The Mystery of the Pirate's Treasure (2 page)

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

S
tudents, your attention, please,” Ms. Stadelhofer announced to her sixth-grade class. “Do any of you recognize this book?”

Dakota—Cody—Jones was about to raise her hand to answer when Matt the Brat, the kid who sat in front of her, turned around in his seat.

“Is that your baby book, Cody-Toady?” Matt teased. His breath smelled of peanut butter.

Cody glared at him.

“Matthew Jeffreys, turn around and pay attention,” Ms. Stad said sharply.

“Sorry, Stad … I mean, Ms. Stadelhofer,” Matt said.

Cody could tell that he didn't mean a word of his apology.

Ms. Stadelhofer held up the book again. “How many of you learned Mother Goose nursery rhymes when you were little?”

All the hands in the class shot up—except one: Matt the Brat's. He'd never admit to knowing such babyish stories.

“Do any of you remember this rhyme?” Stad asked. She began to read from the large picture book:

Cody's best friend, M.E.—MariaElena Esperanto—waved her hand. Cody knew M.E. loved
poetry. It wasn't surprising she'd know nursery rhymes.

“Yes, MariaElena?” said Ms. Stad.

“My
tía
used to sing that to me every night at bedtime,” M.E. said proudly. “I know the whole thing by heart.”

“Would you like to recite it for us?” Ms. Stad asked.

M.E. stood up by her desk and cleared her throat as if she were about to sing an opera.

The class burst into applause.

“Nice job, MariaElena,” Ms. Stad said. “Now, do
you know what the rhyme means?”

M.E. frowned. “Uh … somebody baked a pie full of birds for the king? Sounds yucky to me.”

Everyone laughed.

“Believe it or not,” Ms. Stad said, after the laughter died down, “many of the nursery rhymes are actually about real historical events and have secret meanings.”

Cody's ears pricked up.

“Sometimes the rhymes made fun of the royal family or the political events of the day,” Ms. Stad continued. “Commoners didn't have free speech back then, like we do today. If they criticized the government, they could have been arrested, or worse.”

Cody shivered. Imagine being arrested—or worse—for just talking.

“Many of the coded references in the rhymes are about wars, plagues, and injustice. Most people didn't read or write, so they memorized rhymes. Believe it or not, even pirates used rhymes to pass on secret messages.”

“Pirates?” Matt the Brat blurted, forgetting to
raise his hand. Ms. Stad shot him a warning look. Quickly, he held up his hand, then bent it into the shape of a hook and added, “Arrg!”

Cody could just picture Matt wearing an eye patch and swinging a sword—right before he tripped and fell off the gangplank into crocodile-infested waters. She smiled at the image.

But the word
pirate
had definitely caught Cody's attention, too. Cody loved adventures and had read everything from
Treasure Island
and
Robinson Crusoe
to
Island of the Blue Dolphins
and
Little House on the Prairie
.

As Ms. Stad gave Matt her usual lecture about staying focused and using good manners, Cody jotted down a coded note for M.E. using her
Caesar's cipher wheel. M.E. and Cody were members of the Code Busters Club, along with Quinn Kee and Luke LaVeau from Mr. Pike's class. They'd formed the club because they all loved creating and cracking codes, and they had built their own clubhouse in a nearby eucalyptus forest. The four kids had made their own ciphers by cutting out two circles, one
larger than the other. They'd written the alphabet around the edge of the outer circle, and then they'd done the same on the rim of the inner circle but had mixed up the letters. It was one of Cody's favorite ways of sending secret messages. After lining up the letter
Z
on the inner circle with the letter
A
on the outer circle, Cody quickly coded the message by substituting the corresponding letters. That way no one could read it if it fell into the wrong hands—like Matt the Brat's.

She located the first letter of her message on the outer circle
—I
—then wrote down the corresponding letter underneath it—
X
. She continued to code each letter until the sentence was complete:

X HBRVDC XP UJDCD'I Z KXCZUD LBVD?

Code Buster's Key and Solution found on
this page
,
this page
.

Using origami, Cody folded the sheet of binder paper into a hidden square within a square, with the message inside. She passed the palm-sized note to Becca behind her, who passed it to Susan, who passed it to Lyla, who passed it to Stephanie, who passed it to M.E.

“Quiet down, please,” said Ms. Stad, calling the
buzzing students back to attention. “You might be surprised to learn that the nursery rhyme ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence' was actually a message that pirates used to recruit crew members for their ships. ‘Sing a song of sixpence' refers to the amount of money the pirates would earn for the trip. ‘A pocket full of rye' is about how they spent their money. ‘Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' meant the pirates planned to lure other ships in range, then launch a surprise attack. ‘When the pie was opened' meant the attack itself, and ‘the birds began to sing' was about the pirates who fought in the attack.”

Ms. Stad paused for a moment, looking out at her students, who were mesmerized by her story. She grinned. “Can anyone guess who ‘the king' refers to?”

A few hands went up. “The king of England?” asked Bradley in the back row.

“No,” said Ms. Stadelhofer.

“The king of Spain?” asked Jodie.

Ms. Stad shook her head.

Hands slowly went down. “Give up?” she asked. The students nodded. “Actually, ‘the king' doesn't
refer to a real king at all. It refers to Blackbeard the Pirate!”

“
Cool
,
too bad there aren't any pirates like Blackbeard anymore
, Cody thought.

“Class,” Ms. Stad said. “I have a special ‘pie' of my own to share with you. But this will be a good surprise.”

Everyone sat quietly, waiting. Cody wondered what it could be. A Pirate Day in the classroom? A lesson on how to talk like a pirate? Or maybe Ms. Stad planned to teach them a
real
pirate code?

“Did you find an envelope inside your backpacks yesterday?” Ms. Stad asked.

Cody nodded and noticed the other students nodding as well.

“What was inside?” Ms. Stad asked.

Hands shot up. Ms. Stad called on Becca.

“There was a long, rectangular piece of paper shaped like a mission building,” she answered, “with small windows and a bell tower.”

“Was anything written on the paper?”

“No, it was blank,” answered Bradley.

“Was there anything else in the envelope?”

“Yeah,” answered Lyla. “A pen, but I think the ink was dried up. I tried to write with it, and there was nothing there.”

Cody's hand went up. “It was an invisible-ink decoder pen. If you colored over the paper, a bunch of letters showed up.”