Legends of the Ghost Pirates (14 page)

“The water’s freezing!” Sara shouts.

“Then let's do this fast.”

Now we are moving like a fast sea turtle—which
really isn't much faster. The water is now to our waist, so we push
ourselves just a little farther. Once the water is to our chest,
I'm relieved to feel the barrel floating. “It's working! Let's try
it again.” In an instant we are both standing. Being careful not to
tip over, we wade to shore, each walking sideways, with the barrel
strapped to our backs.

Once we are standing on the beach, I can feel the
water running out of my pants. It's a little clumsy, but we're able
to walk sideways like a crab farther up the beach. But when I look
ahead, there in front of us, sitting on a rock with a smirk across
her face, is Jo.

Chapter 18

Escape

“
Well
, ain't you two just the
cutest thangs,” Jo say chuckling to herself. “I really like how
you've attached yourselves to the barrel.”

“Get us out of here before they come back!” Sara
insists.

“Oh relax,” Jo says as she pulls up her right pant
leg revealing a large knife strapped in a sheave. She slides the
knife out, looks closely at the shiny blade, then comes over toward
us. “They're too busy to notice what's going on with you two.
Besides, the big ugly one's not worried. He thinks you're going to
float away strapped to the barrel. What an idiot.” With one swift
move Jo easily slices through the rope and the barrel drops to the
sand. Once our hands are free, both Sara and I remove the remaining
rope from our wrists.

“So you were here the whole time?” Sara asks. “And
you let us struggle into the water?”

“I was gonna help. But watching y'all trying to move
with a big ol' barrel strapped to your back was just too dang
funny. Besides, you're out now, so what's the big deal?”

“We're wet, and I've got sand in my pants. I
don't
like sand in my pants,” Sara says to her cousin with a
snarl. “And he was trying to kill us!”

I butt in, “We need to get out of here now.”

“Not so fast,” Jo says grabbing my shoulder. “Let's
take a look to see what they're up to. It's always important to
know what your enemy is thinking.”

Sara and I look at each other in question. Sara
says, “She’s right. Let's see what they're doing before we get out
of here.”

Soon we're hiding behind some low lying shrubs
looking down on Skinny Pete's smuggling operation—if you can call
it that. From here it's nothing more than a tarp over a bunch of
boxes. Skinny Pete is lying flat on his back, leg up on one knee,
and even from here we can hear him snoring. The ugly one's standing
closer to the landing ramp next to several other boxes in a smaller
pile. He’s standing there looking out toward the water like he's
waiting for something.

“They must be expecting a pick up,” I say.

“I bet you're right,” Jo says. “Look out there.”
She's pointing off toward the southwest. On the horizon I can see a
boat heading this way.

Sara says, “That should keep them plenty busy for a
while giving us enough time to get to our boat and sail out of
here.” The three of us stand up, and as quietly as we can, make for
the trail back to the sailboat. We sure don't want that goon, Turk,
to catch us again.

Soon we pass across the Narrows and approach the
fork that leads to the Old Man. I stop. “This might be our last
chance to ever look for the treasure.”

“Are you nuts?” Sara says directed at me.

“He's right,” Jo jumps in. “Do we really want to
sail away from here leaving all that money behind? We've got some
time. What do you think, Fisher, about an hour?”

“At least,” I say. “That pick-up boat was a long
ways off, and at the speed they were going, maybe a half hour or
more before they get here. Then they have to paddle in, and load
up. Yeah; I bet about an hour.”

“You two are unbelievable!” Sara says with her fists
tightly clenched on her hip. “You already know what they're capable
of, do you really want to take a chance they'll catch us
again?”

“It's pirate treasure, Sara. That's a lot of money,”
I say.

Clenching her teeth, Sara picks up a rock and tosses
with surprising force at the water. “You two idiots aren't going to
give in, are you?” Both Jo and I shake our heads no. “Okay then;
we're going to do this
my
way. Fisher, set the timer on your
watch for one hour. Once your timer goes off, treasure or no
treasure, we're out of here. Agreed?” Again, we both nod.

