X Marks the Spot

by Tony Abbott

  “But they are Silver’s friends,” said the doctor.

  “As for Silver,” said the captain, “well, I haven’t made my mind up about him yet. He says he lost his leg fighting in the British Navy. Maybe he did. But I want all the gunpowder and guns put in the storage room next to our cabins. I want the weapons near us. Just in case.”

  “In other words, you fear a mutiny?” said the doctor.

  “I love a mutiny!” I said. “They show the movie during the day and it costs half price. What’s not to love?”

  Frankie shook her head. “That’s a matinee, Devin.”

  “A mutiny is when angry sailors take over the ship,” said Jim. “They take over the ship from the people who run the ship. In other words … from us.”

  I gulped. “Yikes. There are twenty-six in the crew besides us. We’re way outnumbered if they take over.”

  “Now you understand,” said the captain. “Be watchful, I say. Be watchful! Now, leave me alone!”

  He kicked open the door to his cabin and we all left.

  The next morning, Frankie and I were on deck, helping to tie up a huge barrel to the mast. The barrel was filled with apples. The squire had it brought on board to keep the sailors happy. I don’t know about them, but it made me happy. I love apples.

  While the crew was busy working the sails and pulling the ropes and doing all kinds of nautical stuff, Frankie and I had a chance to munch and talk.

  “Jim thinks the captain is all wrong,” said Frankie. “He believes Silver and the crew are very good men. They sure look like they know what they’re doing.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Not sure about that parrot, though. I don’t trust it. Those beady eyes. All those green feathers. I think it knows something about Mrs. Figglehopper’s lost bookmark—”

  “Knows something?” said Frankie. “It’s a parrot—”

  Suddenly, there was a great fluttering sound, and the parrot itself came down and sat on the apple barrel. It eyed me up and down with those big black eyes it has.

  “I really don’t trust you,” I said to the bird.

  Frankie shook her head. “Devin, this is silly. We have more important things to think about now—”

  I grumbled under my breath. “Maybe. But, know this, Mr. Flint Parrot Guy—I’m watching you!”

  “Watching you! Watching you!” he crowed back.

  “No, I’m watching you, you feather head—”

  “Feather brain! Feather brain!”

  I blinked. “Hey, I called you a feather head—”

  Frankie tugged on my shoulder. “Devin, you’re arguing with a parrot.”

  “Yeah, and he’s arguing back!”

  Day after day seemed to pass pretty quickly. Jim was kept fairly busy as cabin boy while Frankie and I shared the reading. Hey, it was better than doing some of the harder tasks of sailing a ship. Plus, it helped pass the time. Voyages across oceans can take weeks.

  In rough weather, we saw Long John Silver using his crutch to brace himself against the wind and waves. He turned out to be sturdier than most two-legged people. Of course, during that same rough weather, I kept falling out of my bunk bed. My nose even developed a callus.

  Frankie and I helped as best we could, not having done too much seafaring ourselves. Jim told us the parts of a ship and Long John cooked up special meals for us in the small kitchen. Once, as Jim, Frankie, and I slurped our soup, Silver told us about his days in the navy. Awesomely cool stuff. Like movies, only real.

  “I’ve sailed the seven seas and many others in my day,” he told us. “Danger? Lived with it every day. Adventure? I traveled the wide world in search of it.”

  “We’ve never been anywhere,” I said. “Except in books. Reading them, I mean. The words and stuff.”

  “Arrh! I knew a bookish person once, a lady—”

  “Lady! Lady!” crowed the parrot. I gave it the eye.

  Silver laid down his soup ladle. “Always reading books, she was. I never had time for them. Tried to make my fortune on the sea. Until I lost me leg. But, arrh, you children are as smart as paint, you are. What’s that book you have there, Frankie?”

  “It’s, um, uh, an adventure story,” she said.

  “Arrh, I’ve seen lots of that, me and Flint here.”

  “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” cried the bird.

  I looked at Flint. “Pieces of eight … feathers?”

  Silver slapped his crutch on the floor and laughed. “No, me lad! Pieces of eight is money! It’s gold coins. And Flint here knows all about money, don’t you?”

