The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton's Lair

by S. S. Taylor

  Sukey blushed and I felt something give way in my stomach, an unpleasant little shift. I’d never heard him call her that before, but it sounded familiar, something he’d used more than once.

  “Well, here we are,” Joyce announced, as we came out of the trees and onto a wide, black-sand beach ringed with palm trees, almost exactly like the one on the other side of the island. “Camp Castaway!”

  Thirty-seven

  “Hey, everyone! Look who we found!” Zander shouted as we came down onto the beach.

  Kemal and Jack were the first ones to see us emerge from the trees and Kemal shouted, “M.K.! Someone go get M.K.!” and then ran toward us, grinning.

  “You’re okay,” he said in a quiet voice. He surprised me by throwing his arms around Sukey and then me. I was so happy they were all alive that I hugged him back.

  “We thought you were dead!” Jack exclaimed, hugging Sukey and hanging on just a little too long. “Your hair smells really good, by the way.”

  “Okay, Jack,” she said, pushing him away. “That’s enough.”

  “It’s just so good to see you,” he sighed. “You guys, too.” He was still wearing his white suit, but the pants had been torn off at the knees and the sleeves ripped off the jacket and it was now the color of dirt.

  “We found them up on the side of the volcano, being attacked by one of the eels.” Zander told them.

  “Did you sing to it?” Kemal asked.

  “Zander did,” Joyce laughed. “It was beautiful. His best performance yet.”

  And then M.K. came running down the beach, holding her wrench, a funny hat made of woven palm fronds shielding her face from the sun. The hat fell off when I grabbed her and picked her up to hug her and I think Sukey stepped on it when she hugged her too.

  I hadn’t seen M.K. cry since we’d gotten the news about Dad, but her eyes were wet now and she clung to me whispering, “We thought you were dead. We really thought you were dead.” I felt my throat tighten and my own eyes filled with tears. I quickly brushed them away.

  “Well, we’re not dead,” Sukey said, hugging M.K. tightly. I think she was crying too.

  They’d only been there two days, but they’d been busy. The inflatable raft had been supplied with the same thin tarps that were in my vest, and they’d made some tents at the back of the beach. Someone had been collecting palm fronds; there was a big pile of them next to the tents. For the first time in what seemed like months, I let myself relax a little. We were all okay. I had gone for a ride in the shell of a giant turtle who had shown me an underwater city, and I had failed to figure out the map Dad had left for me there, but at least we were all alive.

  “Did you find water?” I asked her.

  “We found a little bit in some leaves and we were able to collect some that condensed on the underside of the tarps last night, but there are a lot of us. We need a source of fresh water and we need it soon.” She lowered her voice. “We wanted to take a vote on what we should do, but Lazlo’s being impossible. He keeps trying to say that we’re in a state of emergency and as the expedition leader he’s like the king of the island or something.”

  “Where are they?” She knew I meant the Nackleys.

  “In the tent. Mr. Nackley’s resting. His leg looks kind of nasty. I’m worried it’s infected but he won’t let anyone touch it.”

  “Hey, Lazlo,” Joyce shouted as we walked across the beach to the tents. “Look who we found. You didn’t lose a single kid!”

  Leo Nackley was lying in the middle tent, his right leg propped up on a pile of palm fronds, his face pale and tight with pain beneath his dark beard.

  “You’re okay,” Lazlo said, eyeing us coldly. “I didn’t think you would be.” He was very sunburned, his pale skin an angry shade of red, his nose peeling. He was thinner, but I guess we all were.

  “Well, we’re sorry to disappoint you,” Sukey said cheerfully. “Hi, Mr. Nackley.”

  He nodded at her, then looked up at me. “Where have you been?”

  “We washed up on the other side of the island,” I said. “Two days ago. It looks pretty much exactly the way this side of the island looks.”

  “They climbed the volcano,” Zander told him. “And we’re alone out here. No land or ships in sight. So I think we need to—”

  “We’ll talk about it later, West,” Lazlo said. “Can’t you see my father’s resting?” Leo Nackley glared at me.

  We left them alone and went back down to the beach, where Jack was sitting on the sand and trying to comb his hair with a stick. “How’s he doing?” he asked, looking worried.

