by Rob Kidd
“You’ve got to get out of here,” Marcella said. “It isn’t safe! I’m so sorry I brought you into this horrible den of pirates. But I’m sure the East India Trading Company will believe you if you tell them you’re an innocent bystander. They’ll know you’re no pirate!”
“Yes,” Barbara said, “I have a feeling they will.”
“You should run down there and ask them to save you,” Marcella suggested. “I just know they’ll take care of you!”
“Most likely,” Barbara said, tugging on her white gloves.
“I wish I could come with you,” Marcella said. Barbara raised one eyebrow. “But Jean—I can’t leave him alone with these nasty pirates. Who knows what might happen to him? Plus, things are going really well with Diego. If we survive all this, I’m pretty sure we’re going to get married.”
“Mmmm,” Barbara said, deciding not to share her opinion on whether any pirates would “survive all this.”
“I’d better get back before they miss me,” Marcella said, unaware that nobody ever missed her. “I wouldn’t want any pirates to follow me and find you!”
“No, that would be dreadful,” Barbara agreed wholeheartedly. “Marcella—in case we don’t meet again—I wanted to give you a gift to thank you for all your help to me.”
“A gift?” Marcella exclaimed in delight. “What is it?”
Barbara drew a small silver mirror out of her coat pocket. She snapped it open, showing Marcella the clear smooth surface inside, and then closed it again. Marcella accepted it reverently.
“It’s beautiful,” Marcella said. “People hardly ever give me gifts. Which is so unfair, because I deserve presents more than anybody.”
Barbara smiled her sly, catlike smile. “Remember me when you look into it,” she said. “That way we’ll always be close. And if you’re ever upset, just imagine I’m right on the other side of that mirror and tell it exactly what you’re feeling…and where you are…and where the Pearl is going…all that sort of thing. After all, we are friends.”
“Friends…” Marcella said dreamily, clasping the mirror to her chest. “Thank you, mon ami.”
Barbara placed a hand on Marcella’s shoulder. “No, Marcella, thank you.”
Outside, marines and Company agents were pressing the pirates back up the steps. Diego kept trying to get down to the front of the battle line, where he was sure Carolina was, but the crush of pirates in front of him was too thick. And they kept moving up the stairs as more and more of the enemy flooded onto the stone dock. Swords flashed and clanged as marine met pirate, and more than one howl of agony split the air as fighters on both sides were skewered or driven off the steps into the harbor below.
Diego found himself forced back into the gardens with no way forward. He was desperately worried for Carolina. In her bright red sari, one of the pirates might mistake her for a red-coated marine and stab her without realizing it. He wanted to be by her side to protect her. And he wanted to help her fend off the Company!
Frustrated, Diego glanced around the garden, hoping something would give him an idea of how to help. To his surprise, he spotted Jack gallivanting away around the side of the palace with a small metal cauldron dangling from his hand.
Diego frowned and ran after him. Jack Sparrow’s methods were…unorthodox, but often effective, even if sometimes accidentally. On the other hand, Jack’s ultimate goal was usually to save Jack. And the rest of the pirates needed him right now.
Diego chased his captain around the wall of the palace. Up ahead he could see a long, tall stone building with twelve enormous open archways facing out, each with a decorative dome up above. Jack merrily dashed through one of these archways, and Diego hurried after him.
His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimmer light inside, but when they did, he reeled back in surprise.
Probably his nose should have warned him first. The stall—for that’s what it was—smelled strongly of animals…and not just any animals.
Towering over Diego was a massive gray elephant. It blinked at him in surprise.
“Uh-oh,” Diego said. He took a step back and then realized the elephant was tied to a metal ring embedded in the stone floor. It also didn’t look like it was about to charge at anything. Still…its feet were enormous.
Jack poked his head out from behind the elephant.
“Ah, Diego,” he said, as if meeting in an elephant stable during a pitched battle was perfectly normal. “Make yourself useful. Knock over his water trough, will you?”
“What?” Diego said. “Why?” He paused. “No, actually I meant what?”