  It ruffled its green feathers in our faces.

  That evening, after the sun went down and Jim finished his cabin-boy duties, he and Frankie and I headed back up to the deck. The moon was out, and the Hispaniola was rolling steadily over the waves.

  “I’ve been on land my whole life,” said Jim. “But I do like the sea ….”

  I wagged my head. “I like to keep my feet on the ground. But if I have to be at sea, I like a big boat between me and the water.”

  The three of us wandered the deck and found ourselves near the huge apple barrel, which turned out to be one of my favorite places on the whole ship. I had a sudden urge to munch.

  “I’m way hungry,” I said.

  Frankie laughed. “But you just had some of Long John’s soup.”

  “And there’s still some room!” I said. I ran to the apple barrel and peered into its darkness. “Aha, one left!”

  “Mine,” said Frankie sneakily. She whipped past me and reached for it.

  I blocked her arm. “No, mine!”

  “No—mine!”

  “No—whoa!”

  We both tumbled into the barrel and grabbed for the apple. But Jim, laughing, leaped in first and got the apple before either of us. Like I said, it was a huge barrel.

  Just as we settled in to split the prize three ways, we heard some people coming. Before we could peep out to see who it was, one of them sat down, leaning heavily against the barrel.

  He began to speak. “Arrh …”

  Jim grinned. “It’s Silver,” he whispered.

  “Maybe he’ll tell us more old sea stories,” Frankie said. “Let’s go join him.”

  But before Silver had finished his first sentence we knew that if we showed ourselves, we’d be in big trouble.

  Make that Very Big Trouble.

  Chapter 9

  “Arrh, arrh!” Long John Silver was saying. “I tell ye, matey, it was grand in the days when Flint was my captain and I was his first mate!”

  I gulped. “Um … he’s not really talking about Flint the parrot, is he?”

  Jim shook his head. “Devin, I don’t think so ….”

  “Oh, the treasure me and the other buccaneers stole when we sailed together,” Silver went on.

  Frankie looked at me, her eyes gaping open. “Flint was his captain? I can’t believe it! They stole treasure? Jim, Devin, I think this pretty much proves it. Silver didn’t fight in the navy, he fought against the navy! Guys, he’s nothing but a … big old … pirate!”

  “One thing’s for sure,” I whispered. “I’m not eating his soup anymore!”

  Jim put a quivering finger to his lips. “Hush …”

  “I see, sir,” said the one Silver was talking to. “And what happened to Flint’s men?”

  I recognized the voice as one of the youngest of the sailors on board the ship. His name was Dick Depper. He obviously thought Silver was cool.

  “Why, most of the men be right here on this ship!” Silver replied. “Israel Hands and Tom Morgan and George Merry and Job Anderson—Flint’s men, all of them!”

  I went cold. Silver had just named four of the scariest-looking men in our crew. When he finished naming Flint’s other men, we realized that nearly the entire crew was pirates!

  “We’re way outnumbered here,” I whispered.

  “You are such a math whiz,” Frankie added. “Shhh.”

  “Now, look here,” said Sil
ver to the young seaman. “You’re young, but you’re as smart as paint to want to join us.”

  “I still don’t know what that means,” said Frankie.

  A few seconds later the two pirates were joined by Israel Hands, a sneaky, hunched-over pirate with gnarly skin and a long gray mustache drooping below his chin.

  “Ahoy there, evil mateys,” said Hands.

  “Arrh, arrh, to you, too,” said Silver.

  “Look here,” said Hands with a spitting sound in his voice. “I’ve had enough of the doctor and that dim squire and that captain! When do we steal the map and find our treasure?”

  “At the last possible moment, that’s when!” Silver growled. “Captain Smollett is better than any of you to sail this ship to the island. The squire and the doctor have got the treasure map. And they have all the guns and powder, don’t they? The squire may be dim, but he’s a crack shot with the rifle and pistol. So, the right thing is to let them find the treasure and bring it back on board without making trouble.”

