X Marks the Spot

by Tony Abbott

  An instant cheer went up from the crew. “Hooray!”

  Dr. Livesey turned to us. “They think they’ll just trip over treasure as soon as they’re ashore. Let them try.”

  The crowd of men jumped and hooted, making a sort of crazy atmosphere on the deck. But it was plain as day that even though Smollett was the real captain, Long John Silver was the one they obeyed. He was busy giving eyes and saying “arrh-arrh,” all over the place, keeping his pirate crew in line.

  In a few minutes, it was all decided. Six pirates would stay on board with the good guys, and Silver, his parrot, and the rest of the crew would go ashore.

  It was then, as I was watching them all get into the boats, that I knew what I had to do. Silver was my character, and I had to act. I had to follow him.

  I pulled Frankie over to where the boats were being loaded. “I need to go to the island,” I said.

  “With the pirates?” she said. “That’s crazy talk.”

  “I’ve got to follow him,” I said. “I’ve got to learn about his character. You heard the captain. You also heard Mr. Wexler and Mrs. Figglehopper. I won’t get this book report right unless I get what’s up with Silver. Plus, it might save our lives. We were lucky to hear him from the apple barrel, but only because we were close to him. If he goes ashore, we’ll never know what else he’s planning. Sorry, Frankie, I’m following him.”

  As if I was on autopilot, I headed for the rowboats.

  Frankie grabbed my arm. “Well, you’re not leaving me here. I mean, as if. We’re in this story together.”

  “And you’re certainly not going without me,” said Jim, coming up behind her. “I could turn out to be the hero of this adventure.”

  I turned to them. “You know, I was hoping you guys wouldn’t let me do this alone. Come on. Let the grown-ups defend the ship. They have all the guns and stuff. We need to see what Silver and his men are up to!”

  Without another word, we jumped into one of the bad-guy boats. We kept our heads low. Dr. Livesey called out to us, wondering what we were doing.

  But we couldn’t answer him. We just had to go.

  Maybe it was the look of the island with its thick woods and wild stony hills, or the surf pounding against the beach like it wanted to knock it unconscious, or the thought that Frankie and Jim and I were surrounded by deadly pirate types, but my heart sank all the way to my sneakers. From that first look at the place—a place that should have been all paradisey and islandy and cool and summery like my dream—I really dreaded the whole thought of Treasure Island.

  And there we were, sailing right toward it.

  “It’s hard to believe,” said Jim, looking at the dark hills looming before us, “but amazing treasure is buried somewhere on this island.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t get buried along with it,” I said.

  Frankie snorted quietly. “Devin, it’s probably good that you can still make jokes.”

  I looked at my friend. “Who’s joking?”

  Chapter 11

  The splashing of the oars and the shouting of the pirates echoed across the water to the island, sending swarms of birds wheeling and crying over the eerie woods.

  Luckily, our little boat was faster than the others—probably because we were kids and not overweight grown-up pirates. We landed first.

  It was nearly dawn when we finally hit the beach.

  “Ahoy, there, Jim!” Silver was calling out from his slower boat. “Frankie, is that you? Arrh, Devin?”

  We didn’t answer. The moment we tripped off the boat we plunged into the nearest jungle we could find.

  “Hurry,” Jim urged us.

  We ran up through a marshy area and came out on an open piece of rolling sandy earth. It was dotted with a cluster of pine trees and some twisted smaller trees that looked all gnarly and spooky. In the distance was a large hill. I remember that the map called it Spyglass Hill. It stood there, towering over everything like a big dark head.

  “We are probably some of the first people ever to set foot here,” said Frankie. “Except, of course, for the evil bunch that buried the treasure.”

  “Speaking of evil,” said Jim, looking around at the dense forest surrounding us. “I have a bad feeling about this island. I hope we’re not here very long.”

  “No kidding,” I mumbled, looking at our place in the book. “But something tells me we don’t have much of a choice. We’re only halfway through.”

