Margo turned to Shivers and said, “You’re the pirate. You tell me.”
But Shivers was already sprinting across the island, screaming, “THE TREASURE TORCH! WE FOUND IT!”
“Shivers, wait up!” Margo shouted.
She chased after him until they reached the base of the statue.
“What do we do now?” Margo asked, catching her breath.
“Well,” said Shivers, “if we want to find my parents, we should go where they went.”
“Where’s that?” Margo asked.
Shivers pointed to a sign at the base of the statue.
“My least favorite place,” he replied. “Up.”
MARGO WAS VERY PROUD of Shivers. They had almost reached the statue’s knee and he had not looked down once.
Suddenly, Margo slipped. She caught herself just in time on a hem of the statue’s robe. “That was a close one.”
“What was a close what?!” asked Shivers, a moment away from panicking.
“Nothing! Nothing.” Margo gave Shivers a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“AGGHH! What’s on my shoulder?” Shivers screamed. “Is it a hand?! Somebody lost a hand!”
“Shivers, it’s my hand!” Margo said, waving to show him. He sighed with relief. Margo knew this was going to be a long climb. She wanted to make sure it was going to be worth it. She asked Shivers, “You’re sure this is the Treasure Torch, right?”
“I know it is,” Shivers said. “My parents have told me stories about the Treasure Torch ever since I was a little kid. It’s the one treasure that every pirate wants and no pirate can seem to find.”
“Really? It’s right out in the open here,” Margo said. “Maybe you pirates need to get glasses.”
Shivers shrugged. Even without glasses, he could see her point.
“Did you ever know anyone who tried to get it?” Margo asked.
“My great-uncle Marvin went after it and we never heard from him again,” Shivers said. “But that’s okay because he was a grouch.”
They had reached the statue’s wrist now. Shivers hopped across it and climbed onto the statue’s left hand. He realized he was standing on a giant book.
“What’s this enormous book?” wondered Shivers. “Maybe it’s a clue.” He read the giant words on the book’s cover out loud. “‘July IV MDCCLXXVI.’”
Shivers scratched his head. He was thinking, but also his head was itchy. “Wow, whoever told them what to write on this book must have been talking with a mouth full of peanut butter. That stuff is like mouth glue,” he said. “Which is why I only eat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with no peanut butter.”
Margo couldn’t help but giggle. “Shivers, for someone who’s afraid of doing anything, you sure make doing everything a lot of fun.”
Shivers beamed. He was pretty sure that was a compliment. Then he had another idea. “I think the book is written in a secret code!”
“It IS a secret code!” Margo said. “And I learned it! It’s called Roman numerals. In English, the words say, ‘July Fourth, 1776.’”
“Why on earth would it say that?” Shivers asked.
“To celebrate the birthday of the United States,” Margo replied.
“You mean, the Statue of Liberty was a birthday present?” Shivers asked.
“That’s right!” said Margo.
Shivers was confused. “From who?”
“France!” said Margo. “In 1886, France gave the United States the Statue of Liberty as a present for its one-hundredth birthday.”
“Wow,” said Shivers. “How do you know that?”
“Well,” Margo said, “I guess Mrs. Beezle did teach me one useful thing.”
She smiled and ran back across the statue’s wrist. She climbed up the statue’s shoulder and Shivers followed. They scurried across the statue’s neck and under her chin. They grabbed on to her sleeve and swung themselves up to her right elbow.
“This is the most exciting adventure ever!” Margo announced.
“What about the kidnappers you tied up? Or the evildoers whose evil you undid?” Shivers asked.
“Oh, about that . . .” Margo blushed. “I may have . . . made those up.”
“Made them up?!”
“Well, I used to get so bored that I had to make up adventures. But now that I’ve met you, I don’t have to do that anymore,” she explained.
Shivers decided he wasn’t going to panic about this one. As far as he was concerned, Margo was still an expert adventurer.
They were almost at the top now, just a green giant’s arm’s length away from the Treasure Torch.