  Frankie, Jim, and I stared at one another. With each word, the conversation got creepier and scarier.

  “And then?” asked Hands.

  Silver gave out a low laugh. “Arrh, my friend. We could maroon them ashore. But I know what happens if you maroon a man. He comes back later to haunt you. I plan to live as a gentleman after this, to ride my fancy coaches free and easy of walking ghosts, I tell you. When I’m rich, I don’t want no memories coming at my back. No, sir, my vote is death, clear and simple.”

  Death!

  I guess I knew what sort of character Long John Silver was. The bad kind. The very bad kind.

  And Mr. Wexler wanted me to do a report on him!

  “And if anyone gets wind of our plan?” asked Dick.

  Silver made an awful sound in his throat. “Then we strike them down on the instant!”

  The way Silver said the word strike was horrifying. I had this instant image of an enormous crutch slamming down on my head and then everything going black.

  “Strike! Strike!” cried the parrot, and Silver laughed.

  He paused to spit while Frankie, Jim, and I had heart attacks three inches away. A moment later, Silver belched out a long smelly burp.

  That’s when he said it.

  “Now, Dick,” said Silver. “I be hungry. Be a good lad and grab me an apple from this here barrel!”

  Jim stiffened. “No … no …”

  We heard Dick begin to rise. He lifted a lantern over his head and it spread its thin yellow light into the barrel right over us.

  Frankie grabbed my arm and squeezed tight, her face going white and bloodless in the sickly light.

  Oh, my gosh! she mouthed silently at me. Devin!

  Just then, as Dick was turning to lean into the barrel—fractions of a second before he and Silver and Hands would discover us—someone yelled out two words at the top of their lungs.

  “Land ho!”

  Instantly, the lantern’s light vanished, and there was a great rush of feet across the deck. Silver and the others hopped across the boards in a mad dash to get a look off the front of the ship.

  Jim and Frankie and I were frozen where we sat.

  It was Jim who spoke first. “My friends,” he whispered, “we’re on a ship full of bloodthirsty pirates!”

  Frankie nodded. “This is serious. We need to stop them. We need to stop them from finding the treasure.”

  “And,” I said, staring at my friends and making a loud gulping noise, “we need to stay alive!”

  Chapter 10

  A low cloud of fog was just lifting off the water ahead of the ship, when the three of us climbed quietly out of the apple barrel.

  There, sticking out of the ocean before us, was a ragged lump of land shining in the moonlight.

  “Island of Treasure,” I whispered.

  Captain Smollett bolted up on deck and started issuing orders right away. “Pull down mainsail. Set course to land on the east side of the island. Steady as she goes! Now, look here, has anyone here ever seen this island before?”

  “I have, sir,” said Long John Silver, hopping over to the captain. “I stopped here once on a ship I was, er, cooking on—”

  “I have a chart here,” said the captain, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. “See if this is the same place—”

  I could see by the look on Silver’s face that he couldn’t wait to get a look at that chart. But when his trembling hands took it from the captain, he realized it was not the original treasure map, only a copy. It didn’t have the crosses marking where the treasure was buried.

  But Silver was a good faker. He didn’t let on that he was disappointed. “Arrh. This be the place,” he said.

  Jim gave us a nudge. “Come on,” he whispered. “While the captain’s busy with Silver, we can at least tell the doctor and the squire what we know.”

  But even as we tried to sneak below deck, Silver wheeled away from the captain and blocked our path. “Ah, here be my three young friends, arrh!”

  He put his arms around us as if he was a nice old grandpa or something, and I have to say, Frankie and Jim and I nearly dropped dead from fright, just like old Billy Bones back at Admiral Benbow Inn.

  “This here island be sweet,” Silver went on. “And great fun for children such as yourselves. Why, you can trek up its steep hills, dive from its waterfalls, walk along the edges of its steepest and deadliest chasms!”

  “All my favorite stuff,” I mumbled.

  “Especially the deadly part,” Frankie added.

  “Sounds like … fun!” said Jim.