“Or unchain him from that,” Jack said, pointing to the metal ring. “Either one. Savvy?”
“I—Jack, what are you up to?” Diego asked.
Jack sighed and rolled his eyes elaborately. “I do have to do everything around here, don’t I?” He hurried over to the elephant’s wooden water trough, built into the side of the wall where the elephant could reach it easily with its trunk. Jack lifted the trough off of its hooks and upended it, pouring the water out onto the straw on the floor.
The elephant gave Jack a baffled look, lifting its feet one by one as the water spilled across the floor.
“Did you untie him yet?” Jack asked Diego.
“Jack, what are you doing?” Diego cried. “Didn’t you hear that the Company is attacking? Shouldn’t we be fighting instead of harassing elephants?”
“Diego,” Jack said, “is it ever a good idea to argue with me? Aren’t I always right in the end?
Why don’t we just skip ahead? Here, I’ll help—‘Oh, no, Jack, I don’t understand, how puzzling you are,’” Jack said, imitating Diego’s Spanish accent. “‘But Diego, it’s all very clear; I’m going to save the day, as usual.’ ‘But, honor! And swords! And—’ ‘All right, here’s my entire brilliant plan.’ ‘Oh, I see. All right, I’ll just do whatever you say.’ ‘Exactly, thank you.’ And now we’re done with that. Savvy? Now, untie this elephant.”
Diego could see this argument wasn’t going to get him anywhere useful. With a sigh, he crouched and studied the rope tied to the metal ring. The knot looked complicated, so Diego stood up, drew his sword, and slashed through the rope instead.
“Very good,” Jack said. “Direct cuts, straight to the point. I like it. Now go do the same thing to the others.”
Reluctantly, Diego went down the line of twelve elephants, knocking over their water troughs and cutting them loose. Not one of the elephants left his stall despite his newfound freedom; they were too busy poking their trunks curiously around their empty water troughs. Diego wasn’t sure they’d even noticed they weren’t tied up anymore.
When Diego was finished, he ran back down the line to Jack and found him in the sixth stall, pouring something from the cauldron into the trough. Jack was standing well out of the way of the elephant, and as soon as he’d poured out a little of the vegetable stew, he jumped out of the stall. Diego glanced along the row of stables and saw that Jack had done the same in the first five stalls as well.
“What—what is that?” Diego said, pointing to the cauldron.
“Lovely Indian food,” Jack said, holding it out to him. “Try some.”
Diego dubiously poked a finger into the sauce and tasted it. His eyeballs nearly launched out of his head. He grabbed his throat; his tongue felt like it was on fire, and he thought he might vomit.
“Jack.” He gasped. “Wa—fi—ba—” All he could manage was a string of nonsense syllables. He was sure his entire mouth was being scalded from the inside out.
“Oh, good, it is spicy,” Jack said cheerfully, moving on to the seventh stall. “Just checking. Now think how that’ll feel to an elephant!”
Diego stuck out his tongue and fanned it with his hand. “Wha—?” he mumbled.
“Use your noggin, lad,” Jack said. He patted the seventh elephant’s trunk as it came over to investigate what he’d dumped in the trough. “When these elephants need water…where are they going to go
?”
Understanding hit Diego like a mainsail collapsing on top of him. “But we have to get the pirates out of the way!” he cried, forgetting the searing pain in his mouth.
“Oh, right,” Jack said, snapping his fingers. “Knew I forgot something.”
Diego took off running across the gardens. There was no way he could outrun an elephant. He had to hope he could get to the pirates before the mammoth beasts decided to taste Jack’s fiery stew.
A knot of pirates was seething and roiling at the top of the stairs, punctuated by shouts of rage as they accidentally poked each other with their swords.
“Let us through!” howled the ones at the back. “We want to fight!”
“Get back!” yelled the ones still out on the steps. “There’s no room!”
“Everyone get out of the way!” Diego bellowed at the top of his lungs. The urgency in his voice was so strong that many pirates actually fell silent and turned to see who was making such a fuss.
