by Penny Warner
There stood a pale-faced pirate, dressed all in white except for the inside of the cape.
The ghost pirate laughed, a booming hollow laugh that sounded as if it came from an echo chamber.
And then the ghost spoke: “Beware the spirit of Hippolyte de Bouchard, who haunts the mission in search of a long-lost treasure …”
The spooky fog faded away, along with the pirate.
The museum lights flickered back on.
“That was awesome!” Jody said.
“What was that?” M.E. asked.
“Did you see his face?” a student named Maile questioned.
Cody smiled. She knew the ghostly pirate had been Chad. She’d recognized his cowboy boots under the white bell-bottom pant legs. She wished docents on other field trips were as entertaining and exciting as he was.
Under Ms. Stad’s direction, the students began filing out of the room to prepare for the trek back to camp. Just outside, Cody spotted the pair she’d seen earlier at the museum lurking nearby. They leaned against the building, eyeing the kids. Creepy, Cody thought.
“Lima, Oscar, Oscar, Kilo,” Cody said to the other Code Busters as they gathered in groups outside. She was using the phonetic alphabet code to talk with her friends, so eavesdroppers—such as Longbeard and Jolly—wouldn’t understand what she was saying.
After receiving Cody’s message, Quinn, Luke, and M.E. glanced around to see what she was referring to.
“Whisker, Hotel, Echo, Romeo, Echo?” Quinn asked.
Cody nodded in the direction of the couple.
“Tango, Hotel, Echo, Mike!” M.E. said, recognizing the pair.
“Sierra, Uniform, Papa?” Luke asked.
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Cody shrugged. That’s what she wanted to know. Why were these two still hanging around? Something was going on. She only wished she knew what it was.
“All right, students,” called Ms. Stad. “It’s time to make your way back to camp. You’ll be following a new map. As you travel along, you’re to write down each trail marker you see. For example, if you see this marker”—she held up a sign that showed two parallel lines—“that means ‘bridge.’ If you find a bridge along your way, draw it on the map using the symbol for bridge that’s on the bottom left corner of your map. You get points for each of the symbols you find, so use your eagle eyes.”
“What do we win?” Matt the Brat called out.
“Nothing. It’s just for fun,” Ms. Stad announced.
Matt pumped his fist into the air and yelled “Yes!” before he realized there was no prize.
After waiting in line for their group to proceed down the path, the Code Busters began the trek back to camp. All four of them had a great time searching for items on the map. By the time they reached the end of the trail, they’d found them all.
“That was awesome!” M.E. said after they’d turned in their completed maps. The students spent the next half hour washing up and preparing for their campfire dinner of hot dogs, veggies, s’mores, and apple cider. After the meal, they gathered around the campfire for stories and songs, led by Luke and Quinn’s teacher, Mr. Pike.
First he led them in a round of “Silver and Gold”: “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”
“Now we’re going to sing some sailor shanties,” said Mr. Pike. “Does anyone know what a shanty is?”
“An old house?” offered a student named Lillian.
“It can be, but in this case, it means ‘to sing.’ It comes from the French word chanter.”
Cody wondered why so many words came from French. She remembered Ms. Stad telling the class that a lot of coded messages originated in France, like the one the French resistance used during World War II. They had code names, symbols, poetry, and even coded articles in newspapers. Using numbers to represent page numbers, lines, and words, people communicated without the enemy intercepting their messages.
“Sailors and pirates used to sing while working on their ships,” Mr. Pike continued, interrupting Cody’s wandering thoughts. “It helped keep the men together and lifted their spirits during long voyages at sea.”
Matt the Brat shouted, “Yeah, SpongeBob sings shanties on his show!
Mr. Pike nodded patiently, then continued. “A lot of shanties have double meanings that only the sailors and pirates understood. I’m going to teach you one tonight called ‘Blow the Man Down.’ Ready?
“Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!
“To me way-aye, blow the man down.
“Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow him right down!
“Give me some time to blow the man down!
“Do you know what this particular shanty is about?” asked the teacher.
Luke raised his hand. “The wind blew the pirates down?”
“Actually,” Mr. Pike said, “it refers to all the heavy work the pirates had to do aboard ship. The phrase ‘blow the man down’ really means ‘give me strength to do the work.’ Who knows the song ‘Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest’?”
Most of the hands went up.
Mr. Pike continued, “If you’ve read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, you might already know that Dead Man’s Chest is actually a small island in the Caribbean Sea. The story goes that Blackbeard the Pirate left fifteen of his men on the island to punish them for breaking the Pirate Code of Conduct. The worst thing a pirate could do was mutiny, which means to rebel against the captain or to leave the ship without permission. If he did, he could be marooned.”
Quinn raised his hand. “That happened in Pirates of the Caribbean. Captain Jack Sparrow was marooned after his men mutinied.”
Cody heard a couple of students say, “I loved that movie!”
“What’s the Pirate Code of Conduct?” asked a student named Thomas.