Margo was starting to wonder what they would find when they reached the torch. “Shivers?” she asked. “Why do pirates keep going after the Treasure Torch if it’s so dangerous?”
“Because it’s the best treasure in the world!” Shivers replied, hoisting himself onto the statue’s thumb.
“But how do they know it’s worth it?” Margo asked, close behind him.
Shivers jumped up and grabbed the base of the torch. “How do they know? Because it’s the one thing every pirate wants! Because it’s the best thing in the whole world! It’s made of solid gold!” Shivers hung from the side of the torch, his legs dangling in the air. “And we’ve found it!” he shouted, swinging himself onto the top of the Treasure Torch.
But instead of landing on solid gold, his feet started to sink into the torch flame. The torch was not made of gold at all. It was filled with mush that looked like gold from far away, but was more like a swirl of yellow ice cream up close. Shivers could not tell what the mush was, only that it smelled a little spicy.
“Shivers!” Margo shouted.
Shivers was sinking into the gold-colored goo like it was quicksand. “This isn’t the Treasure Torch!” he cried. “The Treasure Torch is solid gold! Somebody must have stolen it!”
“Grab my hand!” Margo screamed.
“Okay!” Shivers yelled. He grabbed Margo’s hand and pulled her into the muck.
Margo sighed. “I meant so I could pull you out, not so you could pull me in.”
“Oh, that would have been a good idea. . . .” Shivers said as their heads sank under the yellow sludge, and they were sucked into a pitch-dark tunnel.
(We had to skip CHAPTER THIRTEEN for obvious reasons)
THE PITCH-DARK TUNNEL SPAT Shivers and Margo out into a cold, damp room. They landed on the stone floor with a thud. They were covered in the spicy yellow slime. Margo dragged herself to her feet and turned to Shivers. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Shivers was shivering so much he could hardly speak. “Th-th-that . . . wa-wa-was . . .”
“That was what?” Margo asked, though she had a feeling she knew the answer.
“TERRIFYING!!!” Shivers screamed. “What happened to the real Treasure Torch?! It was supposed to be made of gold!” He shook his arm, trying to get the yellow glop off his sleeve.
“It’s all very suspicious,” Margo agreed. “What if there is no Treasure Torch?”
But before Shivers could even consider the possibility, the door flew open and two huge guards stared down at them. One guard had a shiny bald head and the other had a single bushy eyebrow that stretched the length of his forehead.
“Congratulations,” said the guard with the eyebrow.
Shivers stopped shivering. “Did we win something?”
“Yeah, you won something.” The bald guard sneered.
“All right!” Shivers gave Margo a high five. “What did we win?”
“A new job,” said the guard with the eyebrow.
“As a pillow tester?” Shivers asked hopefully.
“No,” said the bald guard. In the blink of an eye, the guards snapped heavy chains around Shivers’s and Margo’s ankles.
“As a chain tester?” asked Shivers, still really excited about the prize.
“No,” said the bald guard. “You’ll see.”
The guards dragged Shivers and Margo into a dark hallway. At the
other end, a door opened, shooting a beam of light down the hall and revealing a tall, thin man holding a long, sharp sword. Shivers eyed the guards nervously and said, “Um . . . why don’t you two go ahead, and Margo and I will catch up.”
“KETCHUP?!!!” the man at the end of the hall bellowed. “Who said anything about ketchup?!!”
He stepped forward and Shivers thought he must be some kind of chef. He was wearing a tall white hat and a long starched apron. “Bonjour! I am the great Mustardio,” he announced. “And this is what I think of ketchup.” He threw a tomato up in the air and stabbed it through the middle with his sword.
Shivers screamed. Margo licked a little yellow spot off her sleeve. “I knew this stuff looked familiar. It’s mustard!”
“Smart girl,” said Mustardio. Shivers noticed that the frightening chef had a French accent. He was about to tell him how funny he sounded, but Margo stepped forward first. “Mr. Mustardio?” she asked. “What happened to the Treasure Torch?”
