Crown of the Cowibbean (4 page)

“The Coral Crown, you say? Always thought that was only a legend, a legend, just like them monstrous
hu'mans
. Boy, I bet the ol' Kingfish would love to get his fins on that!” Nwar cawed with a croaky laugh. “Well, best of luck to you, lads. Thanks for letting an old bird talk your ears off.” He made a slight bow before flapping out the door.

“Now you've done it!” Dakota said. “Marco said not to tell anyone!”

“He seemed nice,” Chuck said. “It's not like I went and told the Kingfish.”

But no sooner had Chuck uttered those words than the Kingfish himself burst right through the front door.

“Well,” Dakota gulped. “Here's your big chance.”

The Kingfish was not a king at all, but an enormous catfish. Standing on his tail, he was quite tall—about twice as tall as Chuck and Dakota. He was also rather sloppy, with a round belly that bounced under his chin. He wore a gruesome smile, with two big, oversized front teeth that stuck out past his big, oversized lips. Long whiskers curled out from around his ugly face. On his left side, they could see several short nubs where whiskers used to be. His beady, cat-like eyes were set far apart, covered by thin glasses that stretched across his wide nose. From his head came a pointy fin that looked like a crown.

He spotted Chuck and Dakota almost immediately. He waddled a bit as he strolled across the room toward them on his tail fin. Chuck hid the hornpipe behind his back.

“Well now…what have we here?!” he said in a deep voice. “Cows? On MY island? And runty little cows at that!” He picked Dakota up by the foot with his fin. Dakota did his best to keep his cow mask on as the Kingfish held him upside down and peered at him through his glasses.

“Put my brother down!” Chuck mooed. He ran up and stomped a hoof on the King-fish's tail.

“Ooooh, you're a feisty one!” the Kingfish crooned, grabbing Chuck by the shirt. The Kingfish was quite strong. Chuck and Dakota both dangled from his fins as he began to shake them up and down.

“What do you say there, boys? Anyone want a milkshake?” he teased, letting out a deep belly laugh. The shellfish in the room cackled along with him. But their laughter stopped when they heard a familiar voice yell out:

“Ora
basta
! That's enough!”

Everyone froze as Marco appeared in the doorway. The Kingfish released his grip on Chuck and Dakota. Falling to the floor, they scrambled to the door behind Marco. For a few moments, everything was silent as Marco and the Kingfish stared each other down.

“These cows are sailing under my flag,” Marco said. “If you bother them, you are bothering me.”

“Pollo!” the Kingfish jeered. “Now, I should've known that you'd be the one to bring two grass-chewers to my island…with that first mate of yours and all. Where is that one-eyed beefsteak you pal around with, Pollo? He and I still got a score to settle.”

Marco smirked at the Kingfish. He didn't seem to be afraid, even though he was much smaller. “You should be more careful, my slippery friend,” he said. “You might lose the other half of your whiskers. And you know how silly a pirate looks without a beard.” Marco had a reputation for being an expert swordsman, and the Kingfish knew it.

The grisly catfish scowled at them for a few moments before grumbling, “I'm gonna let you off with a warning.
Today
. But if you little hamburgers ever show up on my island again…I'll turn your hides into leather.” With that, Chuck, Dakota, and Marco backed out of the door.

“What did I tell you?” Marco clucked angrily as they made their way back to the ship. “I told you to
stay away
from The Black Spot! I told you to stay away from the Kingfish!
Marco
is the captain here! If you sail on
Marco's
ship, you follow
Marco's
orders!
Capice?
”

Chuck and Dakota looked shamefully down at their feet. “Yes, sir.”

Marco sighed. “I knew you cows would be bad luck. We were supposed come and go quietly. Now we have to leave Cattleena right away! All so you can find some silly flute! Did you at least keep quiet about our voyage?”

“Yes, sir,” they both lied. With Marco so angry, they were afraid to mention their chat with the black parrot.

Back on the deck of the
Swashclucker
, Chuck and Dakota studied the hornpipe as they sailed away in the night.

“So what does this thing do?” Dakota wondered.

“Makes music, of course,” Chuck said. He took the hornpipe and tried to play a song, but his hooves made it difficult to play more than one or two notes.

“Here, you play it,” he said, handing it to Dakota. “You have fingers.”

Dakota looked at the name of the last song on the list. “Fire in the Heavens,” he read. “That sounds pretty cool.”

Dakota played the notes on the sheet. As he got to the end of the tune, the hornpipe began to shake. He pulled it away from his mouth as little sparks jumped from inside. Suddenly, a bolt of fire shot out of the hornpipe! The fire arced into the sky, where it exploded like a firecracker. The sound echoed across the water. Dakota's eyes grew big as dinner plates. He very slowly and carefully put down the hornpipe.

“Maybe you should start with the
first
song,” Chuck suggested.

“Maybe we should get some sleep,” Dakota said.

