Legends of the Ghost Pirates

by M. D. Lee

  “What’d you find?” I ask.

  “Not much. I really wish we could find more about this Blarney Bart fellow,” she says.

  “Yeah, me too. I’d like to know if there really is treasure buried somewhere because I sure as heck would figure out how to get it.”

  Then an idea hits me. But I wish it hadn’t because I don’t like it. “You know who might know something about him?”

  Sara shrugs. I point to Gus Emery.

  “Why do you think he might know something about pirates? Just because he acts like one?” Sara asks.

  “I don’t know. It just seems somebody who’s been around as long as he has and works on the water with lobstermen and fishermen might know a little about Blarney Bart.

  “Hmm…I don’t know, Fisher. He’ll bite our heads off if we try and talk to him.”

  “I think it’s worth a shot. I tell you what, we’ll wait until he’s done then we’ll go over to his lobster pound and talk to him there.”

  “Okay,” Sara says as she closes the book. “But this is your idea, so you do the talking.”

  Standing in front of Emery’s Lobster Pound, both of us set our bikes against the side of the building. The parking lot is nothing more than white crushed shells and gravel with a big dumpster off to the side. There’s an awful smell coming out of the dumpster because whatever’s in it, probably old fish guts, is starting to rot in the warm summer sun. In the back of the building are old lobster pots, most covered with barnacles, which are in need of some sort of repair. At the green screen door, I push it open and let Sara go through.

  Scrunching her face and squinting at me, she says, “Thanks for being a gentleman.”

  Her sarcasm doesn’t bother me a bit.

  Inside the lobster pound is damp and about twenty degrees cooler. It’s because there are many holding tanks, each stuffed with live lobsters that has cold sea water circulating through. Also, it’s dark and takes a moment for our eyes to adjust. Sara crosses her arms and shivers a little while we look around.

  “I don’t see Mr. Emery,” I say. “But his truck’s parked out back.”

  Sara notices the sign first. Ring bell for service. But it’s an actual bell with a handle on it; a lot like the old school bells. I shrug, and grab the bell handle giving it a good loud shake. A moment later a door in the back opens then the spring slams it shut as Mr. Emery appears around a stack of empty holding tanks.

  His eyes squint when he sees us. “Oh. It’s you two. What’d ya want?”

  I’m not sure what to say to him. He’s actually a little shorter than me, but he looks like he could easily break a two by four over his knee.

  I’m about to turn for the door when Sara says, “You’re a man of the sea. We are hoping we can ask you some questions about…well…pirates.”

  His face turns into a sneering grin. “Pirates! What the thunder are you talking about? You think this is funny coming in here asking an old man stupid questions? Get outta here.”

  “No, we’re very serious, Mr. Emery,” Sara says in a very business-like tone. “We’ve looked through all the local history books on pirates, but there just isn’t that much written about them.”

  “So why do you think I’d know anything about them?” he says as he pulls a cigar out of his shirt pocket and jams it in his teeth.

  Sara continues, “You’ve worked on the water your whole life, so we figure maybe there’s old stories or something that’s passed down.”

  “What. Do you think we sit around all day singing sea chanteys about pirates? What do I look like to you, some kind of old fool?”

  Now Sara turns to leave, but I grab her hand. “It was my idea to talk to you,” I say looking him square in the eye. “I thought maybe you might know something about a pirate who was called Blarney Bart.”

  “Blarney Bart?” Gus Emery repeats in a low gruff voice. He pulls his unlit cigar from his mouth and for almost a minute looks at it as if it’s telling him something. It’s silent inside the lobster pound except for the gurgling of the sea water system. Sara and I both watch him closely. Finally he looks up from his cigar, squints at us and says, “I might know something about Bartholomew Bonney.”

  Chapter 5

  A Yarn

  Gus Emery nods at the table in the corner to for us to sit down. I look over at Sara and she now has Goosebumps on her crossed arms.

  “Can we sit somewhere else, Mr. Emery?” Sara asks. “I’m freezing in here.”