“Elephants!” Diego shouted. “Look out!”
BRRRRRRRREEEEEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!
The pirates’ eyes widened, and Diego spun around to see what they saw.
Trumpeting in fury, elephants were starting to stampede out of the stables. Diego caught a glimpse of Jack swinging himself to the safety of the roof. Almost as one, all twelve elephants charged straight for the stairs where the pirates were fighting.
Several pirates let out shrill screams of fear, and immediately scattered into the trees. Startled, the pirates still fighting on the stairs turned to see what the commotion was. Diego kept shouting, “Elephants! Run! Get out of the way!” as he dove into the crowd, searching for Carolina.
It didn’t take much convincing to get the pirates to run once they saw the elephants coming. They boiled out into the gardens and fled across the manicured green lawns. Askay and Pusasn actually lifted Sri Sumbhajee, one at each elbow, and ran with his feet dangling between them. Lakshmi and Jean were among the last to make it up the stairs and through the door.
“Where’s Carolina?” Diego cried as they ran past him.
“She was down on the dock,” Jean called. “I don’t know if she made it up!”
The earth was shaking as the elephants’ galloping feet got closer and closer. Diego looked desperately down the stairs.
The Company agents were advancing with gleeful grins of triumph on their faces. They thought they had driven back the pirates. They were sure that Sri Sumbhajee and his minions were giving up and running away. They had no idea that the thundering sound they heard was not that of hundreds of pirates retreating.
Finally Diego spotted Carolina. She had her back to the Pearl, fighting right at the edge of the dock. Her sword flashed and her sari glowed in the sunlight. Her opponent was Benedict Huntington.
“Carolina!” Diego yelled, hurtling down the stairs. The marines didn’t even try to stop him; they were too eager to get through the door into the prized inner sanctum of the notorious Sri Sumbhajee. Diego shoved his way through them and nearly tumbled headlong onto the stone dock.
He drew his sword as he ran up behind Benedict.
“I don’t think so,” said a cold voice as a blade appeared in his path. Diego skidded to a stop. Barbara Huntington stood at her husband’s back, smiling maliciously at Diego. He’d have to get by her before he could help Carolina with Benedict. He saw Carolina take a step back—one more and she’d fall into the harbor—if Benedict’s rapier didn’t slip through her quick parries and kill her first.
“Get out of my way,” Diego said.
“I’m afraid it’s you who will be getting out of our way,” Barbara said, but as she stepped toward him, she glanced up, and suddenly the smile dropped off her face.
“Benedict,” she said, her voice rising. “Benedict!”
Diego turned and saw what Jack had wrought.
Marines and Company agents were rushing headlong down the steps, shoving each other out of the way. Some were diving straight off the steps into the harbor. Others were trampling anyone who fell under their boots. All of them were shrieking with fear.
At the top of the steps, an elephant was shoving itself through the doorway. Its mouth was open and its eyes were rolling. It was desperate to get to the cool water of the lake. It didn’t care how many Company men it had to run over to get there.
Twelve frantic elephants were behind that door—and all of them were stampeding straight toward Diego and Carolina.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Benedict, get me out of here!” Barbara screamed, grabbing her husband’s coat and yanking him away from Carolina.
There was nowhere to go but into the harbor; the walls along the sides of the steps created a perfect bottleneck for the elephants to trample through.
Benedict’s eyes were blazing. “This isn’t over!” he shouted, pointing at Carolina and Diego. He stumbled as Barbara physically hauled him backward, dragging him toward one of the rowboats at the end of the dock. She leaped in with him right behind her. “We’ll be back! We will destroy Jack Sparrow! Nothing can stop us!” Benedict howled as Barbara grabbed the oars. Two other agents tried to leap into the boat with them, but Barbara knocked them into the water with an oar.
“There’s no room!” she yelled, although there were plenty of seats in the boat. “We have to go!” She shoved the oars into Benedict’s hands and he sat down, fuming, and began to row back to his ship.
“Carolina!” Diego cried, catching her hand.