  All at once there was a sharp noise from the bushes to our left. A wild duck flew up with a loud quack, another followed it, and soon it was ducks everywhere, screaming and circling over the whole marsh. Then we heard something else.

  Crash! Crack! Branches snapped and leaves crackled. This was followed by the low rumble of voices.

  “Someone’s coming!” said Jim. “Let’s hide.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice!” I said.

  We slipped into the nearby woods, darted under the shelter of some thick trees, and stopped. Crawling on all fours, we made our way quietly back toward the talkers. At last, we raised our heads and peered through the leaves. Long John Silver and another crew member were standing face-to-face in conversation. Silver’s parrot was on his shoulder, turning its head all around, staring into the woods.

  “I still don’t trust that parrot!” I hissed.

  Frankie pinched me. “Will you shhh?”

  We crouched as close as we could, in full sneaky spy mode, trying to pick up as much as possible about the pirates’ evil plans. We heard an earful.

  “Arrh, you’re a smart man, Tom,” said Silver to one of the sailors. “That’s why I’m asking you to join our little enterprise. Forget Captain Smollett and the others and think of yourself. You’ll be rich, you know. Quite rich.”

  The sailor named Tom shook his head. “No. I won’t be led astray by the likes of you and your buccaneers. I’m an honest sailor.”

  I nudged Frankie. “This is great. I think we found another good guy for our trio. Of course, if he joins us, we won’t be a trio anymore—”

  “Devin, hush!” said Jim.

  All of a sudden there came a sound from farther away, a horrible, long-drawn-out cry. “Aaaaaaach!”

  It was a man’s scream.

  The whole troop of marsh ducks did their quacking routine again, and I almost added to it.

  “What was that sound?” Tom demanded.

  “That?” said Silver calmly. “I reckon that’ll be one of your shipmates. By the sound of it, he didn’t want to join us, either. Perhaps you should think again, Tom.”

  Long John Silver hadn’t even budged when that scream sounded. He didn’t blink an eye. He stood there, leaning casually on his crutch, his face, as always, just holding onto that little smirk of his.

  Tom began to shake. We all did.

  He backed away from Silver. “Oh, I see it all now. You and your men are killing those who don’t join you. Well, I won’t be a part of your bloody crew—”

  With that, Tom turned his back on Silver and set off quickly toward the beach. Not quickly enough. With a loud grunt, Silver whipped the crutch out of his armpit and sent it hurtling through the air.

  “Oh, my gosh!” cried Frankie.

  “Incoming crutch!” I whispered. “Tom, watch out!”

  But Tom didn’t hear. The crutch struck him between the shoulder blades in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave a sort of gasp, then fell with a thud.

  “Arrh,” growled Silver as he hobbled over to the body. “That be two of ye gone, then! Arrh-arrh!”

  I can’t speak for Jim or Frankie, but as I watched Silver gloating over Tom stretched out and lying motionless on the ground, the whole world started to swim around me like a swirling mist of fog. Everything. Long John Silver, the birds, the tall island hilltops, all of it was going round and round in front of my eyes.

  Scooping up his crutch and popping his hat back on, Silver pulled a small silver whistle from his pocket and blew on it a couple of time
s.

  “It’s a signal,” Frankie whispered.

  “Meaning more men will be coming,” said Jim, his eyes darting around for a place to escape to. “We might be found here. Silver has proved he’s out to kill everybody. That could mean us, too. Come on.”

  Jim started up, trying to pull me with him. But I was staring at Tom just lying there. He was not saying lines, not moving around, not doing anything.

  “What about Tom?” I asked.

  Not far away were the crunching and crackling sounds of pirates responding to Silver’s whistle.

  “It’s too late for him, but not for us, Devin,” said Jim, tugging on my arm.

  “Jim’s right,” said Frankie. “Maybe we can save the next guy, or the guy after him.”

  Frankie was sounding a little like Jim. She was being brave. She was learning something from her book-report character. All I was learning from Long John Silver was how to be a nasty pirate guy. I was shocked at how bad my character turned out to be.