  “Suit yourself. In the back office, then.” He points to the door he previously came through.

  It’s not much of an office. There’s a desk shoved up against the window buried in stacks of paper, and two old steel chairs that are half rusted from the salt air. In the corner there’s an old milk crate with machinery parts. They must be spare parts to the sea water pump system in the lobster tanks.

  “Sit down,” he says. I look around, but I’m not exactly sure where he thinks we’re going to sit. I find a box I can sit on and Sara remains standing.

  “So you know something about this Blarney Bart?” Sara asks.

  Looking at his unlit cigar again, he sets it down on the corner of his desk. As he stares out the window, slowly he says, “You could say I’ve had my encounters with him.”

  I snap a glance at Sara and she catches my eye with an upset look. No one says anything for a moment.

  Finally I say, “What do you mean you’ve had encounters with him? He died sometime in the 1700s.”

  Gus Emery chuckles a little and turns around. “Remember, you asked.”

  Gus continues, “It was many years ago. I don’t recall the year. I was a young man and I had my first lobster boat.” A weak smile grows across his face as he remembers. “Well, the bank actually owned her. Anyway, I was tending my traps up in Sheepscot Bay just off The Cuckolds; there’s a ledge out there so I didn’t have to sink the traps too deep.”

  “It was a foggy morning, but it wasn’t so thick I couldn’t find my traps. Besides, I’d been out there so many times I coulda found the stinkin things blindfolded. I was hauling one of ’em when I sees this thing out of the corner of my eye. It startled me at first. I wasn’t expecting anything out there.” He runs a hand over his short white hair as he recalls what happened, but doesn’t say anything else.

  “Please, go on, Mr. Emery,” Sara says bringing him back from his thoughts.

  He’s not grinning any more. “It was a schooner. Not too big, just a two masted. There weren’t any coastal schooners left, not in these parts. And not one like that. But the damn thing was coming right for me. The strange thing was there was no wind that morning; it was still. But it was moving like it had a strong breeze. It had a bone in its teeth, I’ll tell ya.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  His eyes squint hard at me like he’s going to rip me in two. “Of course I’m sure, you fool!”

  He turns and looks back out the window. “I dropped the trap I was hauling and pushed the throttle to full. When I turned around it was still there, the same distance away. I was pushing almost twelve knots. I shoulda easily out-run it. But there it was, still coming right for me. Makes no sense.”

  He taps two fingers on the desk. “Here’s the part that still keeps me awake at night. It was so close I realized it had two cannons on her bow. Loaded or not, who the hell knows. I sure as rigger rats didn’t want to find out. I was never certain if they’re aimed at me; a simple lobster boat. I wasn’t out-running them; they had me. I reasoned if I stopped they could take whatever it was they wanted. I can’t imagine what the God’s name they’d wanted with a lobster boat. But they kept coming. Never slowed down. Got so close I could read the name on the bow; Queen’s Rose. It was about to run me over. Just as I was about to dive into the water for my life…it…just disappeared.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Clean your ears out, you fool!” he barks at me. “I said it disappeared, vanished, gone.”

  I look over at Sara. Her eyes are wide,
but she doesn’t dare say anything.

  “Makes no kinda sense.” he says. “My boat should have been turned to splinters.”

  I build up the courage and ask, “So what’s this got to do with Blarney Bart?”

  “Kid. You gonna let me tell the blasted story?” He turns back to look out the window. “Just before it shoulda sent me to the bottom, I see the figurehead. It wasn’t like other schooners; the kind with a half-naked blond mermaid. This one was different. It was a cougar’s head. A freaking cougar’s head bearing its teeth. And wings on its side. When I was a nipper there was a schoolyard song sung about Blarney Bart.”

  He closes his eyes remembering the past. In his gravelly voice he begins to say the lines, not quite singing, more like reading poetry.

  “Taking riches not of their own

  Blarney Bart chased as midnight shown

  The French feared the cougar’s head

  Soon the thieves would be dead”

  In a lower voice this time, he repeats the line. “Soon the thieves would be dead.”

