by Liz Kessler
“Then we know that the ship I saw wasn’t a shipwreck and wasn’t a ghost ship, either,” I said.
Aaron nodded. “Correct.”
“So what was it, then?” Mandy asked.
I looked at her. “I guess that’s what we need to find out.”
Aaron gazed around the room. “We need a computer,” he said. “We need to Google ‘Prosperous II.’ There’s bound to be some information on Wikipedia or something.”
“You’re right,” Mandy agreed. “I can hardly believe there’s no Internet on this entire island. I’ve tried to get reception on my phone about a hundred times.”
“Wait.” I’d had a thought. “There is a computer. Just one. Maybe it’s connected to the Internet.”
“Where is it?” Aaron asked.
“Lyle’s office.”
“Of course!” Mandy’s eyes beamed. “It is connected. I remember noticing a wire attached to a modem and thinking how quaint that it had to be wired up like that for Internet access. It’s probably the only place on the whole island where we can get online.”
“That’s fantastic!” Aaron said. “We just need to get back in there.”
“Hmm,” I said. “That’s not going to be the easiest task in the world, given the way our last encounter ended.”
“What, you mean the fact that he kicked us out of his office and then locked himself away in there and said he wasn’t going to talk to anyone else all day?” Aaron asked. “You think perhaps now isn’t the best time for us to go back in and ask him to do us a favor?”
I gave him a playful punch in the side. “Maybe not,” I agreed. “We need to distract him, somehow. Get him out of the office so we can sneak in and use his computer.”
Mandy was looking out of the window. “Hold on,” she said. “I think I’ve got an idea.”
Aaron and I watched from upstairs till we saw Lyle leave the Watchtower with Mandy. We were waiting quite a while. I guess it took quite a bit of persuasion for Mandy to get him to talk to her at all, let alone leave his office.
“Yes!” Aaron suddenly exclaimed. “She’s done it. Look.”
I glanced out the window in time to see Mandy leading Lyle along the cliff top toward a clump of bright-yellow flowers a few minutes’ walk away. Mandy had seen these from the window, and the plan was that she would ask Lyle as many questions as she could think of — about these, and the island’s plant life in general — to keep him talking and away from the Watchtower. While she was doing that, we’d use his computer to get online and find out anything we could about Prosperous II.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said. We scurried down the stairs to the ground floor, past the PRIVATE! NO ENTRY! door, and headed to the office. Luckily, Lyle had left it unlocked and we sneaked inside.
I followed Aaron around to Lyle’s chair behind his desk. I couldn’t help glancing at the photo of the woman in the frame. It was definitely the woman I’d seen through the porthole; I was sure of it.
Aaron and I both perched on Lyle’s chair, and Aaron typed “Prosperous II” into the search bar. The first page brought up links to a couple of art galleries, an Egyptian temple, three banks, and a quote from the Bible.
“Hang on.” I reached for the keyboard, this time typing, “Tall ship named Prosperous II.”
“That’s better,” Aaron said as the page loaded with links to tall ships. There were a lot of them.
“Wow. Seems like Prosperous is quite a popular name for a boat,” I murmured as we clicked on each link to see what it said. There were all sorts of ships — mostly modern ones, but a few older ones. None that looked like the one I’d seen.
“Try just searching for pictures,” I suggested.
Aaron clicked the IMAGES tab at the top of the page — and finally, we were getting somewhere. The page loaded with row after row of photos of ships — mostly tall ships, and many of them looking like the one I’d seen. I studied them all, scrolling down, row by row.
Finally, on about the twentieth row, I saw it. I jabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s it!”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. The writing on the hull looks exactly the same, and that dragon/mermaid figurehead would be hard to mistake. That’s the ship, definitely.”
Aaron clicked on the picture. More photos came up. Underneath them was a link with “Prosper Vacations. Go straight to website” written beside it. He clicked the link.
While we waited for the page to load, I got up and looked out the window. Lyle was still outside with Mandy. She was pointing to a tree halfway down the hillside. Lyle had his hands in his pockets and looked impatient to get away. Keep him talking, Mandy. Just a couple more minutes . . .
“It’s a passenger ship,” Aaron said.
“Like the original one?”
“Kind of. That one carried cargo, too, didn’t it?”
I tried to remember what the information in the folder had said. “Yes, I think so. Commercial goods and passengers.” I came back over to the computer and looked over his shoulder.
“This one is run by a vacation company.” Aaron clicked another button and a list of dates and prices came up. He whistled as he looked at the figures.
“A very exclusive vacation company, by the look of it,” I said.
“I’ll say.” He clicked on SEPTEMBER, and we studied the dates. “It sets sail every two weeks. And if this information is up-to-date, it looks like the most recent trip left last Monday, a week ago.”
“Does it say where it left from?” I asked.
“Can’t see anything.”
We studied the page. “Look — there, in the top corner.” I pointed at a square that contained a small picture of a map.
Aaron clicked the picture and the image opened up to full-size. A squiggly red line on the map indicated what was presumably the ship’s course. At various points along the line, there were numbers from one to fourteen.