Below deck, Dakota fell asleep right away. But Chuck lay awake for hours, thinking about the other verses on the map.
A spying eye? Stars of our own
? What did it all mean? He went over the phrases in his head again and again, until the gentle lobbing of the ship finally rocked him to sleep.

5

WATERDOWN

Chuck and Dakota awoke at dawn to the sound of Marco crowing on the ship's bow. They clambered out of their bunk, rubbing their eyes in the morning light as they came up to the ship's deck.

“
Buon Giorno
, Buccowneers!” Marco crowed. “Rise and shine! Big day ahead of us!”

After a quick breakfast of bananas and corn, Chuck and Dakota took time to experiment with the hornpipe some more while Marco watched. This time, Dakota decided to start with the first song on the list, “The Fishes' Breath.” It was a very short tune with only eight notes. When Dakota played the jaunty little ditty…
BWOP
! A big bubble appeared around him.

Chuck snickered. “You look like you just got burped up by a fish!” he joked. They both laughed as Marco popped the bubble with his sword. They went on like that for a while—Dakota playing the tune and making bubbles, while Marco and Chuck kept popping them and laughing. For a moment, they forgot all about the Kingfish and the trouble they'd gotten into the night before.

Before too long, they heard Ribeye give his “Land Ho!” grunt. They dashed to the railing and looked off the starboard bow to see the tops of several ships' masts sticking out of the water. They reminded Dakota of tombstones.

“
Waterdown
,” Marco said, looking through his spyglass. “The final resting place for many a doomed ship. Make a wide circle, Ribeye. Let's not get too close to that graveyard, unless we wish to be part of it.”

“Wait! We're just gonna go around? What about the clues?” Chuck pointed to the shipwrecks as he recited the second line of the poem. “‘
A watery grave where the clock strikes eleven
'. What time is it right now?”

“Nine thirty,” Marco answered.

Chuck scratched his chin with a hoof. “Are we supposed to wait until eleven?”

“We do not wait at all!” Marco said. “We sail on to the next place on the map.”

“Please, Captain! Can't we explore the shipwrecks?” Chuck pleaded. “It won't take too long! Who knows what kind of treasure there might be?”

Normally, Marco would have no desire to drop anchor here. He would have preferred to go around this shipwreck and head to Sterling Reef. But he had to admit the hornpipe Chuck found was pretty remarkable. And the little calf had a good point: there could be more treasure in this wreck.

“Fine,” Marco agreed. “But we do not wait until eleven o'clock. You must look right now.”

They couldn't see much of the underwater wreckage from the surface. Chuck thought about the next line of the poem: “
A spying eye sees when our own eyes do fail.
” He thought maybe he could see further down through Marco's spyglass. But when he asked, Marco refused.

“No one touches Marco's spyglass,” Marco said flatly. “A captain's spyglass is a treasure in itself.”

Chuck thought and thought about how to get down underwater.
I'd have to be able to breathe like a fish
! he thought. Suddenly, his tail began to twitch.

“That's it!” he said. “The first song is ‘The Fishes' Breath'! We can use that bubble to go underwater!”

“Do you enjoy getting us in trouble?” Dakota asked. “Now you want me to go into an underwater graveyard?” Dakota did not like the idea of underwater danger any more than above-water danger.

“Come on!” Chuck said. “I just know there's something important down there!”

Dakota knew Chuck's plan was going to bring him trouble. But he played “The Fishes' Breath” anyway.

BWOP
! The bubble blew up around the both of them. They gently sank into the water, but inside the bubble, they were dry and surrounded by air.

Chuck looked around at the bubble with a sense of wonder. “Isn't this amazing?” he marveled. “We're breathing underwater!”

With a little bit of practice and little bit of teamwork, they found that they could pilot the bubble around in the water by rolling it with their feet. Before long, they were pedaling around in the water with ease. They headed for the shipwrecks.

The wreckage loomed in front of them like a collection of giant, sleeping skeletons. It looked a lot like the
Hortica
on Bermooda, except this was dark and murky and much bigger. Everything was covered in barnacles, seaweed, and green algae. This place had not been disturbed in a long time.

Neither of them were sure where to begin looking. Chuck suggested that they start in the captains' quarters, just like they did on the
Swashclucker
. They pedaled their bubble through a big hole in the roof of the largest ship's cabin.

The inside of the cabin was bare. Dakota scratched his head as they looked around the watery room. There was an old table broken in half, a chandelier without any candles, and a few empty barrels. The windows were all shattered, with stained glass scattered all around. The two of them were about to leave the room when Chuck spotted an old chest in the corner.

“Look!” Chuck said. “Look at the chest. It has a clock on it!” The clock on the chest was smashed and broken. Its hands were stopped at precisely eleven o'clock, and looked as though they had been there for hundreds of years. “This is where the clock strikes eleven!” Chuck was so excited he started clapping his hooves together.