“Up here,” she said, dragging him up the Pearl ’s gangplank. “Hurry!”
All around them men were hurling themselves into boats, or, when there wasn’t enough space, directly into the harbor. As Carolina and Diego made it to the deck of their ship, a few agents tried to run up the gangplank behind them. Side by side, the two teenagers drove them back with their swords. Diego parried and lunged, wobbling on the slant of the gangplank. Carolina whipped her sword in sharp spirals, her gold earrings glittering as they forced the men back step by step. Finally the agents leaped into the water, and Diego and Carolina could run back on deck and pull the gangplank up out of the way.
“Look!” Diego said, pointing to the far outer wall of the island, where the hidden entrance was. Pirates were gathered at the top of the sheer stone precipice. They had dragged the curtain of moss over to this side of the wall and were standing with it raised over the only exit from the harbor.
“Agents of the East India Trading Company!” a voice bellowed from behind them. Diego and Carolina whirled to see Sri Sumbhajee standing on the top of the inner wall, flanked by Askay and Pusasn. Below him, elephants were still pushing through the door and charging down the steps. Several of them were already in the harbor, dipping their trunks in the lake and spraying cool water over their backs.
“Sri Sumbhajee demands that you retreat at once!” Askay roared. He was holding something up to his mouth that amplified his voice so it echoed across the harbor. “Or else Sri Sumbhajee will destroy you all!”
On board the Peacock, Benedict Huntington was hopping up and down and shaking his fists and shouting. No one could hear what he was saying. Askay continued, supremely indifferent to the agent’s rage.
“You may notice what those brave gentlemen of fortune are holding over your only exit,” he went on. “Let me assure you that it is most…flammable.”
The pirates holding the false moss curtain lifted torches alight with flames. Diego realized what they were threatening to do. If they lit the curtain on fire and dropped it into the lake, it would spread to the Company ships and set them all ablaze within minutes. The agents would be trapped between the fire and the elephants.
Then again, so would Diego and Carolina, aboard the Pearl.
“Why doesn’t he just do it?” Diego wondered aloud. “He could wipe out so many of their ships right here.”
Carolina nodded across the dock at the elegant ship opposite theirs. “He doesn’t want to lose the Otter if he can avoid it. O
r clean up the mess of a hundred burned ships and a thousand drowned agents.”
“Do you think they’ll leave?” Diego said.
Carolina didn’t answer. She stared out at the Company ships with a grim expression.
“This is your last chance,” Askay called. “Leave now, or suffer a fiery, watery, or…very flat death.”
For a long moment, it looked as if the ships would refuse to go. Benedict was stamping up and down the deck of the Peacock, clutching his hair. Barbara calmly walked past him to the wheel. She signaled the other sailors, and they raced to their positions.
“They’re going!” Diego said.
It was true. Seeing the Peacock do an about-face, the other ships dragged as many men from the water as they could and followed close behind them. One by one, the Company ships sailed out of the harbor, right under the hanging curtain that the pirates held menacingly over them.
Relieved, Diego turned to hug Carolina. But she stepped out of reach of his arms and turned away.
“As soon as the elephants are calm, we had better go find Jack,” she said. “The agents will soon be back with reinforcements—and we want to be gone long before then.” Without looking at him, she hurried over to the hatch and disappeared down into the ship.
Diego’s happiness drained away. He hadn’t been able to talk to her about Marcella. He needed to convince her that Marcella had been the one who kissed him. But would Carolina believe him?
They’d won the battle, but Diego felt far from triumphant.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jack was lounging cheerfully on Sri Sumbhajee’s lion throne when the pirates started trickling back into the palace, bedraggled and exhausted.
“How’d it go?” he called as some of his crew drooped into the courtyard below him. “Pretty well, I think. Thanks to me, of course.”
“Yes, Jack,” Barbossa said sarcastically. “Thank you so much for sending a horde of stampeding elephants down on top of us.”
“You don’t look any flatter than you did before,” Jack observed. “Although your hat seems to have suffered terribly.”