“The Treasure Torch?” Mustardio laughed. “The Treasure Torch has been gone for years. I replaced it with a mustard torch long ago! So that every silly pirate who set out on the Eastern Seas searching for the most famous treasure of all would fall into my mustard trap. It’s a perfect little swirl of deceit!”
“You mean,” Margo asked, “the real Treasure Torch is . . .”
“Nowhere near here!” snapped Mustardio. “Everyone who falls through the mustard must work in my factory for the rest of their lives! And you two are the latest fools to join!”
“So . . . that’s a no on the pillow-tester job, then?” Shivers asked.
Mustardio glared at Shivers. He turned on his heel, then marched down the hall to the doorway where the light was coming from. The guards pulled Shivers and Margo, forcing them to follow. Just as they stepped through the doorway, Mustardio bellowed, “Welcome to Mustardio’s hot-dog factory!”
Shivers and Margo were speechless. The factory was set up in a vast, high-ceilinged room. In the middle, there was a monstrous machine that creaked and wheezed as it spat hot dogs onto a conveyor belt. There were posters on the walls that could only have been hung by Mustardio.
“Where are we?” Shivers asked.
“The left foot of Liberty!” Mustardio shouted, his voice echoing off the walls, which were really just the insides of Lady Liberty’s toes. “The only part of the statue that’s completely off-limits to tourists.”
There were captured workers everywhere. As Shivers took a closer look, he saw that all the workers were . . . “Pirates,” he whispered. There were pirates pulling levers to grind meat, pirates using swords to chop relish, and pirates squirting mustard onto every hot dog. Shivers even thought he saw his great-uncle Marvin peeling onions in the back of the factory.
“Yes. Pirates are very good workers,” responded Mustardio, grinning wildly.
“Great!” said Shivers. “So, just set me up with a comfy chair, and I’ll be the hot-dog tester.”
“Wrong again,” said Mustardio. He pulled Shivers into the hot-dog assembly line.
“What am I supposed to do?” Shivers asked.
“You’re with the relish choppers,” Mustardio said. “Take this sword and chop.”
“No!” Shivers let out a little scream. “I never finished my sword training. Could I chop relish with a mop?”
“What kind of a pirate are you?” Mustardio asked.
“Well, it’s funny you should ask,” said Shivers. “It all started the day I was born—”
“I didn’t mean that as a real question!” Mustardio shouted. “Fine. You’ll be with the sauerkraut scoopers. Take this spoon—”
“Spoon! No way!” said Shivers.
“What’s wrong with a spoon?” Mustardio was getting frustrated.
“One wrong move and you could scoop your eye out!” said Shivers.
“Just take the spoon!” Mustardio insisted.
“Get it away from me!” Shivers screamed as Mustardio waved the spoon in his face.
In the next room, over at the pickling station, a woman heard Shivers’s scream. She dropped the cucumber she was pickling. A mother always knows her baby’s cry, and this woman had the biggest baby of them all. “Shivers?” she whispered.
“Tilda, what did you just say?” asked the tired man in chains beside her. The woman was Shivers’s mom, Tilda the Tormentor. The tired man was Shivers’s dad, Bob.
Tilda grabbed Bob’s arm and said, “He’s finally made it! Shivers is here to save us!” Tilda and Bob smiled two big bright grins.
Back at the assembly line, Shivers heard shouting from behind the wall. “Shivers!” said the voices. “We’re in here!” Just like parents always recognize their children’s cries, kids always recognize their parents’ shouts. And pirate parents shout a lot.
Shivers jumped for joy. “My parents!” he cried, turning to Mustardio. “You have my parents!”
Mustardio’s mouth broke into a snaggletoothed smile. “Guards!” he ordered. “Bring them in!”
When the guards brought Shivers’s parents in from the pickling station, Shivers noticed they looked different. Their eyes were filled with fear and they both smelled like pickles. And what was worse, there was no sign of Shivers’s brave brother, Brock.
“Shivers, you made it!” said his mom. She tried to hug him, but Mustardio stepped in the way.
“So, this is Shivers!” Mustardio laughed. “You said he was the most feared pirate in all the land!”
“They did?” asked Shivers.
