Gershwin and the Orcas’ Treasure Island

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Gershwin. Now Gershwin was a bit of an adventurer. When I say a bit, he was very much an adventurer. He’d been to all sorts of places: faraway lands, up the mountains, in a submarine, to the beach and to the city. He’d even been to space in one of his adventures. But he was always looking for the next bit of fun and the next adventure to be had.

That is why, one morning, he got up, rolled out of bed, put on his clothes and grabbed his rucksack. He filled his water bladder with water, put it in his mouth and walked off to find the ocean. He walked and walked. He caught a bus. He caught a taxi. Eventually he ended up at the end of the seaside pier.

There was a beautiful big boat that Gershwin just happened to know how to sail. It wasn’t just any boat: it had the biggest engine Gershwin had ever seen on a boat, but it also had the biggest sail. It could sail through the ocean using an engine or a giant sail.

Gershwin started off with the engine. It was a fast engine, and the boat was out in the middle of the sea before he knew it. The seaside town was just a speck in the distance, and all he could see was sea for miles and miles around him.

There was a beautiful wind blowing, so he thought it was time to move over to the sails. With all his might, he punched the big red button in the middle of the console. As he turned around, he saw a hatch open in the back of the boat. Out came a big pole. Two more poles came out from that, and the sail slowly opened. The wind caught it and the boat started moving.

The only thing slowing him down was the propeller from the engine, still in the water. Next to the red button, he punched the big pink button, and the propeller slowly moved inside the ship so it wouldn’t slow the boat down. Now Gershwin was off, steering using just the power of the wind, to see what he could find out on the ocean.

After a few hours of sailing, he heard splashes behind the boat. He looked out and saw a pod of dolphins swimming along behind him, splashing out of the water, landing back in and crisscrossing around each other, enjoying the wake from the boat. Gershwin had never seen dolphins in the wild before, so, as usual, he pulled out his camera and took some photos. “They’ll be good for the scrapbook.” There was also the idea of printing the pictures and making stickers when he got home.

Very soon, in the distance, he saw a rocky island and strange things flapping around in the air. He wasn’t sure what they were, so he steered the sail to point directly at the island. When he arrived, he dropped the anchor, hit the red button so the sail went back inside, and got down into the little boat at the back. He rowed his way to the island.

There were so many different birds: cormorants, seagulls, pigeons and blackbirds. But the most exciting was a puffin. He’d seen puffins before, but never been this close. The puffins waddled up and pecked at him as if they’d never seen a human before. He happened to have some birdseed, so he threw it down for the puffins, then pulled out a little slice of cake and ate that himself.

Now it was time for more sailing. He bid the puffins adieu, went back to his rowboat and rowed to the big sailing boat. He hit the red button to launch the sail and off he went, after raising the anchor, of course.

He sailed and sailed towards the sun and realised he’d circled most of the coast by now. He was all the way up on the other side of the northern islands. The northern islands were well known for whale watching, with orcas or blue whales circling the islands, so he went to look for them. Before he even had to search, he found three orcas casually circling the boat and spraying water from their blowholes.

The orcas seemed to want something. They kept nudging the boat, spraying him, then swimming a little way into the distance. Gershwin decided it would be best to follow them, and that was just what he did. Why didn’t he talk to them? He could only talk to land animals, not sea animals. He would have to learn the language of sea creatures another day.

Very soon he came upon an island. He’d never seen one like it before. It was huge, covered in sand and palm trees, but it shouldn’t have been there. That was the most curious thing. It had been on the map all along, but covered in ice, so somebody must have thought it was a giant iceberg. Now the ice had melted and it was a beautiful island.

He jumped off the boat onto the beach to take a good look. He could tell people had been there before, because when he turned a corner, underneath a row of three palm trees, there was a ginormous X. It was almost as if somebody had tried to write it on a map but didn’t have a map, so they’d written it directly on the sand.

Gershwin knew what a big red X meant: treasure was buried there. He dug into the sand with his hands, his feet, anything he could get his hands on, right under the X. Then he found it, a treasure chest.

He was so excited that he pulled the chest out, ran back to the boat as quickly as possible and jumped on board. He needed to get home and show his mummy and daddy. Instead of the sail, he hit the pink button. Out came the propeller and the boat jetted off. He found the big rectangle on the dashboard and pushed it hard to go at full speed.

The boat flew through the ocean, bouncing off the waves. He had to hold on to the treasure chest just to keep himself in his seat. He would be home in less than ten minutes, but he was so excited he couldn’t wait even that long. He tried to have a peek inside the chest, then realised he needed a key. He peered through the keyhole, but he couldn’t get inside. He’d be home soon, and his mummy and daddy would know what to do.

A few minutes before he reached shore, he called his mummy and daddy from the ship to pick him up. At the seaside pier they were waiting in the car. He ran down the pier, chucked the treasure chest in the boot and they flew through the streets back to their house.

Gershwin pulled the chest out and snuck it inside. “Mummy, Daddy, there’s no key for this. I don’t know what to do.” His daddy was very clever, and so was his mummy, but his daddy had learned how to pick locks. He grabbed his lock-picking tools and started working away. Click, click, click, click, click, click. Whrr.

The lid popped slightly open. Gershwin could see a gleam of light coming out. They opened it further and further and realised it was filled to the top with golden, shining coins, the most beautiful things Gershwin had seen. They must be worth a fortune. Perhaps enough to buy everything in a whole shop. Or maybe “eleven eighty-eight”.

Gershwin grabbed a handful of gold and took it to the nearest gold-valuing shop. The man measured it and weighed it. “Well, these gold bars, they must be worth at least eleven eighty-eight each.” Gershwin rushed home again, realising he had thousands of gold coins. He was rich beyond his wildest dreams.

He took the treasure chest home and hid it under the floorboards, through a little door in the ground, where it would be safe. Then he went back to his life. He pulled out his camera, plugged the memory card into the printer and printed the beautiful dolphin pictures: one for his photo journal, another for his junk journal, and another for his sticker book.

Now he was tired. He crawled into bed, curled up comfy and fell asleep. Time to dream about his next adventure. The end.