  But Frankie and Jim were right. We had to keep going. I guess that’s the thing about books. You just have to push through and hope that the story ends okay.

  As quietly as possible, the three of us slipped away from where Silver was. We tramped deeper and deeper into the jungle.

  We hurried along for what seemed like hours.

  Until we saw something that made us stop.

  A figure was moving in the trees above us. It was dark and shaggy and leaping from one branch to another, making weird gargling noises.

  “Maybe it’s a bear,” said Frankie.

  “Or a gorilla,” said Jim.

  “Or a giant squirrel,” said Frankie.

  “Or maybe,” I said, “it’s some crazy island monster that’s been asleep for centuries until we woke it up and now it’s very hungry and it wants to eat something and the something it wants to eat is us!”

  The thing was still leaping from branch to branch, only it was getting closer.

  “In that case,” said Frankie, “I think we’d better—”

  “RUN!” cried Jim.

  Chapter 12

  We burst away under the trees, but the instant we did, the creature, whatever it was, sprang to the ground and took up pursuit.

  “It’s after us,” cried Frankie. “Devin, take a left!”

  Wham! I hit a tree.

  “I meant the other left!”

  “Now you tell me!”

  “I almost wish we were back fighting pirates,” Jim huffed as we tore through the jungle. “Long John Silver and his crutch seem less terrible than some island monster.”

  “It’s like an old horror movie,” I said, slapping my way through the hanging vines. “And those never end up good—”

  But as fast as we were, the creature was much faster, thudding along the ground then leaping into trees, swinging on vines, scampering along branches. In no time, it had worked its way around and dropped to the ground right ahead of us.

  We screeched to a stop. I gaped at the thing crouching there. It was breathing heavily.

  “Don’t eat us!” I cried.

  “Wait a second!” said Frankie. “That’s not a crazy, kid-eating monster. It’s … it’s … a man!”

  It was a man. Though he was about as disguised as you could get. He was little and wiry and thin, with a long dirty white beard that hung to his waist. His hair was shaggy and loose, falling messily below his shoulders, and with enough tangles and snarls to give a hairdresser a fit.

  Wherever his skin showed—and that was a lot—was either very hairy or very dirty. He was dressed in what looked like the tattered remains of an old ship’s sail mixed and matched with various local plants. All this was held together with sticks, brass buttons, and loops of twisted grass.

  He took a step forward. We backed up.

  “Don’t attack us, please,” I said. “That is if you even understand what I’m saying, mister, uh, mister—”

  His eyes, all wrinkled and old, suddenly grew wide, and his lips parted in an enormous grin. Without warning, he threw himself on the ground in front of us, clasped his hands and shouted at the top of his lungs, “CHEESE!”

  We blinked at the hairy guy.

  “Mr. Cheese?” said Frankie. “Your name is Mr. Cheese?”

  “No, no, my name is Ben Gunn!” he chirped in a high, raspy voice. “I’m saying cheese because I love cheese. And I’m asking—do you have any cheese?”

  “Do we have any cheese?” I said, doing the fake feeling-my-pockets thing. “Sorry. Fresh out.”

  “I’ve lived on berries and goats and bugs and oysters. But what I’d really love is a nice wad of cheese. A chunk of Cheddar. A bit of Brie, even. Perhaps a load of Limburger. Or a munch of Monterey. I’d even go for a pinch of Parmesan. Or a ripple of Romano. A—”

  “We have some on our ship,” said Jim abruptly.

  Ben Gunn’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

  “SHIP!”

  “Ship,” said Jim. “The Hispaniola.”

  “You have a ship!” Ben cried, as if “ship” was the only thing better than a block of cheese. “A ship to sail me home! Oh, my, my, you’ve come to save old Ben Gunn! Why, I haven’t seen a soul for three whole years!”

  We could tell from his voice that he was an English guy, like all the others in this book.

  “Poor man, were you shipwrecked?” asked Jim.

  “Marooned,” said Ben Gunn.

  I remembered Long John Silver using the word. It meant a horrible kind of punishment, like when I have to stay after school and my mom forgets to pick me up and I have to stay there for a while.