“That must be where the ship is on each day,” I mused.
“I guess.”
“So last Monday was day one.” I followed the line, charting the ship’s journey. The first two days it skirted along the coast. The next two were spent out at sea. I got as far as day five.
“Aaron,” I said, my voice coming out like the rasp of a dying man. I couldn’t manage more than one word. Instead I just pointed at the number.
“Day five,” Aaron said. “What about it?”
I took the mouse and clicked to enlarge the map further. The area around the DAY FIVE mark filled the screen. The red line ran alongside an island — and from the picture, there was no doubt about which island it was.
Aaron let out a long breath. “It was due to arrive here,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
But the fact that the mysterious ship had been due to pass Fivebays Island last Friday wasn’t the weird thing. The weird thing was that it should have passed by quickly and moved on that same day.
So why hadn’t it continued its journey? Why wasn’t it three hundred miles out at sea by now? And why were Aaron and I the only ones who could see it?
The questions beat against my mind, mixing together with the picture of the woman’s face and her words: “Help us! Help us!”
I had no idea what any of this meant, but I knew one thing: the ship was somehow stuck — and until we could figure out how to free it, nothing else on this field trip was going to hold one iota of my attention.
“Em!” Aaron tugged at my sleeve. He’d stood up and was looking out the window. “Lyle’s coming back. We need to go.”
I shook myself out of my thoughts.
“Quick, close the web pages and let’s get out of here,” he said. I clicked the CLOSE button on all the pages we’d visited and prayed Lyle wouldn’t check the browser history and realize that someone had used his computer.
Aaron was by the door, looking out. “Ready?” he whispered. “We’ll have to go upstairs till he’s back in his office. If we walk out now, it’ll look too obvio
us.”
We scurried out of the office and up the spiral staircase just in time to see Lyle come back into the building, go into his office, and close the door behind him.
Once his office door was closed, I let out a breath as my knees almost buckled under me.
“You OK?” Aaron asked.
I shrugged. I had no idea whether or not I was OK. I didn’t have too much time to think about it, though; someone was coming up the stairs.
“There you are!” Mandy said. “Did you find anything?”
“Oh, yeah,” Aaron replied, “we found something!”
She beckoned us downstairs. “Great! Tell me about it on the way to lunch. Miss Platt says we’re joining Shiprock for a picnic at Sandy Bay.”
Aaron and I filled Mandy in as we made our way over to meet the others.
“So where do we go with this now?” Mandy asked as we arrived at the beach, echoing the question lurking in the back of my mind.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. We wandered down to the water’s edge, where the Shiprock kids were arriving. “Maybe Shona or Seth will have some ideas.”
We reached the shallow waves lapping softly onto the sand. “We’ll tell them everything over lunch,” Aaron said. “Surely, between the five of us, we should be able to come up with some kind of plan.”
Shona and Seth listened to the whole story as we ate our lunch and splashed in the soft waves.
Shona’s eyes had gone all wide and watery, like they always do when we start getting involved in an adventure. “This week is turning out to be so much more exciting than I’d thought it would be,” she breathed.
I couldn’t help wincing. She hadn’t seen the woman on the ship — her eyes scared and desperate.
I shook the image out of my mind and tried to think about the smiling version on Lyle’s desk instead. But that just made me confused. Who was this woman?
As if I’d spoken the question out loud, Mandy suddenly blurted out, “Do you think she’s his wife?”
We all turned to look at her.
“Lyle’s wife,” she went on. “I mean, she’s in a picture frame on his desk. Don’t you think that makes it quite likely?”
Mandy was right. And that would fit with the way Lyle had questioned me about the boat.
“It was when I said I hadn’t seen anything that he went all weird and said he didn’t want to talk to us anymore,” I mused.
Shona’s eyes had gone super sparkly. “Of course! She’s Lyle’s wife! She must be!”
“Even if she is, you know that doesn’t make this some kind of romantic love story!” I snapped.
Shona looked as if I’d slapped her.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “Sorry. I just —”
“No, I’m sorry,” Shona said. “You’re right. I’m getting carried away, being excited by a mystery, but you’re the one who’s seen all the scary things. I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I said. “But thanks.”
Seth was frowning, as though he were thinking hard. “Even if she is his wife, it doesn’t give us any more answers. If anything, it only raises more questions.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “And I would love to try to find some answers without creating more questions.”
Seth glanced at Aaron, then at me. “Well, you know what you have to do, don’t you?”
“I . . .”
Mandy broke in. “She has to talk to Lyle.”
“I do?”
Seth nodded. “He’s the only person who can tell you if the woman in the photo is his wife.”
“And if she is, he’s the only person who might know how she got onto that ship,” Mandy added.
They were right.
Aaron nodded. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “We’ll figure out exactly what to say. We’ll do it carefully, and we’ll do it together.”
I looked at him for a moment. His face was set and serious. “OK,” I agreed. “Thank you.”
“Good luck,” Seth said. “I’ll check in with you in a few days to see how you’re doing.”
“In a few days? What do you mean?” Aaron asked.
