The Not-so-Jolly Roger (2 page)

To get back to this time, the week after we got back to our time, Fred and Sam came over to my house to check out
The Book
again.

“I’ve been thinking about this time travel stuff,” said Fred. “And I think we should go somewhere worth our while.” Fred sat on my bed, still wearing his baseball uniform, tossing his baseball up and catching it. “Kids in those magic books I’ve read are always so dumb. They always wish for exciting adventures or some garbage like that. And they never take anything useful with them—like a machine gun or a jet. I say we wish for a pile of money and come back millionaires.”

Sam looked up from his comic book. “No way. It will never work. If you had ever made it to the end of any of those magic books, you would know that magic is very tricky. Like Joe’s uncle said, ‘be careful what you wish for. You might get it.’ We could wish for a pile of money, end up in a bank, and get shot by Jesse James.”

I sat at my desk, trying to perfect my disappearing quarter trick. “Sam’s right. It’s not like faking people out with coin tricks. Let’s just be a little more careful this time and figure out exactly what we’re going to wish for.”

I looked at the midnight-blue book on my desk.

“Magic can backfire on you even when you’re trying to do good,” said Sam. “And it will definitely mess you up if you are greedy.”

“So, Mr. Know-It-All, what do you want to wish for?” asked Fred, pulling his baseball cap down over his eyes.

“I think we should go visit some famous historical figure and see what they were really like.”

Fred threw his ball up to the ceiling and caught it. “Go visit some famous historical figure? Get out of here! You should be in one of those other lame magic books with all the other stiffs. Who wants to go visit famous dead guys?”

Sam pushed his glasses up. “I do.”

“Get a life,” said Fred. “So we go visit George Washington. We come back. What do we got? Nothing. But, we go visit buried treasure. We come back. What do we got? Millions!”

“Oh, that’s brilliant, Sherlock. This is the same kind of bright idea that almost got us executed last time. Did you ever stop to think who buries treasure? Pirates, that’s who. And do you know what pirates usually have? Pistols and cutlasses, that’s what. And do you know what they do with those pistols and cutlasses? Shoot and stab people who are trying to steal their treasure, that’s what.”

“Come on,” said Fred. “I took care of the Black Knight, didn’t I? What’s a few pirates? Joe, you got any pictures of buried treasure in that book?”

I stuck the quarter in my pocket and picked up
The Book.
“No.”

“So there,” said Sam.

Fred cocked his arm to throw his baseball at Sam.

“But there is this spell called the All Purpose Time Warper:

“Buried treasure,” yelled Fred.

“No, you jerk,” yelled Sam.

Fred threw his baseball. Sam ducked. Wisps of pale green mist began to swirl in my bedroom.

“But wait,” I said, “the spell only works—”

Fred’s baseball slowed and then froze in midair, only inches away from my desk lamp.

The Book seemed to melt right out of my hand.

The green mist swirled faster and higher; covering book, ball, bedroom, and all.

Oh, no is right,” said Sam.

We looked around the island for somewhere to hide. The choices were pretty slim: our three trees, or one big black rock.

We climbed higher into our trees, and did our best to look like coconuts. We couldn’t see anything, but we could hear the splash of oars and bits of some truly awful singing.

The small rowboat landed as I peeked through the leaves. Two guys unloaded a chest. One was tall. The other was short. Both wore ragged pants and striped shirts. They were the ugliest and nastiest-looking guys I’ve ever seen ... until I saw the third guy behind them. He was twice as big and twice as nasty-looking.

He was the one with the awful singing voice, and boy, did he have a face to match. Black hair stuck out everywhere. His black eyebrows and moustache bristled out front. Long black strands fell down his back. And a monstrous black beard, with four pigtails, braided and tied with ribbons on the ends, fell down his chest. To top it all off—the whole mess was smoking!

But the worst part about this guy was not his crazy hair or black outfit. The worst part was that he was equipped, just as Sam had predicted, with four pistols and one wicked-looking cutlass.

“Bad luck,” whispered Sam. “I’ll bet anything that’s Blackbeard ... and not the Walt Disney version.”

“Who’s Blackbeard?” Fred whispered from his tree.

“His real name was Edward Teach,” said Sam. “Some people say he was the craziest and meanest pirate of all time.”

“Oh,” said Fred.

The two ragged guys staggered up the beach lugging the chest between them. The giant black pirate counted off paces behind them.

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.
Halt!”

They stopped right under our trees.

“Dig here, lads. We bury our treasure, and we three be the only ones what know about it, eh?

Who says I don’t treat me prisoners well? Have another tot o’ rum.”

The big guy pulled a bottle out of one of the deep pockets in his long coat. He took a swig, and passed it around.

The two prisoners drank, then started digging.

The pirate leaned against my tree. The top of his three-cornered hat was right below me. Something in his hair
was
fizzing and smoking, and it smelled terrible. I wiggled my nose as quietly as I could, and tried not to think about sneezing.

The pirate jabbed the sand with his cutlass. Then he started in with that singing again.

“Just us three, eh, laddies? Not a soul around.”

Sam and Fred looked at me and bugged their eyes out.

The hot sun beat down. Flies buzzed around. The prisoners drank and dug. The bearded pirate kept singing—horribly. My foot, wedged behind a coconut, went to sleep. My arms felt like they were going next. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the two guys finished digging. The pirate slid his cutlass back in his belt.

“Yar, mates. That would be perfect. Now lower her in there slowly, slowly ...”

While the two prisoners were lowering the chest, the pirate pulled out two pistols and shot them both.

The bodies and chest fell to the bottom of the hole with an ugly thud. The crazy pirate laughed and started croaking another song as he kicked sand in the grave.

A drop of sweat rolled off my nose and fell down toward the singing pirate. It landed right on his hat. I closed my eyes and held my breath.

He stood up, looked all around, and said, “Just us three, lads. Guard our secret well. Har, har, har.” And then he turned to go.

That’s when the fly decided to land on Fred’s nose.

Fred wrinkled his nose, blinked, and shook his head.

The fly flew.

Fred’s Mets cap slid right off his head, spinning down, down, down, until it landed with an awful plop right at the toe of the pirate’s big, black boot.

He froze. He looked at the hat. Then he looked slowly up, up, up the trunk of my tree. Our eyes met and my heart went as numb as my foot. The black pirate growled,
“Arrrrrrrgh,”
and grinned a crazy smile. I swear I saw his eyes flashing red.

Then he pulled out two pistols, aimed, and fired.

Click,
went one pistol.

Click,
went the other.

“Damnation and hellfire. Forgot to reload. But you won’t be going nowhere, will you now, lad?”

My brain thought about diving out of the tree. My body refused.

The pirate tossed the two empty pistols aside and reached for two more.

While he was reaching, Fred slid down the trunk of his tree and jumped to the sand. “Don’t shoot! That’s my hat.”

The pirate whirled around and aimed the pistols at Fred. “Yarrr, this island be haunted, sure. They’re dropping from the trees. Quick, lad, how many more of your kind up there?”

“Two,” said Fred.

“Three against one? Why, those are the best odds I’ve had in a long time.” He tucked away one pistol and drew his cutlass. “Call out the rest of your spying monkeys. Let’s fight to the death and the Devil take the hindmost.”