  “A ship!” Ben muttered once more. Then a sudden shadow fell over his face, and he raised a finger before our faces. “You haven’t come on old Captain Flint’s ship, have you?”

  “It’s not Flint’s ship,” Frankie told the old man. “Flint is dead. But there are some of Flint’s old crew on the island right now, which makes things pretty sticky.”

  It was Ben’s turn to gasp. “There’s not a man with … one leg, is there?” he asked.

  Jim nodded. “Long John Silver! You know him?”

  “Akkkk!” Ben screamed. “He’s the most terrible creature that ever hopped on this earth! He was with me on Flint’s ship when they buried the treasure here. Six strong seamen Flint took ashore with him. Then me, Billy Bones, and Long John Silver see Flint coming back to the ship after burying the treasure. And the six men were not with him. And his sword was gone. We knew then that Flint had buried the treasure and killed the six men who knew where it was!”

  It was a horrible story. Frankie’s expression went all the way from astonishment to fear. Mine did, too.

  “How did you get marooned?” asked Jim.

  “Three years ago, I was in another ship and we passed the island and I told the men what treasure was here, if we could find it,” Ben said. “We landed and searched for twelve days, but never found it. The captain was so mad at me, he marooned me ashore. ‘Find Flint’s money for yourself!’ he shouts at me, and takes off, leaving me to fend for myself. I built a hut, I built a little boat, I made myself a little life here. But I’ve been cheeseless ever since!”

  “How terrible,” said Frankie. “You poor man—”

  Suddenly the air exploded with a thunderous sound.

  Ben jumped in fear. “What’s that?”

  “It sounds like the ship’s cannon,” said Jim. “Something’s happening. The pirates and our men must have begun to fight! Come now. Follow me!”

  All four of us began to run toward where the little boats had reached the shore. Ben trotted nimbly over rocks and broken branches like a real jungle animal.

  “Take a sharp right turn!” he said, and we did. “Under the trees to your left,” he said. We went there, too. After three years of nothing much to do, the guy really knew his jungle.

  Suddenly, we heard a bunch of sharp crackling noises coming from the shore.

  “Pistols and rifles,” said Jim. />
  “Oh, terrific. Now we’re at war!” said Frankie.

  A moment later, Ben Gunn broke through the thick woods and into a clearing. There, not fifty feet ahead of us, was a small fort built of logs. And above the fort was the British flag fluttering high over the woods.

  “The old stockade!” said Ben. “But the flag is new—”

  “Our friends must have come ashore and set up camp here!” said Jim, nearly laughing.

  “Does that mean the pirates have taken over the ship?” I asked.

  Jim nodded. “Probably. But we’ll sort that out later. Ben, come and meet our friends, the doctor, the squire, the captain—”

  Another blast of the cannon shot straight through the woods, crashing nearby.

  “Oh, ho-ho! Not I!” said the little man. “I’m safer up in my trees! But tell your leaders I may have something to share with them. But I’ll only trade it for cheese! Later! Later!”

  “Ben, wait!” said Jim.

  But the little man darted away like a graceful animal, leaped into a tree and swung from branch to branch until he was lost in the leafy darkness.

  “Strange little oddball,” I mumbled.

  “Strange big cannonball!” Frankie cried. “Jim! Devin! Watch out!”

  We all fell flat on the ground as a third sizzling, whistling cannonball shot straight over our heads.

  Chapter 13

  The trees exploded above us, showering us with falling leaves and branches.

  “Let’s get in the fort,” cried Jim. “Hurry!”

  We rushed to the stockade walls and pounded on them. A moment later, a small door opened in the wall and there was the squire, looking wrinkled and dirty.

  “I say!” he said. “We were expecting visitors, but not friendly ones. Do come in!”

  We dashed in moments before the next cannon-ball exploded inches from where we were standing.

  Inside the wall was a flat area about the size of the school playground, but paved with dirt. Smack dab in the center stood a house made entirely of logs chopped roughly and fitted together.