“Unfortunately, duty calls.”
“Seth’s been summoned back to work,” Shona explained. “Seems Neptune’s getting his tail in a tizzy without him.”
“I’m heading off this evening on the high tide. I’m hoping I can come back before the end of the week, but you know Neptune. I’m sure he’ll have a hundred urgent matters that need dealing with before then.”
“We’ll miss you,” Aaron said.
I was still lost in my thoughts about Lyle and the ship, so I only half took in what Seth was saying. But something about what he’d said was nudging at me. “When’s high tide?” I asked.
“About six-ish. Just before. Why?”
It had been high tide when I’d seen the ship in the channel yesterday, which would have been about an hour earlier than today’s high tide. What about the first time? When had that been?
“Aaron, when did we find that chair?” I asked.
Aaron turned to me. “Huh? Yesterday!”
“No. I mean, what time?”
He frowned. “Can’t remember. It was in the morning. Maybe eleven? Eleven thirty?”
I nodded.
“Why?” Mandy asked.
“It’s nothing,” I said. But was it nothing? If high tide had been just after five yesterday, low tide would have been about six hours earlier — which would have been around the same time that Aaron and I saw the ship. Was it significant? Could the tides have anything to do with us seeing it? If so, did that mean we might be able to see it again at high tide tonight? Did I want to see it again?
Aaron was looking at me, with a You sure you’re OK? expression on his face.
“What are you thinking?” Shona asked.
I shrugged. “It’s just . . . the ship. I think it was high tide when I saw it the second time.”
Shona jumped in the waves, her tail flicking a bit of water in my eye. I rubbed it away. “It was!” she said. “Because, remember, we had to meet up just after high tide, and we were the last ones to the beach. So I figure it was probably exactly high tide while we were out there.”
“And that’s why you were asking about when we found the chair,” Aaron mused.
“But if that was in the morning, it couldn’t have been high tide then, too,” Mandy said.
“No,” Seth agreed, “but it could have been low tide.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I think it might have been on the low and high tides that I saw it. Not that that helps us understand any more about it.”
“Maybe not,” Aaron admitted, “but any connections we can make are better than none at all.”
I nodded. “Yeah, let’s hope so.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Shona said. “Let’s meet later, when Seth has to go. He leaves on the high tide, so if we’re right that the ship has got something to do with the tides, perhaps you’ll see it again.”
“It’s worth a try,” Aaron said. “Maybe we could swim the first part of his journey with him. Head out toward where you saw the ship.”
A shiver ran down my spine, like a cold piece of seaweed brushing against me. Did I want to see the ship up close again? The people? The woman?
On the other hand, could I really leave all these questions unanswered?
“OK, it sounds like a plan,” I said eventually. “But what about you, Mandy?”
“I’ll cover for you back at the cabin. We’ll have free time then, but if you’re not back when we sit down for dinner at seven, I’ll come up with an excuse for you.”
I caught Mandy’s eye. “Thank you,” I said — and I hoped she knew I was thanking her for much more than just making up an excuse for us to skip dinner.
She held my look for a moment. “Yeah, it’s cool,” she replied.
“Swishy!” Shona said. “Then, after dinner, you guys can go to see Lyle.”
“All of which means that by
tomorrow morning, one way or another, we should have at least a few answers to all these mysterious questions,” Aaron said.
“All right, children. You’ve had long enough for your lunch.” Miss Platt was standing up and wiping sand from her skirt. “We’re going to form interschool groups for this afternoon’s activity. First of all, we’d like you to share what you’ve found out this morning.”
I smiled at the others. Well, we’d already done that. Maybe we’d get the afternoon off.
“And once you’ve done that,” Miss Platt continued, dashing my hopes of a free afternoon playing with my friends, “we’re going to meet at Pebble Bay, where we will start our geological study of the island’s interesting rock formations.”
“You’re kidding,” Mandy muttered. “Could they have thought of anything more boring than that?”
As if she’d heard us, Miss Platt added, “Remember, this is a school trip. It’s not a vacation. You are here to have a good time, but also to learn. Now, form groups, people — and this time, we want you to get together with people you haven’t teamed up with before. As well as everything else, we’re getting to know one another this week.” She paused and shot a look in our direction before adding, “If you join up with the same group of friends for every activity, you are hardly pursuing the cause of bringing two worlds together.”
“She means us,” Mandy grumbled.
“Seems like it,” Shona agreed. “I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Meet you at six, at Deep Blue Bay?” I suggested. “Mandy will cover for us at the cabin, and the rest of us will swim out with Seth from there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Aaron agreed as we broke up the group to find new people to talk to.
As we parted company and I teamed up with Gemma from my class, and Meryn and Gabe from Shiprock, I couldn’t help wondering if I was looking forward to meeting up with everyone again later — or dreading it.
The afternoon passed surprisingly quickly. Not that studying the geological formation of an island is interesting — but hanging out with new people and taking my mind off all the weird stuff was actually quite refreshing.
Which meant that six o’clock came around fast, and it was soon time to start facing all the question marks again.
