Aloha, Lugosi! The Gretch Bayonne Action Adventure Series Book #4

by Steven M. Thomas

  That night, I asked Speck if he’d seen the two men on the beach we had talked to.

  “No,” he replied. “I watched you reach the island and walk up through the trees but I didn’t see any men. There were men there?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Not really.”

  Later that evening, as Barber and Sharkey were fishing, I managed to have a private conversation with Crumby about what we’d witnessed.

  “We should go back,” I said. “It may be a long time before you have the opportunity, and you might not even be able to find the island again.”

  Crumby spun the giant wheel in his hands and yelled for the crew. “Change of course!” he commanded. “We’re going back! And we will need lanterns and shovels! All hands on deck!”

  The captain positioned the Eclipse just off Ghost Island and dropped anchor. The stars shown just enough that we could see the outline of the island but that was about it.

  He ordered Cousin Alex to stay aboard with Hiwanda and wait for our return. This time, we would be taking Sharkey and Barber with us. Speck would stay on board as usual in his crow’s nest, despite the fact that he couldn’t see a damned thing. But come daybreak, if we weren’t back yet, he could at least look for us through his telescopes.

  We started hearing the voices once we got to the beach. “Thank God, you’ve come to rescue us!” a voice cried out.

  It was the same voice Crumby and I had heard when we first hit the beach earlier that day. But this time, we couldn’t see them.

  “Just ignore them,” Crumby instructed.

  “Who is here?” Barber asked.

  “No one,” I answered.

  “But I heard them!” he replied.

  “Follow me!” Crumby instructed as he led us up the beach. We each had lanterns, but navigating in the dark was difficult. Things always look different at night.

  “Who were those men?” Sharkey asked, bumping up against me from behind.

  “Nothing to be worried about,” I said. “They can’t harm us.”

  Crumby finally told us to stop, as we arrived at the great palm tree. We sat our lanterns down and stared at the skeleton that was buried from the waist down.

  “We have to dig him up,” Crumby ordered. “The treasure may be buried here.”

  “Jesus and Mary,” Barber said. “Defacing a burial site is bad luck!”

  “That may be why my uncle hid the money here,” the captain said. “It’s not for the weak of heart. But dig, man, dig!”

  I stood back and watched the three of them turn shovel after shovel of dirt until they hit something hard. Barber went head first down the hole as we all waited in anticipation. He finally came up empty handed.

  “It’s rock,” he announced. “Nothing but rock!” They quickly began digging around the other side of the palm tree. Again, about two feet down, all they found was rock.

  Crumby sat on the ground with his head in hands, right next to the skeleton they’d just dug up. It had fallen apart and was unrecognizable, except for the skull. The captain picked up the skull and held it in front of him. “I am sorry, old man,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to you, but forgive me for disturbing your rest.”

  Barber and Sharkey were sifting through the dirt they’d dug up, in total desperation. I felt bad for them to come up empty handed.

  “I found something!” Sharkey yelled, producing a small leather pouch from the dirt. He struggled to open it, but once he did, he upended the pouch and began shaking it. And from out of that pouch poured dozens of gold coins.

  They all screamed and cheered louder than a thousand spectators at a football match. I’d never seen men so happy. Sure, it wasn’t the treasure chest full of gold bars, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. Crumby had walked away from the island out of a fear of ghosts. I’d convinced him that we should go back, in the dark, and search again. And it paid off.

  As we were shoving off the island in our little dinghy, I heard a familiar voice. It was the ghost of one of the men we’d seen when we first got there. “May I go with you?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “You can’t leave here.”

  “What do you mean I can’t leave here?” Crumby asked.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” I answered.

  No one else had heard the voice that night but me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Finding the gold coins was a big boost to Captain Jonas Crumby and his crew. I am not even sure if they told Speck about it, and Cousin Alex was certainly left out of the loop.

  I didn’t really care. My mission was the same. To find Bela Lugosi. I’d lost nearly a day in the search by going back to Ghost Island, but in my mind, it was worth it. It gave Crumby and his men a renewed spirit to keep pressing on. So it was worth it to me.

  Hiwanda was beginning to be more comfortable on the ship. She was doing a great deal of the cooking and cleaning, and seemed to be happy. But that also meant she was spending a great deal of he time with Cousin Alex.

  “He is a good man,” she told me. “The Chief is not so nice to him though, which is not a good Moon for him.”

  I explained to her that the two men were rival cousins, and I think she understood. But Alex had already convinced her that Crumby was a bad egg. And she knew that the captain and I went off together on adventures without her. I decided right then and there that I would not leave her alone with Alex anymore than I had to.

  “This is another one!” Speck told me from atop the crow’s nest. “Life could be there!”

  I peered through the telescope at the green island. At first, it looked like nothing, then I saw what appeared to be a pack of hogs running up a hill. “Did you see pigs?” I asked Speck.

  “Yes,” he replied. “And down towards the beach, there are wooden structures. They are definitely man-made.”

  “Like huts?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered. “More like children’s swing sets.”

