“Chya,” said Tommy. “Like, together, we can save Bick and Beck’s butts. Repeatedly.”
Dad chuckled. “We can also find a certain privateer’s treasure.”
He held up a single black coin and rubbed it clean with his thumb. With the oxidation scraped off, the coin revealed itself to be silver. It sparkled and shimmered in the sun—way more than that tuna fish Beck and I went chasing after.
CHAPTER 5
Seems Mom, Dad, and Tommy had found the sunken Port Au Prince (exactly where Dad’s dive computer said it would be) but had to scurry away from the shipwreck with only one silver coin when they saw Beck and me tangled up in a tango with an eight-legged monster.
“Everybody recheck their gear,” said Dad. “We’re going back down. Let’s grab the metal detectors and dive nets.”
“This is going to be quite a haul,” said Mom. “On first inspection, the cargo hold looked to be loaded with treasure chests.”
“Woo-hoo!” shouted Tommy. “We’re gonna be rich.”
“Actually, Thomas,” said Dad, “we already have more money than we’ll ever need.”
“Even if, someday, I want to buy, like, a Maserati or a Lamborghini?”
“You can buy those with your own money, Tommy,” said Mom. “Any treasure we find down below will be immediately donated to the Tonga National Museum in Nuku’alofa.”
“But then we’re heading on to Australia to search for Lasseter’s Gold,” I said. “Right?”
“Indeed, we are,” said Uncle Richie, getting kind of wound up. “For it is the stuff of myth and legend! The most famous of all of Australia’s long-lost treasures. Imagine, an inland reef, hidden in the desert, rich with gold.”
Tommy raised his hand.
“Yes, Tommy?” said Mom.
“Are we gonna donate all of Lasseter’s Gold to a museum when we find it?”
“We will give it to whomever deserves it,” said Dad.
“Fine,” said Tommy, sounding sort of sullen. “Whatever.”
I think he really wanted to buy a snazzy car.
“First things first,” said Mom. “Before we head off to Australia…”
“Which is still three thousand two hundred and thirty-nine miles away,” added Storm.
“Thank you, Stephanie,” said Mom, who, by the way, is one of the few people allowed to call Storm by her real name. Dad and Uncle Richie are the other two. “Before we even think about Australia and Lasseter’s Gold, we need to retrieve the Port Au Prince’s silver and jewels!”
So, we all went through our pre-dive checks once again and grabbed the extra gear we’d need for finding and then hauling the treasure up to the surface. We tumbled and scissor-kicked back into the ocean. This time, Beck and I were behind Mom and Dad but in front of Tommy. When I glanced over my shoulder, he did one of those two fingers to his eyes, two fingers to me, two fingers back to his eyes gestures. Yep. He would be watching us.
Hauling treasure out of a sunken hull is always a blast.
We use a metal detector to sweep the barnacle-encrusted wreckage to make sure we don’t miss anything. Then we load dive nets with as much loot as they can hold.
Working together, we had five big bags stuffed with silver candlesticks, gold crosses, and jeweled goblets. The museum in Tonga would probably need a new wing to house it all.
Mom gave the signal and we headed back up, dragging our bulging treasure nets behind us. When we broke through the surface of the water, we noticed something peculiar.
Another boat was docked right next to ours. The Venus was stenciled across its stern. From our vantage point, bobbing up and down in the water, we could see Uncle Richie and Storm chatting with a giant of a woman. She had to be six feet tall with long blond dreadlocks streaming out of her wide red bandana. Even though the sun was scorching hot, she wore a waxy-looking long coat and boots up to her knees. Two men, with muscles nearly as thick and big as hers, were standing beside her. The lady looked like an Amazon warrior. And not the kind that sells things online.
CHAPTER 6
Tommy was open-mouth gawking at the lady who had to be at least ten years older than him.
“I think I’m in love,” he blubbered.
In case you didn’t know, Tommy falls head over heels in love on a regular basis. It’s why Mom and Dad nicknamed him Tailspin Tommy.
He started swimming for our ship, faster than I’ve ever seen him swim before—even though he was hauling two heavy, treasure-filled dive bags behind him. The guy moved like a torpedo slicing through the waves.