  Silver squinted at us one by one. “’Tis pleasant to be young and have all ten toes, to be sure! If you three go exploring, tell old John, and he’ll show you which places be the most—arrh!—fun!”

  With that, he clapped us all on the back and hobbled off to the kitchen below deck.

  “That was majorly creepy,” said Frankie.

  “Do you think he suspects us?” asked Jim.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope not. Come on, let’s spill the beans to the rest of the good guys.”

  Minutes later, we all met in the captain’s cabin.

  There were only four chairs, just enough for the doctor, the captain, the squire, and Jim. That’s one of the things about crashing a story this way. They never have enough places to sit. So Frankie and I stood.

  Dr. Livesey looked serious. “We understand you have something to say. Tell us now.”

  Frankie, Jim, and I took turns describing what we had heard from our hiding place in the apple barrel. I did a good job of imitating Long John Silver’s voice and adding in some extra “arrh, arrhs.” Jim repeated the names of all the men Silver named as old Captain Flint’s shipmates.

  “In other words,” Frankie finished up, “Long John Silver is a bloodthirsty, ruthless … pirate!”

  “Aha!” snarled Captain Smollett. “So our crew is no more than a bunch of buccaneers. I don’t want to say I told you so, but—I told you so!”

  “Quite right,” said the doctor. “We’re sorry for doubting you. But Silver and the others don’t know we know. This is good. The question is … what shall we do now?”

  The captain paced the room a couple of times. As angry as he was, he took quick control of the situation.

  “First, if we turn around now, the crew would attack us in a minute. So we must land on the island. Second, having the map is good. They won’t risk its being destroyed or lost in an outright attack, at least not yet, so we have a little time. Third, not every single member of the crew is a pirate. Some men are on our side. Five, by my count. So with the six of us, there are eleven whom we can count on—”

  “Oh!” the squire suddenly blurted out. “And to think these pirates were all Englishmen—born in England! Why, I could just … just … blow up the ship!”

  “Whoa, dude,” I said. “We’re on the ship!”

  The squire blinked. “Oh, well, I meant … later.”

  �
�Later, we’ll need it to get home,” said the captain. “Our best chance now is with Jim, Frankie, and Devin.”

  Everyone turned to us.

  “Here it comes,” I said. “Right into the frying pan!”

  The doctor rose and smiled at us. “Indeed, it’s plain to see that Long John Silver rules these pirates, and that, of all our crew, he is friendliest toward you three. You should make friends with him. That way, you can keep us informed of what he’s thinking, what he’s like. It may save our lives to know his character.”

  Frankie looked at me. “Character? That means you, Devin, remember?”

  I suddenly wanted to rant and rave against Mr. Wexler and his book reports, but Frankie just kept tapping the book to remind me that characters only know the world of the book, nothing outside it. So all that came out of my mouth was a single word. “Arrh.”

  A moment later, the captain was called on deck. Silver and the crew had brought the ship to within a half mile of the eastern coast of Treasure Island.

  As we drew near the rocky shore, the crew was getting more and more restless. Silver was trying to calm them and we knew why. So we would find the treasure for him. After that, he’d “strike us down.”

  Suddenly, Jim turned to the captain. “Sir, I have an idea. I think you should tell them they can go ashore.”

  “What?” said the captain, wrinkling his eyebrows.

  “Silver and the crew. Tell them they can go ashore.”

  “What exactly is your idea, Jim?” asked the doctor.

  “Sir,” the boy began, “these pirates are angry and restless, full of black looks and secrets.”

  “I’ll say,” I added. “All they do is grumble.”

  “If we let Silver take them ashore,” Jim went on, “they will surely go, thinking that they will be closer to finding the treasure. If Silver can talk them out of attacking us, good. If not, then we fight it out from the ship.”

  Everyone looked at Jim.

  The doctor smiled and nodded.

  “Quite a nice plan,” said the captain. “We’ve already got all the guns safely stowed in storage. I like it.”

  The captain climbed the rear deck and made the announcement. “Listen up, crew. We’ve had a hot day. We’re all tired. I say, anyone who wants to can go ashore for the afternoon and come back at sundown.”