  Hiwanda was thrilled to be going with us this time, although it was against my better judgment. I couldn’t imagine pigs and swing sets on an island in the middle of the Pacific. It didn’t make any sense. But so far, nothing had.

  We discovered the “swing sets” on the beach were nothing more than hanging galleys once we landed. There were no swings. Just ropes and what looked like blood splattered everywhere. I knew I’d made a mistake the moment we’d stepped foot on the island.

  “You must go back now,” I told Hiwanda. “Get in the dinghy and go back to the ship.”

  “I won’t leave you!” she insisted.

  “There’s danger here,” I said. “And I don’t want you to stay another moment! Now go!”

  Hiwanda didn’t budge. She was clearly not going to be told what to do.

  “There’s a path here,” Crumby said. “Come on!”

  We wound through shrubs and vines up the path towards a high hill. Rustling sounds were all around us, and we could hear the grunting sounds of animals near us. We were being followed.

  The path led to a set of old wooden stairs and a high barbed wire fence. The gate was locked, but we managed to climb it and make it to the other side. It must have been ten acres of what had once been a farm. The ground was mostly bare dirt now, and there were no animals around. In the distance was an old farmhouse, which was surrounded by yet another high fence.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for years,” Crumby said.

  We walked up to the house and around to the back, hoping to get an idea of whether or not anyone lived there. There were six little pigs wandering around and a couple of domestic cats.

  A donkey and a few chickens were startled by our sudden appearance and began making a lot of noise. A long-haired man burst out of the back door with a shotgun and fired it towards us.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “We are just looking for someone! We don’t mean any harm!”

  He lowered his gun and walked towards the fence and opened the gate. “Get in here!” he s
aid.

  Hiwanda gripped my hand tightly as we walked through the yard and into the stranger’s house.

  “Did you see them?” the man asked.

  “See whom?” I asked.

  “The pack,” he answered. “Khana and his wild pack!”

  “We saw some pigs from our ship,” I answered. “But no men. Who is Khana?”

  “He is their leader!” the man answered. “For the last two years, he has held me hostage here and ruined my farm!”

  “He’s been robbing you?” Crumby asked.

  “Worse than that!” the man answered. “He’s taken complete control!”

  “We saw a lot of hogs here that seemed to be running wild,” I explained. “Apparently this Khana has left some behind.”

  “You don’t understand,” he explained. “Khana is not a man. He is a pig. And now he is the king of this island.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  How can a pig take over an island? They are breakfast, I thought, not warriors.

  The farmer introduced himself as Teddy Roenkamp. He’d acquired the farm four years earlier in a card game.

  “It was great for the first couple of years,” Roenkamp explained. “Merchant ships would stop by several times a year and I would butcher the pigs for them down on the beach. They would trade me money and goods. I had everything I needed and more.”

  Things turned bad for the farmer almost overnight. “Khana was always the smartest of the bunch,” he said. “He watched everything that was happening. And one day, just as I was getting ready to take him and about six others down to slaughter, they escaped.”

  “How did that happen?” I asked.

  “They simply ran away,” he replied. “He started running, and the others followed him.”

  “Maybe he knew they were about to be butchered,” I said.

  “Oh, absolutely, he did,” Roenkamp replied. “The scariest thing was, after they ran about fifty yards off, Khana suddenly turned around and started charging back towards me. He stopped and stamped his hoofs, grunting loudly, then turned and disappeared with the others into the woods.”

  Hiwanda was listening intently. I could tell she was already siding with the pigs. Where she came from, men did not eat land animals.

  “He returned a few weeks later and managed to get through my fence, taking a half dozen more swine with him,” the farmer said. “That was over a year ago.”

  “It sounds like you have quite the dilemma on your hands here,” Crumby finally said.

  “I am ready to leave the island to them,” Roenkamp admitted. “I haven’t been able to supply the passing ships with meat, and am nearly out of supplies now.”

  “We have Winchesters on board our vessel,” Crumby replied. “Me and my men could probably take them out if we can get them out in the open.”

  “I’m afraid Khana is too smart for that,” the farmer replied. “They don’t come out during the day. And besides, even if they did, you most likely wouldn’t get them down on the beach.”

  “You’re welcome to come with us,” I offered. “We’re headed all the way to the end of the islands. It will at least get you out of here.”

  “If they see me leaving with you,” he replied, “they will attack us all. They are pure evil, and would rip me to shreds at the first opportunity.”

  “These pigs,” Crumby said. “They will eat just about anything, right?”

  “Yes,” Roenkamp replied. “Including all of us.”

  “I have an idea,” the captain said. “We are going to leave now, but you must meet us on the beach tomorrow morning if you want to get out of here alive.”

  “What’s the idea?” the farmer asked.

  “We have many cases of food aboard our ship,” Crumby explained. “Do you have buckets?”

  “Of course,” Roenkamp said. “Dozens of them. But feeding them is not going to stop them.”

  “It won’t just be food,” the captain replied. “We will add gunpowder. Not enough so that they can taste it, but enough to make them sick and render them defenseless for hours.”