“Believe it or not, pirates did have rules,” said Mr. Pike. “Many of them covered things like how to share the loot and how the crew was paid. They even had a rule for turning out the lights and candles by eight o’clock. Every pirate had to sign a contract—or mark it with an X if he couldn’t read or write. And most of them couldn’t do either.”
Unable to read or write? Cody thought. How did they get along in life without being able to do that?
“We have to check out that Pirate Code of Conduct. It sounds awesome,” Quinn whispered to the others.
“I doubt it’s anything like our Code Buster rules,” M.E. said, grinning.
“Shall we sing ‘Blow the Man Down’ again?” Mr. Pike asked.
Once they’d sung the shanty three more times, the teacher announced, “Well, it’s eight thirty. According to the Pirates Code of Conduct, it’s past time for lights out.”
Cody heard groans from the other students, but she was tired from the day and ready to curl up in her sleeping bag. The girls took showers in the cinder-block latrine, dressed in their pajamas, and brushed their teeth—all while watching out for spiders.
Once they were snuggled in their sleeping bags, Cody found she couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe it was all those pirate stories that kept her awake. Or maybe it was the mystery of that strange couple arguing with Chad. Then again, maybe she was just excited about the possibility of a treasure hidden somewhere at the mission.
Rolling over on her stomach, she propped herself up on her elbows and peered out the mesh door of the small tent. Most of the other tents were dark, except for a few flashlights moving around inside.
Suddenly, Cody saw a flash of eerie light, coming from somewhere in the dark woods that surrounded the campsite.
The light began to flash on and off.
Cody began to recognize letters.
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Someone was sending a message in Morse code …
M.E.!” Cody whispered urgently, shaking her sleeping friend’s arm.
“Huh?” M.E. mumbled, then rubbed her ey
es and sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“Look! Outside the mosquito flap! I saw something …”
M.E.’s eyes widened, and she scrambled forward. “What is it? A bear? A wolf—”
“No!” Cody said, cutting her off before she scared both of them with her wild guesses. “Lights. Flashing on and off. I think someone is sending a Morse code message. Something about finding a map!”
M.E. peered through the mesh for a few seconds. “I don’t see anything. But I’m never going to be able to sleep tonight.”
“Keep watching! Over there.” Cody pointed in the direction where she’d seen the flashing light.
“It was probably just one of the teachers or parents, checking on the—” M.E. gasped. “I saw it! You’re right. It does look like Morse code. Someone’s out there!”
“Write this down,” Cody commanded, handing M.E. her notebook and a pencil.
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Once the girls had translated the message, they looked at each other.
“What does it mean?” M.E. asked Cody.
Cody shrugged. “You don’t suppose one of the boys sent that message …?”
“Luke or Quinn? But why? That makes no sense,” M.E. said.
Just then Cody heard her cell phone chirp. “A text.” She picked up the phone lying next to her sleeping bag and read the message.
“R U sending code?” The text was from Quinn.
“No,” Cody texted back. “Thot U wr.”
After a pause, she texted again: “Sup?”
“IDK. Something abt a map,” Quinn answered.
Cody thought about the map Chad had shown them. She pulled up the picture she’d snapped on her cell phone and studied it. Was this the map they were referring to? She opened the tent flap and leaned out, scanning the dark again for the flashing light.
There was nothing but pitch blackness in the trees around the camp. Whoever had been sending Morse code appeared to have vanished.
Another text chirped on Cody’s phone, again from Quinn. “We’ll CIO 2morrow. L8R.”
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M.E. snuggled back into her sleeping bag and pulled it up to her nose. Although she’d been frightened, it didn’t take her long to fall back asleep. Meanwhile, Cody kept watch for the next half hour, unable to relax. Finally feeling drowsy—and seeing no sign of the mysterious light again—she lay down in her bag and drifted off, dreaming of pirates.
The warm sun filtering in through the door of the tent woke Cody early the next morning. She turned to check on M.E. and found her friend still asleep. Cody checked her phone for messages and, finding none, gathered her clothes, towel, soap, and toothbrush, and headed for the latrine to get ready for the day.
By the time she returned, M.E. was up and dressed and holding Cody’s phone. “Quinn just texted. He said to meet him in the trees where we saw the light last night.”
Wondering what was up, Cody tucked her Pj’s into her sleeping bag, hung up her wet towel on a tree branch, and, together with M.E., headed for the spot where they’d seen the flashing light. Luke and Quinn were already there, scoping out the area.
“Did you find something?” Cody asked as she and M.E. reached the boys.
“Footprints,” Luke said, pointing to what looked like several large boot prints in the soft dirt.
“They look fresh, but I guess they could have been made any time in the past few days,” Quinn said.
“There’s no sign of a flashlight or map, is there?” M.E. asked, scouring the area around the footprints.
“Yeah, right,” Luke said. “Like they’d leave those behind.”
“I wonder if it was one of the teachers?” M.E. said. “Maybe Stad was practicing Morse code with another teacher so she could send us a message today. She loves codes about as much as we do.”
“I doubt it,” Quinn said. “Not that many kids would be able to translate it.”
