by E. S. Farber
Suddenly we heard a scream. We ran outside. The screaming got louder.
“T. J.!”
The screaming seemed to be coming from the grove of pine trees just past the shed. We hurried through the trees. But he wasn’t there. And the screaming had stopped.
We looked at each other, listening hard. Suddenly, it started up again, faint but unmistakable.
“That way!” I pointed to a forest of gum trees.
We dashed through the trees. Something swooped through the dim understory of the forest. But there was no sign of T. J.
“T. J.!”
Our voices echoed through the trees.
“T. J.!!!”
There was a muffled shout. It was coming from somewhere ahead of us. Green moss hung like curtains from the branches. It took us a few minutes to push our way through. When we got to the other side, there was T. J. Gray and white goop dripped down his face.
“What happened to you?”
“This gigantic monster bird, like one of those dinosaur birds, came after me,” said T. J. “I ran, and the next thing I knew it bombed me with this stuff.”
“Where did this monster bird go?”
“That way!” T. J. pointed off into the trees.
Roger headed for the trees. I handed T. J. some leaves to clean himself up.
“T. J., that was no pterodactyl,” I said, trying not to laugh. “It was an osprey and you got pooped, is all. There must be a nest around and it was just protecting its territory.”
“All I see is flowers and a big blue rock,” Roger called back to us. “No monster bird, dude.”
Blue Rock? I thought. Why did that sound so familiar? I had heard that name before. Blue Rock. And then it hit me. I had not heard it. I had read it.
“No way!” My heart beat faster.
“No way what?” asked Roger. “You’re surprised there is no monster bird?!”
I ran through the break in the trees. In the middle of a field of wild flowers was a blue-gray sandstone boulder.
“That’s it!” I said, pointing at the boulder. “It’s the first marker!”
“Huh?”
“Blue Rock is one of the markers on the map,” I explained. “It’s right near where the treasure is buried.”
“Whoa!” said T. J.
“Not whoa!” said Roger. “Don’t you mean, yo-ho-ho?!”
Fifteen Fireballs on a Dead Man's Chest
I took out the map. The X was near a stream that ran almost the length of the island. I looked around the clearing. The stream was just across the field from us. Bingo!
So, the next question was, which direction was the X from the stream and Blue Rock? The map key didn’t have NORTH at the top like usual. Instead, it was to the right, where EAST is supposed to be. Weird. Captain Kidd sure was tricky. If the key was correct, that meant the X was northwest of Blue Rock.
“So, are we ready to dig up the treasure?” asked Roger.
He and T. J. crowded around me to get a look at the map.
“Not yet.” I frowned.
“Is it because you feel bad again about how you kind of stole the map?” said Roger.
“No!”
“Is it because you’re afraid you can’t? Don’t be afraid! Look that fear in the eye, Fish. Tell it to make like a banana and split!”
Roger is always saying stuff like that. He gets these crazy ideas from the “find your inner power” CDs Mrs. H. likes to listen to. She says they help her sell houses.
“No! I’m not afraid of anything,” I snapped. “It’s just that there should be a third point.” I jabbed my finger at the map. “See, the X where the treasure is buried is a certain distance and direction from the stream—or actually from the footbridge across the stream—the Blue Rock, and there should be one more marker.”
“You mean like that tree,” said Roger. He pointed to a small tree on the map that was east of Blue Rock.
I couldn’t believe I had missed it. “Yes!” I looked at the map’s legend. “According to this, it’s a small white oak. So all we have to do is find it and then we’ll know where the treasure is buried.”
We looked around the clearing. There were lots of trees, but there was no small white oak.
“The only oak tree I see is that giant one over there.” I sighed. “And that hasn’t been a small tree for a long, long time.”
“That’s it!” yelled Roger. “When was this map made? Like, over three hundred years ago. So, a small oak tree would now be—”
“A big one!” We all high-fived.
“Okay, guys, we’re ready to call the paces.”
I pulled out my compass. “T. J., go stand at Blue Rock. Roger, you go over to the oak tree.”
Roger raced to the tree, while T. J. munched his way over to the rock.
I checked the map and then ran over to the oak tree. “Okay, Roger, walk fifty-four paces southwest.” I checked my compass and pointed him in the right direction. It seemed to take forever to count 54 steps, but finally he was standing in front of a clump of pricker bushes. I sure hoped the treasure wasn’t buried under them.
“T. J., you have to go twenty-six paces northwest.”
I raced over to T. J. with the compass. We walked the paces and wound up a few feet away from Roger and the pricker bushes. I dashed over to the crumbling stone bridge. I carefully walked twenty paces east toward T. J. and the rock. Then I walked thirty paces north.
The three of us stood looking at one another. There was an awful big space between us where the X was supposed to be.
“That’s gonna be a whole lot of digging,” said Roger.
I frowned. “The map is so detailed, the space should be way smaller.”
“We did everything you said, Fish,” said T. J., sucking on another fireball. “We walked all the paces, right?”
“Just like pirates,” added Roger. “Ahoy, mateys, and heave-ho, and yo—”
“That’s it!” I said. “Captain Kidd had longer legs than we do!”