  “That might just work,” the farmer said. “But if you bring buckets of food to the beach at night, they may attack you just to get to it.”

  “You leave that to us,” Crumby replied. “By sunrise, if you aren’t on the beach, we will leave without you.”

  I was impressed that the captain would make such sacrifices for the farmer. It had nothing to do with our mission, and he had no way of making any profit from it. Perhaps finding the gold coins changed him. Either way, we were committed. It didn’t even bother me that Crumby had not consulted with me first. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

  We carried three empty pails in each hand and walked back down to the dinghy. There was not a hog in sight, but I felt like we were being watched. Just as we pushed the little boat off of the beach, they emerged from the woods.

  “My god!” I said. “They are coming down to the beach! Do you see them?”

  There must have been twenty of them, and sure enough, out in front, was Khana. He was clearly the king of the island. He stamped his hoofs and shook his head, as if he were scolding us never to return. It was a damned intimidating sight to say the least. But we’d made a promise to Roenkamp. And as much as I hated to, we had to go back and rescue him from Pig Island.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Crumby and Barber argued over how much gunpowder to mix in with the canned beef. You’d think they were running a damned gourmet restaurant to hear them talk.

  “That’s too much!” Barber shouted. “They will smell it! And if they smell it, they won’t eat it!”

  “It has to be enough to make them sick!” the captain countered. “Otherwise, what is the point?”

  It suddenly dawned on me that the gunpowder might not affect the hogs at all. After all, they are pigs. Their stomachs are different from ours. And they can eat anything. As we debated the biology of pigs, more and more gunpowder was added to the pails.

  “My grandfather had pigs,” Speck finally said.

  We all stopped what we were doing and turned to him in dead silence. He didn’t immediately offer up any advice so I finally spoke up.

  “Then what do you think?” I asked him. “Will this work?”

  “They are very smart,” Speck answered. “Much smarter than horses.”

  “And they will smell the gunpowder!” Barber replied. “See! That’s what I have been trying to tell you all!”

  “But the thing about pigs,” Speck continued, “they aren’t so smart when they are hungry.”

  “Thus the phrase ‘eating like a pig,’” Crumby quipped.

  Cousin Alex had been quiet during the whole gunpowder to beef ratio debate. He had been delegated to opening cans.

  “They will eat it even if it were half and half,” he said.

  Crumby began dumping more gunpowder into the pails, but didn’t verbally acknowledge his cousin’s endorsement of his theory.

  “Keep the beef coming, damn it!” the captain yelled.

  Finally, all sixteen buckets were filled with the poisonous concoction. It was time to feed the animals.

  I was reminded of Crazy Carl at the Selig Zoo when Wolf and I went there looking for the Graf monkeys. He not only had to feed the animals, but keep them under control. That’s why he carried a bag of small hammers around with him. In the end, even after feeding them, he got his face ripped off by Clarence the lion.

  Crumby pulled me aside so we could speak in private.

  “I am sending Alex and Sharkey to make the food drop,” he said. “You and I will follow in the other dinghy to pick up the farmer.”

  “It’s going to be risky,” I replied. “I can see why you would send Alex, but why Sharkey?”

  “Someone has to do it,” he replied, “and he is the third mate here.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

  “He’s the most dispensable,” the captain answered. “Speck and Barber are more valu
able. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Why are you doing this, really?” I asked. “We could have just carried on and left this man to catch a ride off Pig Island the next time a merchant ship came around.”

  “Pork can last a long time,” the captain replied. “Especially if you salt it down real good and keep it cold.”

  “You want one of those pigs for yourself, don’t you?” I asked.

  “We might as well take one,” he replied. “Do you know how long it has been since I’ve had bacon?”

  We loaded the sixteen buckets onto a long rod and lowered the dinghy with Alex and Sharkey into the water.

  “You know the plan!” the captain shouted. “Just set the buckets down on the beach and get the hell out of there, fast!”

  As we waited for the sun to come up, I found Hiwanda sleeping in the crow’s nest.

  “She was crying,” Speck said. “She doesn’t want us to kill the animals.”

  “We’re not killing them,” I replied. “We’re just putting them to sleep for awhile.”

  “I don’t think she understands that, Bay,” he said.

  “I will talk to her in the morning,” I answered. “We are saving a man’s life here. And that is far more important than a pack of wild animals.”

  “They walk the earth,” Speck said. “And to her that is sacred.”

  Hiwanda may be right. Hell, I don’t know. To me, food is food. It doesn’t matter if it swims in the ocean or is raised on a farm. We are carnivores. I’d sooner eat a damned pig than starve to death, let alone allow a pack of them to run over me. It may not be pretty, but that is the order of the food chain. And I’m damned glad to be on the top of it.

  Crumby yelled that Alex and Sharkey were back and it was time for us to go. The sun was coming up as Speck peered through his telescope.

  “Can you see anything yet?” I asked.

  “My God,” Speck said. “They are all there, lying on the beach!”

  “The hogs?” I asked.