  Gus Emery spins around with fire in his eyes. “You kids get the hell outta here! I shouldn’t of told you any of this. Scram!”

  I grab Sara’s arm because she looks like she’s going to ask him another question, but I pull her to the door.

  “But, Fisher…” she protests.

  “But, Fisher, nothing,” I say. “We heard enough.” I push her through the door and pull her over to our parked bikes.

  We are walking our bikes back toward Main Street thinking about the story we just heard. Sara is just staring straight ahead; she’s deep in thought.

  “So Blarney Bart is a ghost pirate,” I say, more to myself thinking out loud.

  Sara stops walking and brushes some loose hair out of her face. “You know what I think?” I shake my head no. “I think Gus Emery is just a creepy old guy who was trying to scare some kids.” She turns and keeps walking her bike.

  “But, Sara, you don’t get it. His schoolyard song’s the same one I found in the book.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s right here,” I say grabbing the book. After a few moments of flipping through the book I can’t seem to find the poem. “It was right here, I swear.”

  “Fisher. Honestly, a ghost pirate?”

  “What about that stuff about the figurehead. If we could find more out about it that would mean he’s telling the truth.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Sara says. “It could have been just a schoolyard song all the kids used to sing, and he remembered the lines and used it to try and scare us.”

  Then it hits me. “Didn’t he say something about lobstering off The Cuckolds?”

  “I think so,” Sara answers.

  Quickly I swing myself onto my bike and start pedaling. “Come on,” I shout back to Sara.

  When she catches up to me, out of breath she asks, “Where are we going?”

  “To Mr. P’s boat.”

  *

  While we’re walking down the dock in front of the Plankinton’s house toward the sailboat, Sara says, “What’s this all about?”

  “I’m not sure yet. There’s just something in the back of my mind I need to check out.”

  At the boat, we both hop onto the deck of the Sticky Wicket, and I grab Sara’s hand and take her below.

  With a slight smile growing across her face, she says, “Mmm…Fisher. I didn’t realize you wanted to make-out.”

  “No. Sara. I was…um… actually thinking about something else. She looks a little disappointed, but not too much.

  Underneath the table where we’re sitting, there are many charts of the area rolled up and neatly stacked. I have to unroll two of them before I find the chart I’m looking for. I spread it out on the small table and begin studying it.

  “What are we looking for?” Sara asks.

  “The Cuckolds. Remember he said he was just off The Cuckolds.”

  “Yeah. So?” Sara says. “I’m sure he didn’t make that part up. Finding The Cuckolds isn’t going to prove anything.”

  “That’s not what I’m after.” I continue to study the chart. It doesn’t take too long before I find it right where Gus Emery said it was, in Sheepscot Bay. I tap my finger on the spot. “Here it is.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Sara says. “What does that prove?”

  I run my finger from The Cuckolds, a short distance away, to a long narrow island just to the right; Damariscove Island. “Nobody but us knows the treasure is actually buried on Damariscove Island. It’s only in the logbook we found, right?” Sara shakes her head; she still doesn’t get it.

  “Don’t you see? If no one knows about a treasure on Damariscove Island, then Gus Emery couldn’t have made up the location about a ghost pirate. If it was a ghost pirate and it was protecting his treasure, this is where it would be.”

  Chapter 6

  Getting There

  Sara studies the chart where I have my finger pointed then looks back at me. “Fisher. You really believe the ghost of Blarney Bart is protecting his treasure?” she says with doubt. “I think Gus Emery just made all that up because we were bothering him. There’s no such thing as ghosts, and certainly no such thing as a ghost pirate.”

  I sit up in the bench still below deck on the sailboat. “I don’t know. This is Maine after all. Everyone seems to have at least one ghost story they know of. Heck, people have been dying here a lot longer than anywhere else in the country. So why couldn’t there be ghosts?”

  “Fisher, that’s just dumb. There’s no such thing as ghost pirates.” Sara stands and climbs the short ladder to the deck. “Only in the movies.”

