Walk the Plank! Walk the Plank! W.M. Akers Walking the plank is not a fun thing to do. Here’s how it works. A pirate sticks a long piece of wood off the side of his ship and makes you stand at one end. He puts his sword at your back and bellows, “Walllllk the plank!” You walk across the plank toward the water. When you run out of plank, you fall in the water. Probably there are sharks down there. The ship sails away, and that’s the end of you. The thing is, pirates never really made anyone walk the plank. This may surprise you, since it’s in a lot of movies and TV shows. It’s a nasty thing to do, and pirates were pretty nasty, so it seems like something they would do. But in fact walking the plank was imagined by Robert Louis Stevenson, a 19th century novelist, whose most famous book is Treasure Island. A fictional pirate like Long John Silver might make you walk the plank, but a real-life pirate never would. That is what was going through Tommy’s mind as he stood on the end of the plank staring out at his doom. His best friend Jack stood behind him. Tommy felt the point of Jack’s wooden sword digging into his back. “I said, walllllk the plank!” shouted Jack. “The thing is,” said Tommy, “pirates never really made people walk the plank. That was invented by Robert Louis Stevenson, who—” “I’m a pirate! Do you think I care about books?” They were standing on the edge of Jack’s tree house, which had a lot of uses. Sometimes it was a submarine. Sometimes it was a spaceship. Sometimes it was just a tree house. That afternoon, it was serving as a pirate ship. They had been pirates all afternoon, and everything was going fine until Tommy made the mistake of criticizing his captain. Jack was always the captain, since this was his tree house. And Captain Jack’s number one rule was that the crew must never question his orders. So when the Captain ordered his first mate to hand over three chocolate chip cookies, Tommy was supposed to do so without complaint. But chocolate chip cookies were his favorite. He’d suffered through a whole boring bologna sandwich to get to them, and now that he was finished, Jack wanted to take them away. Tommy didn’t care who was the captain. He stuffed all three cookies into his mouth and chewed as fast as he could. And so Captain Jack sentenced him to walk the plank. “I’m getting tired of waiting, Mister Tommy. Walllllk the plank!” Tommy looked at the ground. They had jumped out of the tree house tons of times, but it was easy when you had a running start. It would be harder to just walk into thin air. He could see why Robert Louis Stevenson thought this would be a scary thing. There was no way out. Unless…what would a pirate do? Tommy didn’t hesitate. He spun around as fast as he could and kicked his leg into the air. Jack’s sword went flying, and before Jack knew what had happened, Tommy leapt onto the sword. He popped up and pointed it at Jack’s back. “Yaaargh!” “What are you doing?” whined Jack. “This is a mutiny! I’m the captain now. And I say that you have to walllllk the plank!” © 2015 ReadWorks®, Inc. All rights reserved. ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § £ ¨ © ¤ ¢ §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