So we walked the paces all over again, this time taking giant steps. When we were finished, the X where the treasure was buried was much smaller.
“X marks the spot!” I put down the backpack. “Now we just need some shovels and we can start digging!”
T. J. stayed to mark the spot. Roger and I hurried back to the shed. When we got there, we stopped to catch our breath. We stared up at the house. All quiet.
I thought I saw a light for a second at the top by the widow’s walk. I was about to point it out to Roger, but when I looked again, it was gone.
“Dude, what are you waiting for?” said Roger, pushing open the shed door.
We grabbed some shovels we found stacked up against one wall, along with an ice pick in case we hit rock, then raced back. T. J. was just where we had left him, still eating fireballs. I tossed him a shovel and the three of us got to work.
The ground was really hard. We had to keep using the pick to get rocks out of the way. It felt like hours had passed but we kept on digging. My arms started aching. I was hot, sweaty, and tired. I sure hoped the treasure wasn’t buried much deeper.
“Sure you don’t want a fireball?” T. J. asked for about the millionth time. He popped another one in his mouth.
“I don’t know how you can eat those things,” I said, wondering how deep we had gone. I figured about four feet.
“Yeah, dude, they can burn a hole right through your intestines and out your stomach,” said Roger. “No joke.”
T. J.’s eyes widened and he started to mumble. But his mouth was too full of fireballs for us to understand a word.
“Keep digging, guys,” I said, tossing out another shovelful of dirt. The sky had gotten darker,
and it looked like it might rain any second.
“Fish, I hate to rain on your parade,” said Roger, grinning as he pointed up at the clouds. “But what if the treasure isn’t really—”
Just then my shovel hit something hard. The three of us stared at one another. “Whoa! I think it’s the treasure chest!”
Excitedly, we dug away the dirt. Sure enough, the edges of a chest began to appear. We pushed away the rest of the dirt with our hands. There in front of us was an old wooden trunk with a rusty padlock. Captain Kidd’s treasure chest at last!!!
“Yo-ho-ho! Way to go!” whooped Roger.
“Woo-hoo!” I shouted.
“Yippee!” yelled T. J.
SPLAT! All the fireballs in his mouth landed right on top of Captain Kidd’s trunk.
“Dude!” shouted Roger, jumping back from the fireball explosion.
“Oops!” said T. J. “I forgot you can’t talk with fireballs in your mouth.” He swallowed hard a few times and took a few deep breaths. He wiped up the mess with the bottom of his T-shirt.
“Man, T. J., I don’t know how you can fit so many fireballs in your mouth,” I said.
“Fifteen is my limit,” said T. J.
“You know what they say?” joked Roger. “Fifteen fireballs on a dead man’s chest. Yo-ho-ho and a—”
Suddenly there was a clap of thunder. It sounded like it was right over our heads. Lightning streaked across the sky.
“If we get zapped, we’re toast,” said Roger.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Lightning is more likely to strike the tallest things around, which in our case would be trees, not—”
“Forget the lightning, Fish. We are so toast,” said T. J. “Look who’s coming!”
Roger and I looked up. Our mouths dropped open. Striding toward us were Mystery Man and the librarian with the red glasses. And right behind them under a big white umbrella was none other than the Lioness.
“Not just toast. Burned toast with no butter or jam,” said Roger. “That’s us.”
“White or wheat?” asked T. J.
“You look more like a burned bagel or cinnamon bun, if I had to pick a bread type,” said Roger, who talks a lot when he’s nervous. “Now, Fish would be a toaster pizza, and I would be . . . ”
The surprise party of three reached us, and I took a deep breath. I was about to explain everything. Before I could even open my mouth, T. J. said, “See, I told you the partner was wearing a mood ring.” He pointed to Red Glasses’s hand. “When it turns red it means love, because she’s in love with Mystery—”
“Mann!” Roger put in. “Mr. Mann, sir.”
And everyone started talking at once.
Here We Go Again!
A few days later, my dream came true. Roger, T. J., and I were lugging the Seagull motor down Main Street in Feenie’s red wagon. We agreed to use the money we got as a reward for finding the treasure to buy the Seagull and fix up the Captain’s boat. You probably want to know about the bet.
Hold on, I’m getting to that.
First, I need to tell you about the treasure. It sure wasn’t what we expected. There were a bunch of old papers, a pair of long johns (I guess even pirates wear long underwear), and at the very bottom, a busted-up silver teapot and a bunch of silver spoons. That was it. No pieces of eight. No gold. No bars of silver. No diamonds or emeralds or rubies. Captain Kidd’s real treasure is still hidden somewhere.
The good news is that Lyons Island is now a historic landmark, so the Lioness gets to keep it just the way it is. And T. J. was right about the mood ring and love and all that, because Mystery Man and Red Glasses—I mean, Ms. Valen—are engaged. They were very excited about the treasure. Old papers really are pirate booty to them. Mystery Man actually shook each of our hands and told us how impressed he was with our treasure hunting skills and our perseverance.