Sara brushes some loose hair from her face and
continues, “Only one person can fit inside the cave underneath the
Old Man, so Fisher you'll be the person digging. While you’re doing
that I'm going to sneak back to Skinny Pete's pick-up site and keep
an eye on them. If it looks like they're done sooner or if they
realize we're not there anymore, I'll come running back here. I can
keep far enough away it should be safe.”

“I don't know about that, Sara. I don't like it,” I
say crossing my arms tightly.

“It'll be a lot safer this way than not knowing they
might come walking up on us. It's like Jo said, it's important to
know what your enemy is thinking.”

“I guess so,” I say reluctantly.

“And Jo,” Sara says, “you stand just far enough away
from Fisher while he's digging that you can keep an eye on him, but
in a spot where you can see me if I'm coming from the trail.”

Jo says, “I think that dog will hunt.” Sara and I
look at each other with question. “It's a good plan!” Jo says.
“
Dog-will-hunt
means it's a good plan.”

“One hour,” Sara says pointing a finger at me then
Jo. “Got it.” Sara takes off back the way we came then suddenly
stops and turns around. “And NO kissing! I swear if I catch you
I'll tear both of you to pieces no matter
who
started it.”
Jo just shrugs.

Shortly after that I'm crawling, hands and knees
with the flashlight and shovel, over the hard packed sand
underneath the Old Man. It seems extra dark in here especially
because it's so bright outside. Thinking that maybe the last person
in this same spot might have been a pirate over hundreds of years
ago suddenly gives me a chill up my backbone. The farther I crawl I
notice there's sort of a wet fishy smell in here. But that makes
sense because it'd be weird if it smelled like pizza.

It doesn't take long at all, maybe only twenty feet
in, when I come to a space I can almost stand if I keep my head
down. I shine the light all around trying to decide where to dig. I
guess if I were a pirate and I was burying a treasure, I'd bury it
right in the middle because that would give me the most room to
swing the shovel. So that's what I do, I dig right in the
middle.

Jo shouts in, “Find anything yet?”

I shout back, “No. But I'm about to start
digging.”

“Okay,” she answers.

I've got the flashlight propped up in the sand so I
can see almost everything. I take a couple of scoops of sand and
toss it to the side of the rock to keep it well out of my way.
Luckily sand is soft and it's pretty easy to get a hole started. I
look at my watch; I've only been in here ten minutes, but it
actually doesn't leave me much time. Something like buried treasure
could take days to dig up, but I'm only guessing because I've never
actually dug up any treasure before. I dig a little faster.

In only a few minutes I've got a good sized hole
going, about a foot deep and maybe three feet wide. The next scoop,
when I push the shovel in it makes a dull thunk. It's not the same
sound as if I had hit a rock, it's more like wood. Instantly I
realize I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my head like someone's
kicking to get out. Carefully, I take a couple of smaller scoops
around where the shove made the thunk.

This IS it; treasure! I can't believe I actually
found buried treasure. I wonder what it'll be; precious jewels or
diamonds, or maybe gold coins? Probably gold coins, I reason,
because it was tax money they stole from the French. Either way we
are going to be rich!

I dig quicker around the area. When I'm about as far
as I can safely go with the shovel I drop down to my knees to
carefully scoop more out by hand. Soon I have what's left of a
rectangle box in front of me, but there seems to be no type of lid
on it, just sort of a wooden outline buried in the sand. Carefully
digging, I remove more damp sand out of the center and around the
sides of the wooden rectangle. It's clearly what's left of a chest.
When I pick up a loose piece the wood crumbles in my hands almost
as if it too were just wet sand. I have to be extra careful. The
more I dig the more I realize there's not much of the chest left;
just a few pieces of rotting wood here and there. The gold must be
close now!

When my fingernails scrap wood, I realize it's the
bottom of the chest. Instantly it feels like someone karate-kicked
me to my gut. It's the bottom. There's nothing in it! But I have to
be sure, so I keep digging all around the sides scooping as much as
I can. But the more I do scoop, the more certain I am there's
nothing in it. Not a dang thing! It's just a few rotten pieces of
wood that were probably once a treasure chest with millions of
dollars of gold. Blast! This isn't fair. I grab the flashlight and
shine it all around the hole. I'm absolutely positive there's
nothing here. There was probably treasure in it once, but there’s
nothing now. I grab the shovel and heave it at the rock sides of
the cave. It makes a loud clank when it hits.

