, 'Yum!'

Based on a story by Louise Cooper that first appeared in 'Short and Scary,' published by OUP.