Something caught Cody’s eye as she followed the boot prints leading deeper into the trees. The object was small, thin, and white, and sticking out of the ground. If she hadn’t been looking carefully, she might have missed it.
She knelt down for a closer look.
“Come here!” she called to the others. “I think I found something.”
“What is it?” M.E. asked, hurrying to Cody’s side. The gang knelt down around the object in the dirt, frowning at the discovery.
Cody reached for it.
“Don’t touch!” Quinn commanded.
“Why not?” Cody asked.
“Because it probably has germs.” Quinn grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt and used it to grasp the tip of the sharp object. He held it up.
A toothpick.
The kids looked at one another.
Then Quinn said aloud what they were all thinking: “Longbeard was here.”
Luke nodded. “He was chewing on a toothpick when we saw him. Remember, he spat one out at the museum.”
“Gross,” M.E. said, making a face.
Cody shivered, creeped out by the thought that the angry old man who’d been hassling Chad was the one hiding in the dark trees while she and her friends slept. What was he doing out here? Who was he signaling to?
The camp bell rang, calling the kids to breakfast. The Code Busters returned to Quinn’s tent to drop off the puzzling toothpick, but as they were about to leave, Cody saw Quinn staring at his backpack.
“What’s the matter?” Cody asked.
“My backpack. It was on the bed, and now it’s on the floor.” Quinn began rummaging through the pack. After pulling out all of his stuff, he sat back, frowning. “The map I copied … you know, the one the treasure hunter made?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s gone!”
“Boys and girls,” Ms. Stad called after the students had finished their buckwheat pancakes, bacon, and strawberries. “Gather ’round, please.”
Over breakfast the Code Busters had discussed the missing map. Who had gotten into Quinn’s backpack? Longbeard and Jolly? How had they gotten in without being seen? Was that the map they’d referred to in Morse code? And why would they want to steal it?
“It’s time for another day at the mission,” Ms. Stad continued, interrupting Cody’s thoughts. The students mumbled under their breath, excited about more map puzzles. Cody hoped they’d see Chad so she could ask him about Longbeard and Jolly. Maybe he knew why the old couple might want the map.
Each student was handed another of Ms. Stad’s maps for a return trip to the mission. This time they were given a list of objects to find when they reached the mission itself.
M.E. smiled. “This should be easy.”
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“Let’s search the area fast,” Quinn said, eager to find each of the objects in the puzzle. The Code Busters headed for the flower garden and jotted down the location on their maps, using the codes they’d been taught. Next, they headed for the courtyard fountain and marked it on the map. Finding all nine bells took some time, but Cody had kept an eye out for them earlier, since Ms. Stad had told them they’d be searching for the bells. They found the last one in the courtyard on top of a circular cement pedestal. Cody noticed this bell appeared to be cracked.
One of the docents had told the students that the bells were made out of bronze because they produced a nicer sound. But if the mixture of softer metals—tin, copper, lead—wasn’t accurate, the bell could crack.
Cody leaned in and ran her finger along the crack, wondering why the mission employees didn’t fix it. She thought she saw a glint of something bright deep within the crack. Could that be tin or copper?
“Come on, Cody,” Quinn said, interrupting her thoughts. “We still have a few more to find.”
Cody nodded, and they set off in search of the stone wall. By the time they were finished with the search, they realized they were the first ones to complete the chal
lenge.
Quinn looked at his military-style watch.
“We’ve got some time before the rest of the kids are done. Cody, let me see the picture you took of the treasure hunter’s map.”
Cody got out her phone, tapped the picture, and handed it to Quinn. The map filled the small screen. Enlarging it with his fingers, he pointed to a section of the map. “What’s that?”
“Enlarge it again,” Luke said.
“Looks like a drawing of a big rock,” Quinn said. They took turns studying it up close.
“Yeah? What’s so special about that?” Luke asked.
“Why would a big rock be noted on the map?” Quinn asked.
Before anyone could answer, Cody said, “Guys, look over there.” She pointed to the cemetery several yards away, where they’d found their last clue.
“I don’t see anything except a couple of gardeners.”
“Those aren’t gardeners,” Cody said. “Look at that beard!”
Finally, the others saw what she had: Longbeard and Jolly standing near a big rock. Each held a shovel.
“What are they doing?” M.E. asked.
“It looks like they’re planning to dig in the cemetery,” Cody said. “I’m pretty sure they shouldn’t be doing that.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re acting like gardeners. Did you see their matching shirts?” Luke said.
“Do you think they’re digging up old bones?” M.E. asked, watching them from behind a large bush.
“I’ll bet it’s the treasure they’re after, not bones,” Quinn said. “That’s probably why they stole our map. Come on. Let’s go get a closer look.”
The Code Busters headed for some nearby bushes, keeping out of sight of the two treasure hunters. When they reached their hiding place, Quinn turned around and finger-spelled:
After a few minutes, they inched closer to the cemetery. Cody held her breath and stepped carefully, not wanting to make a noise. Quinn stopped a few yards away from the couple, behind another large bush, and finger-spelled:
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