Yep. He was definitely tailspinning again.
Beck and I swam after him. So did Mom and Dad. But Tommy beat us all to the dive ladder, clambered up, dumped his treasure bags on the deck, and tried his best to look suave and cool, which is kind of hard to do when you’re dressed like a frogman with an oxygen tank strapped to your back.
“Hey,” I heard him say to the lady when we were all back on deck. “I’m Tommy. And you must be… gorgeous!”
Storm rolled her eyes. Beck did her famous “gag me now” gesture. Mom and Dad both shook their heads. We were all kind of used to Tommy and his tailspinning.
Fortunately, the lady laughed. A big, boisterous laugh. Uncle Richie joined in. Then the two big guys behind the lady laughed, too.
“G’day to you, Tommy,” said the lady. “I’m Charlotte Badger. These are my mates from down under, Banjo and Croc.”
“G’day,” said the two men, who had very stubbly beards, lots of piercings, and more arm tattoos than a Maori warrior.
“Ms. Badger and her esteemed associates hail from Australia,” said Uncle Richie. “They might be able to offer us invaluable assistance in our quest for Lasseter’s Gold.”
“Be happy to help, mate,” said Ms. Badger.
“Bully!”
I’m not sure if Uncle Richie was supposed to be discussing our Australian treasure hunt with total strangers. But it was our main mission. And if the lady was from Australia, she might be able to help us find one of the biggest missing treasures in the whole world: Lasseter’s Gold!
“I see you lot already beat us to the Port Au Prince,” said the lady, gesturing to dive nets loaded with clinking treasure we’d flung up on the deck. “Good on you. You did a bonzer job. My mates and I do a wee bit of treasure hunting ourselves from time to time. But you beat us to this beaut, fair and square.”
“I’m Dr. Thomas Kidd,” said Dad, stepping forward to shake Ms. Badger’s hand. “I take it you’ve already met Storm and Uncle Richie.”
“We’ve yabbered. They’re both bobby-dazzlers.”
“Well, this is my wife Sue. Our twins, Beck and Bick. And, of course, our oldest, Thomas.”
Tommy wiggle-waggled his eyebrows. “I think I just found all the treasure I’ll ever need,” he said to Ms. Badger. “You!”
Ms. Badger boomed up another big laugh. Banjo and Croc echoed it.
“Ripper!” she said. “You’re a fair dinkum dag, aren’t you, now?”
“Huh?” said Tommy.
“A genuine funny fellow,” Ms. Badger explained. “You’re also kind of cute.”
She winked at Tommy. He actually blushed.
Ms. Badger squinted up at the sun. “Cooee. Comin’ on a scorcher. Mind if we head belowdecks? If you have a map of the Aussie Outback, I can give you some ridgy-didge intel on where Lasseter’s buried reef of solid gold might be.”
“Ridgy-didge means genuine, authentic, or true,” said Storm, who’d probably spent our dive time memorizing an Australian slang dictionary.
“Well,” said Dad. “We already—”
“Let’s go down below!” said Tommy, cutting Dad off. “We can show you The Room, too!”
“Thomas?” said Mom, shaking her head.
Tommy acted like he didn’t hear Mom or see the way Dad was frowning at him.
“Oooh,” purred Ms. Badger. “What’s in ‘the room,’ Tommy?”
“All sorts of super-cool stuff. It’s like a fl
oating treasure museum!”
It’s also filled with top-secret stuff—like charts and treasure maps and highly classified research that Mom, Dad, and Storm do to plot our quests. The Room was where they figured out how to pinpoint the Port Au Prince. Everything in The Room is usually protected by The Door, a heavy-duty bank vault–type thing made out of thick steel, and sealed by The Lock, which you can only open if you have The Key.
Yes, everything about The Room is spoken about in capital letters. It’s that high security.
And now Tommy wanted to show it off to a perfect stranger, just because she was pretty?
“Come on, Charlotte,” he said. “Right this way.”
Of course he did.
CHAPTER 7
Have you ever fast-cleaned your room in the fifteen seconds you had before your parents stepped through the door?