  I poke my head out into the daylight. “Okay, let’s just say there’s no ghost pirates lurking around out there. But we do know for certain there was a captain named Bartholomew Bonney and he stole some treasure.”

  “Tax money,” she corrects me.

  “We also know he was a pirate…well…sort of a pirate, because the history books say he was. And we found his logbook, which no one knows about, telling us exactly where it’s buried. There just has to be treasure buried out there somewhere. I just know it. Sara, aren’t you just the least bit curious to see if there really is treasure?”

  A smile slowly grows across her face. “It would be kind of cool to find it for the sake of history. We’d be on all of the news stations as the kids who found Blarney Bart’s missing treasure. Then afterward we’d probably be asked to give talks and things at universities. Maybe even be offered a scholarship.”

  I jump up on deck with her. “Right! And the money. Think of all the money! What would you do with it?”

  She doesn’t think about it even for a second. “I’d use it to pay for school.”

  I roll my eyes. “Wouldn’t you want to use it for something cool? Like a little red convertible sports car?”

  “Being able to go to a big university is cool. It’s not cheap. It costs a lot of money to go to a school in Boston. Besides, I’m not going to have my driver’s license for another year so what would I do with some dumb car?”

  I give in. “Okay. So you’d use the money to go to school. So let’s go find the treasure. It’s practically in our hands already. Are you in?”

  She hesitates for a moment then looks at her feet. “I’m in, Fisher. But how are we going to get to Damariscove Island?”

  I shake my head. “I dunno.”

  “We’re going to need a plan,” Sara says.

  “I didn’t even see a ferry route marked on the chart. The island must be too small to have ferry service.”

  We sit quietly in the cockpit of the sailboat; the warm summer sun heats our backs, while we think about this for a few minutes. I look out across the water taking in the smell of the salt air.

  “I know how we can get out there,” I say finally, jumping up to my feet.

  “Me too. But let’s hear yours first,” she says.

  “While we were sitting down at
the pier, I noticed one of the lobster boats on a mooring had Damariscove Island ME painted on the transom.”

  “I don’t get it,” Sara says looking puzzled.

  “Don’t you see; if he has Damariscove Island painted on the transom that must be his home port. All boats have their home port painted on the back end. So whoever owns that boat must have a house or a mooring out there. Who knows, but maybe he can take us with him.”

  “Hmm…That might work,” Sara says not sounding too sure. “But how are we going to find the owner of the boat?”

  “That’s easy,” I answer. “I can just hang out at the pier until he shows up. When he does I just ask him if he can drop us off on the island.”

  “I guess it’s worth trying,” Sara says doubtful. “But I’m not convinced anyone’s just going to give us a ride out there because you ask him nicely.”

  I cross my arms. “Let’s hear your idea.”

  The sea breeze blows her brown hair slightly off to the side, and with her hand she brushes it back in place. “My dad has a friend who has a powerboat; a Boston Whaler, I think. Maybe if we ask him he’ll take us out there.”

  “That might work, too,” I say. “But the problem is we can’t tell him why we really want to go to the island; to look for treasure.”

  “All we have to tell him is we want to explore the island a little, maybe go for a hike,” Sara says. “And really, that’s probably all we’re going to end up doing anyway; just hiking around.”

  I lean against the mast. “Here’s what we do. I’ll go and hang out at the pier and see if I can find the lobsterman who owns the boat. While I’m doing that, you ask your dad if he’ll ask his friend to take us out to the island. One of our ideas has to work.”

  She stands up and lightly pokes a finger into my belly. “What are we waiting for?”

  *

  I’ve been sitting here for more than an hour and a half. Not much is happening on the pier. There’s only been one lobster boat that was loaded up on some bait. That only took him about fifteen minutes then he was off. I’m starting to think maybe this isn’t the best plan. I’ve got plenty of time while I’m sitting here to think up a new plan, but nothing’s coming to me. I’ll give this a little longer. I pick up some flat stones and skip them across the water.