Turns out he is a real live treasure hunter. He actually went to where Captain Kidd’s honest to goodness pirate ship, the Quedagh Merchant, was discovered off Catalina Island (that’s in the Dominican Republic). And he went scuba diving to look for the treasure. There wasn’t any. Just a bunch of old cannons. Captain Kidd’s treasure is still out there somewhere. Mystery, I mean, Mr. Mann invited us to come to the library’s Special Collection any time we want, and he framed a copy of the newspaper article about us finding the treasure and put it up in his office.
“Your turn,” said Roger. He put the wagon handle in my hand just as we passed the library.
“Hey, did you ever pay that fine you owed?” asked T. J. He shoved an AirHead into his mouth.
“Mystery Man said I didn’t have to,” I said, grinning.
My library card was the clue that led Mystery Man and the Lioness to us. See, he found it in the Lioness’s basement at the end of the garden party. It turned out that she remembered seeing a trunk like the one he talked about when the stuff in the basement got moved after the leak. So she and Mystery Man took a trip to the basement and found the same trunk I did. The next day (the day we dug up the treasure), he went to my house. Feenie told him I was on a hunt for “some kid’s” treasure. Mystery Man put two and two together. Then he called the Lioness and met her in town and they hurried to the island to find us. The light I thought I saw at the top of the Lioness’s house when Roger and I went to get the shovels really was a light. It was coming from the widow’s walk, where Mystery Man and the Lioness were standing, looking for us, because you can see almost the whole island from up there.
Just then Roger nudged me. Rounding Town Pond were two boys. One of them was wearing mirrored sunglasses and pushing a red scooter.
“It’s time, Finelli,” said Roger.
All three of us started to run, pulling the wagon behind us. We caught up with Bryce and Trippy by the flagpole at the far end of the pond. It’s a popular spot to watch the swans, or to bike and skateboard. There were a bunch of people there, but I barely noticed. I was too busy thinking about what I was going to say to Bryce.
“Hey, Bryce!” I called.
“Yeah, loser,” Bryce sneered.
“I won the bet!”
“Yeah, Bryce,” Roger piped up. “Fish found the treasure, so he wins.”
“It’s been more than two weeks,” said Trippy.
“I know,” I said. “But the day we found the treasure was the fourteenth day. So it was exactly two weeks.”
By this time, a bunch of people were watching. There were some kids from our class and a group of older kids from Marine Middle, including Roger’s sister, Summer, and Beck Billings. At the very back of the crowd was my mom. She was holding a loaf of bread that Feenie and Mmm were feeding to the cygnets. Everyone had their eyes on us.
“It’s all over, Bryce,” said Roger. “Fish found the treasure. Now give him the sunglasses.”
Bryce frowned and looked at Trippy, who shrugged.
“He found Captain Kidd’s treasure in two weeks, just like he said,” Roger went on. “That means he wins. So give Fish the sunglasses.”
“Give Fish the sunglasses!” someone in the crowd yelled.
“Give Fish the sunglasses!” called another voice.
Bryce had no choice. A bet was a bet, and I had won it fair and square.
Reluctantly Bryce pulled off his mirrored sunglasses. He threw them at me and I caught them.
“Put them on.” Roger nudged me.
So I did, and everyone clapped. Feenie and Mmm waved their magic wands. My mom smiled. So did Summer. The crowd started breaking up.
“It’s just a pair of sunglasses,” said Bryce. “It’s no big deal. You’re still a loser.” He nodded toward the wagon. “You gonna fix your dad’s broken-down truck with that old motor?”
“For your information, this engine isn
’t for a car or a truck at all. It’s a Seagull motor, one of the finest motorboat engines ever made. The British used them to power light assault craft during World War II, as a matter of fact.”
“Read my lips! Who cares?” said Bryce.
“You will, when we use it to bury you at the Captain Kidd Classic.”
Bryce snorted. “Beat me? With that old thing? You must be kidding.”
“No, I’m not kidding. We’re not just going to beat you. We’re going to win the Silver Cup.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“I dare you, Fish Finelli,” said Bryce. “I double-doggie dare you.”
“Just you wait! You’ll be eating our spray.”
Roger and T. J. looked at me, eyes wide. I knew they were thinking of Bryce’s brand-new whaler. His top-of-the-line, superlight, super fast boat with the 9.9-horsepower Mercury FourStroke engine.
“You losers must be kidding,” said Bryce. “You couldn’t beat a canoe with your old boat.”
“Just watch us!” I said.
“The Fireball can beat anything,” said Roger.
“Later, losers!” said Bryce, as he and Trippy walked away.
“Fireball?” T. J. and I both looked at Roger.
“Great name for our boat, right! Remember what happened when we dug up Captain Kidd’s trunk?!”
I smiled. “The Fireball. I like it.”
“Oh, you mean when I . . . ” T. J.’s voice trailed off. “I get it!”
Roger whooped and held up his hand. T. J. and I started whooping, too.
We did our secret handshake. And we said our secret password—“S.D.E.P.”—and bumped fists.
“Here we go again,” said Roger.
10,000 WAYS THAT WON’T WORK
“On the count of three,” I said. “One . . . two . . .”
“Two and a half,” said Roger, grinning so his brown eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Two and three-quarters,” said T. J.
“Three!” We picked up the Seagull motor and slid it into the drum of water.