That’s what Mom and Dad did. They hurried down belowdecks before anybody else and told Tommy to make sure he showed Ms. Badger “his incredible hiding place” in the galley.
So, Tommy showed Ms. Badger the secret compartment he built for stashing his hot sauce collection.
“See? You tap this pine knot, a cabinet door flips open, and there’s my Tapatío, my Jamaican, my Frank’s RedHot, and, of course, my El Yucateco Green Habanero.”
That slight side trip bought Mom and Dad just enough time to toss blankets and towels and sheets and foul weather gear over whatever they didn’t want an outsider to see in The Room. They even spun around the corkboards cluttered with pinned-up papers and charts and maps and aerial photographs for our upcoming Australian adventure. The back sides linked together like a block puzzle to create a decorative mural: an innocent image of a friendly mermaid swimming with an even friendlier dolphin.
When Tommy and Charlotte finally drifted into The Room, followed by me, Beck, Storm, and Uncle Richie, all anybody could see was that mural and a couple of display cases filled with art, artifacts, and antiquities.
“And right there,” said Tommy, proudly pointing to the cabinets, “you can see some of the treasure junk we’ve found over the years. That’s a conquistador helmet. We think it used to belong to a conquistador.”
“Impressive, mate,” said Charlotte with a whistle.
“Yeah,” said Tommy, picking up a heavy jade Buddha statue. He curled it as if it were a dumbbell. His biceps bulged. “A lot of the ladies say that about me.”
“What’s this one here?” Charlotte picked up an empty jar.
“Careful,” urged Mom, trying her best to smile. “That’s a rare piece of pre-Columbian pottery.”
“Coo. I like this brass incense burner, too,” said Charlotte, putting down the clay pot and hoisting the next treasure out of its display case.
“It’s shaped like a Hindu goddess,” said Beck.
“Just like you,” Tommy said to Charlotte. Then he wiggled his eyebrows some more.
Charlotte Badger laughed. “Crikey, you’re a right bosker bloke, Tommy.” She put the incense burner back in its cabinet. “Now then, let’s talk about Lasseter’s Gold. Australia’s most prized and elusive treasure.”
“Bully!” said Uncle Richie. “Such is this family’s current quest. What can you tell us about it, Ms. Badger?”
“Only this,” said the powerfully built, towering woman (she had to duck down a little to keep her dreadlocks from scraping the ceiling). “You’d have to be barmy as a bandicoot to go lookin’ for it. A real ningnong.”
We all looked to Storm. She translated: “We’d be nuts to try and find it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“First off,” said Ms. Badger, “it’s probably just a legend made up by a dipstick who couldn’t give cheese away at a rat’s birthday party. Second, if it does exist, it’s situated in the sweltering Outback where it’s so blistering hot the crows fly backward to keep the sun out of their eyes.”
“Um, is there a third reason we shouldn’t go?” I asked squeamishly.
“Too right. In fact, it’s the most important reason of them all.”
“What is it?” asked Tommy, his eyes widening.
Charlotte Badger jabbed a thumb toward the ceiling. “Me and my mates, Banjo and Croc, will find it long before you lot ever do.”
“Excuse me?” said Dad.
“I told you, old man,” said Ms. Badger, with a laugh. “We’re treasure hunters. Oh, sure, you might’ve beaten us to the Port Au Prince here in Tonga but you’ll never beat us back home in Oz.”
Dad narrowed his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
Ms. Badger grinned. It wasn’t a pretty one. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough, Dr. Kidd.”
She started backing up toward The Door. Tommy, who was the closest, might’ve been able to grab her and stop her from escaping but he was too busy being heartbroken.
“You know,” Ms. Badger taunted, “for being so world famous, you Kidds sure are a dim lot. I’ve seen better heads on mugs of root beer. Word to the not-so-wise? Never leave two unattended pirates up on your deck while their pirate captain lures you down below—away from your sails and rigging.”
“You’re a pirate?” gasped Tommy.
“Aye, that I am.” She pulled a very long, very scary knife out of her duster coat. It was almost as long as a pirate’s swashbuckling sword.
She tossed back her head and laughed heartily.