“He is!” insisted Tilda the Tormentor.
“You’d better watch your back!” added Bob.
“He can’t even hold a spoon,” snickered Mustardio.
Shivers’s face turned red. “I can hold a spoon,” he explained. “I just choose not to because I don’t want to scoop my eye out! My parents always said, ‘Safety first!’”
“No, Shivers,” said Bob. “We always said, ‘Safety’s worst!’” Bob and Tilda threw their hands up in despair.
“So, this is the pirate you’ve been counting on to save you,” said Mustardio. “The pirate who brings along a little girl to keep him safe.” He tossed the spoon to Margo, who caught it angrily. “Look, everyone,” Mustardio said sarcastically, “the little girl isn’t afraid to hold a spoon! Isn’t she fierce!” There was an uproar of laughter from all of the guards.
“Little girl?!” Margo rattled her chains. “My name is Margo and I’m the strongest, bravest, toughest—wait a minute!” She narrowed her eyes at the mustard bottles lining the factory shelves. “Shivers, what does it say on that mustard bottle?”
Shivers read one of the labels. “‘French’s.’ Wow, that’s funny! You just told me that the Statue of Liberty came from France!”
“Exactly!” Margo cried. “Connect the dots! When France gave us the Statue of Liberty, it must have really been a hot-dog factory so that they could sell French’s mustard all over the country!”
Mustardio shouted, “Stop it! Stop connecting the dots!”
Margo continued, “Now the only question is, was there ever a real Treasure Torch?”
Mustardio snapped back, “Of course there was! But in order to sell more mustard I needed more hot dogs. I needed workers to keep up. When pesky pirates started trying to steal the Treasure Torch off the top of the statue, I replaced it with a mustard trap. From that day on, the pirates have worked for me!”
“So where is the real Treasure Torch now?” Margo pressed on.
“Don’t worry, it’s safe!” Mustardio cackled. “And you’ll never find it!”
Before Margo could ask any more questions, Mustardio snapped his fingers and an enormous guard marched to his side. “Throw that girl in the Bungeon!” he commanded.
“I’m not afraid of a dungeon!” shouted Margo.
“I said BUNgeon!” cried Mustardio. “We store the buns in there.”
The guard grabbed Margo by her shoulders. He was wearing a black hood over his head so that sh
e couldn’t see his face. This made him look like the least friendly guard in the world.
“No!” cried Shivers as he watched the guard lead Margo down a flight of stairs toward the Bungeon.
“Enough talking!” shouted Mustardio, clapping his hands. “We’ve got hot dogs to assemble.”
THE BALD GUARD PULLED Shivers and his parents over to the conveyor belt.
Mustardio declared, “Since you’re too afraid to hold a sword or a spoon, your whole family will work the mustard squirting station . . . for the rest of your lives!”
Shivers flinched in fear.
Mustardio snapped his fingers and one of the pirate workers pulled a lever. Shivers heard the sound of old gears grinding and the giant conveyor belt started rolling twice as fast as before.
Shivers saw hundreds of slimy hot dogs fall from an enormous meat grinder onto the belt. As each hot dog moved through the assembly line, the pirates put it together piece by piece like a big, tasty puzzle.
First, a pirate would hoist a bucket of buns up from the Bungeon. Then another pirate would put the buns on the conveyor belt, and another would place the hot dogs in the buns. As the dogs moved down the conveyor belt, another pirate would top each one with chopped relish. Then the dogs would roll on to the sauerkraut scooping station, and then to the onion station. Finally, the dogs would arrive at the mustard station, where Shivers and his parents would do the job they were to do for the rest of their lives: PLOP. The yellow mustard squirted onto the hot dogs.
“It’s perfect!” Mustardio shouted. “They’re all perfect!” He picked up one of the hot dogs and did a little dance with it.
While Mustardio celebrated, Shivers managed to whisper to his dad, “Where’s Brock?”
“Yesterday Mustardio threw him in the Bungeon,” Bob whispered back sadly. “We haven’t seen him since.”
The Pirate Who's Afraid of Everything Page 6