“Everything okay in there?” Jo calls from the
entrance.

“There's no treasure,” I say mumbling more to
myself.

“What'd you say? I can't hear you out here.”

Grabbing the flashlight and shovel, I start crawling
back out the entrance. “I said, there's no friggen treasure in
here.”

When I poke my head out, Jo says, “Are you
sure?”

“Oh, I'm certain,” I say. “Have a look for
yourself.” I hand her the flashlight. With a disappointed look on
her face she takes the flashlight from me and crawls into the cave.
With Jo now under The Old Man, I take up her position to watch the
trail for Sara.

I'm only in position for a minute when I see Sara
running down the path waving her arms. I kneel down to the entrance
and scream, “Jo, we gotta go, NOW!” In an instant I can see the
flashlight beam aimed toward me as she starts crawling out.

“What's going on?” Jo asks as she nears the
opening.

“I don't know, but Sara's waving her arms like a
maniac.”

Chapter 19

Jo's Plan

Sara
comes running up to the Old
Man cave just about the same time Joe crawls out. “We have to go!”
She says excitedly. “They made their delivery much faster than I
thought they would. The water was calm enough that they were able
to bring the pick-up boat straight up to the long ramp.”

“Really?” I say. “I would've thought they'd have had
to anchor out and row in, but I guess not.”

“No,” Sara says. “The boat wasn't that big; maybe
twenty-five feet, so it was actually very easy for the boat to land
on the ramp. The two guys in the boat loaded the boxes of stereo
equipment really fast. Turk and Skinny Pete just stood there while
the other guys moved the small pile on board. After the boat left,
Skinny Pete and Turk started to cover up the pile of equipment.
That's when I took off. It shouldn't be long before they're
done.”

Sara looks at Jo holding the flashlight, then says,
“How about you, was there treasure?”

With a sour look on my face, I shake my head as we
start into a jog along the path. “Nothing but an old wooden box;
probably the treasure chest.”

“Really?” Sara says while she's trotting behind me.
“That's pretty cool. I honestly didn't think you'd even find that
much. So that means there
was
a pirate who buried treasure;
probably Blarney Bart Bonney.”

I'm too disappointed to answer, so I pick up the
pace into a run. I can hear both Sara and Jo keeping up right
behind me. I shout back to them, “With a little luck the tide will
be running out and we can shoot right out of the channel into open
water without too much problem.”

At a run, it doesn't take long at all to get back to
the dingy. I stop and bend over to catch my breath before I shove
it into the water. Then I see it. “I don't believe this!” I say
pointing a finger to the dingy.

Both Sara and Jo quickly stand next to me. Sara
says, “What is it?” But as she asks she sees what I'm pointing at.
The bottom of the dingy, which wasn't strong to begin with, has
been kicked out.

Jo says, “Turk must have found the dingy and kicked
it out. The hairballs knew we were here all along.”

I look out into the cove, and sure enough, the tide
is
now running out at a fast rate. There might be several
knots of current going past our sailboat on the mooring.

“I betcha we could swim to the sailboat,” Jo says as
she studies the cove, tapping her hands on her hips.

“No way,” I say. “That current is too strong. You'd
get flushed out into the ocean before you even got halfway.” To
make my point I throw a stick as far out as I can, and when it hits
the water, it takes off bobbing toward the opening. “We have to
find some other way to get out there.” But no great ideas come to
me.

Sara points to the old life-saving station. “Do you
think there's an old lifeboat or something in there?”

“Does a coon-dog have fleas,” Jo says. The three of
us quickly take off running toward the life-saving station with Jo
now leading the way. In broad daylight the thought of the face I
saw in the window doesn't bother me as much. Then I realize it was
probably Skinny Pete's face I saw the other night. Not a ghost
pirate. What an idiot I am sometimes.