Then she spun around, took strides the size of kangaroo hops, bounded out of The Room, dashed through the galley, and scrambled back up to the deck.
Beck and I raced after her.
When we scampered topside, we could hear her ship, The Venus, motoring away.
We could also hear our mainsail flapping in the breeze like a line of plastic pennants at a used car lot.
While we’d been downstairs, showing Ms. Badger Tommy’s hot sauce collection and a few of our favorite artifacts, Ms. Badger’s pirate buddies, Banjo and Croc, had cut our mainsail to shreds with knives and daggers that were probably even longer than hers.
CHAPTER 8
For a second, we all stood on deck, just staring up at our tattered sails as they snapped and flapped in the South Pacific breeze.
“This is all my fault!” said Tommy. “Again. How many times have I fallen for a pretty girl only to have her turn out to be some sort of nefarious spy or bad actor?”
“At least seven,” I said.
“Are you counting that Russian lady?” asked Beck.
“Oh, right. Forgot her. Probably eight. Maybe nine.”
Storm, who, of course, would know the precise number of femmes fatales that Tommy had been tricked by in our adventures, remained silent. Instead, she put a comforting hand on his shoulder and said, “Tommy, the only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”
“Bully for you, Storm!” cried Uncle Richie. “You memorized that book of Teddy Roosevelt motivational quotes I gave you.”
“She tricked us all, Thomas,” said Dad, clamping his hand on Tommy’s free shoulder.
“We knew the risks,” added Mom. “But your father and I thought Ms. Badger might be able to give us valuable information about the Outback.”
“Instead,” I cracked, “she played with our valuable treasures down below so her pirate pals could do incredible damage up here.”
“And,” said Uncle Richie, “if I may offer an observation, I believe Ms. Badger’s true intention was to damage more than the fabric in our mainsail, spinnaker, and jib. No, friends. I believe she intended to rip apart the fabric that holds this family together. If we’re bickering and blaming one another, then we can’t be pulling together to chase after her!”
“Chya,” said Tommy, a fiery light returning to his eyes. “Well, that’s not gonna happen, Uncle Richie. We’re gonna beat her to Australia! Then, after that, we’re gonna beat her to Lasseter’s Gold!”
“That’s the spirit, Thomas!” shouted Uncle Richie.
“Hear, hear!” echoed Mom, Dad, and Storm.
Beck and I were sti
ll a little skeptical.
“Um, exactly how are we going to do that?” I wondered aloud. “Our sailboat doesn’t have any sails.”
“So, what?” said Tommy. “The Lost can perform under sail or under power. If we tweak out the engines, maybe improvise a turbocharger, we can outrun that hunk of junk pirate ship. Dad, we should also check the compression valves and adjust our propeller height.”
“Of course,” said Dad. “Good thinking, Thomas!”
Storm nodded. “Raising the drives higher out of the water will improve speed because it will reduce drag.”
“And,” said Mom, “we have spare sails hidden in several secret compartments.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” said Tommy, suddenly sounding like the ship captain he was born to be. “I want the engines tweaked, the propellers raised, and new sails rigged and ready to run in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty?” I said, totally pumped by Tommy’s pep talk. “We can do it in fifteen!”
“Nah,” said Tommy, shooting me a wink. “We should give Charlotte Badger a head start. It’s only fair. She doesn’t know who she’s up against! We’re the Kidds.”
“Boo-yah!” I said. Then Beck and I knocked knuckles. We also floss-danced a little.
And then we went to work.
We rigged the sails with Mom and Storm.
Dad, Tommy, and Uncle Richie fiddled with the engines.
Twenty minutes later, we were ready to blast off. We still had three thousand miles of ocean to cross before we’d hit the port of Sydney, Australia. Traveling at about 26.8 knots (or 30.8 miles per hour), that meant it would take us maybe one hundred hours or 4.1666666 days. Yes, sometimes math comes in very handy, especially on a ship.
And on the morning of the fourth day, guess who we passed just as we cruised into Australia’s Sydney harbour?
That’s right.
Charlotte Badger and The Venus.
Treasure Hunters--The Plunder Down Under Page 2