  “He looks like he’s in pain,” I told him.

  “Yeah,” Jack said in a low voice. “I think Lazlo’s worried too.”

  “Well, something’s making him act like he’s the Emperor of the Indorustan Empire,” M.K. muttered.

  “He’s under a lot of pressure,” Jack said. “It’s not his fault.”

  “Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that. I’m going to go work on Amy,” M.K. said, marching off down the beach.

  We spent the day swimming and sitting around staring at the ocean or sleeping in the sun. Joyce kept checking the sky, and I knew she was worried about Njamba.

  By five o’clock, we were all hungry and starting to think about dinner. The fire had mostly gone out and Kemal said he was going to try to get it going again. I offered to help. They had managed to pile some palm fronds on top of the fire before the storm arrived and when we took them off there were still a few embers at the bottom. I helped him bring over some dry branches he’d stored under a tarp. “Where’d you find these?” I asked. “We had a terrible time finding stuff to burn on the other side of the island.”

  “There are some trees that grow up the slope,” he said pointing. “Your brother thought they might be related to mangroves. Anyway, they burn really well.” He cupped his hands and got down low, blowing on the embers. We watched as a small flame shot up to catch the crumpled palm fronds he’d used for tinder. He piled some more on at just the right moment and the fronds caught fire.

  “You’re good at that,” I told him.

  “I should be.” He smiled. “Besides the thousands of dollars the Academy’s spent on teaching me how to build fires, I got lots of practice when we were escaping from Ottomanland. We camped in the desert for twenty-three nights before we arrived in Simeria. The desert gets cold at night. There are wild dogs, snakes, other things. My parents had to hunt for food.” He gave me a small smile. “I got good at building fires. Get me a few pieces of that wood.” He pointed to the pile of debris they’d found on the beach. There wasn’t much, five or six boards from what looked like a lifeboat, broken pieces of pottery. They’d already removed the few bits of silver, a cup and a few spoons, and were using them for cooking. There was something eerie about the little pile. Had any people washed up with it? If so, what had happened to them? I pulled out a couple of the boards and tossed them onto the fire.

  The damp wood hissed and steamed as the flames licked at them.

  “So what do you think?” Kemal said in a low voice, as we watched Zander and Sukey walk toward us, talking and laughing. “Do we have a chance of finding the shipwrecks?”

  He was trying to sound casual, but he hadn’t quite succeeded. “You mean the oil?”

  “Yeah, I mean the oil. I thought . . . I mean, well, what you and Joyce were saying.” He blushed.

  Zander interrupted us. “How’s that fire? Suke and I are going to try to rustle up some fish for dinner.”

  “Zander says he’s got some new method that works better than the spear!”

  “I found this little net, all folded up in my vest,” Zander said. “Dad left it for me. It works great.”

  Kemal and Jack and I set up a little platform of sticks for cooking over the fire, and and it wasn’t long before Zander and Sukey came running up the beach, laughing and holding a makeshift palm frond basket filled with fish.

  When the fish were cooked, we laid them
out on rocks and sat around the fire, watching the sun go down. Leo Nackley came to eat with us, limping down the beach and wincing as he lowered himself to the sand.

  Once we’d all eaten, he raised a hand and announced, “Now that we know we all survived the shipwreck, Lazlo and I think we have to address the fact that the strange conditions in the water back there indicate something’s there, under the water. Lazlo thinks it must be the ocean trenches that we’ve been seeking. They were letting out oil, and that’s what caused the shipwreck. He wants to repair the raft and use the diving equipment from Miss West’s . . . machine to see what’s there. Don’t you, Lazlo?”

  “Yes,” Lazlo said nervously. “I think that may be the source of the oil. I’m going to go tomorrow and I’m taking Jack and, uh . . . Zander with me.”

  “Are you joking?” Joyce asked him. “You want to go back there?”

  “In a leaking raft?” Zander asked. “I won’t go.”

  “It’s not up to you,” Lazlo said. “I’m the expedition leader. You have to do as I say. Miss West is going to fix the raft.”

  “With what?” M.K. asked him. “Don’t you think that if there was a way to fix that boat I would already have tried it?”

  “Everyone says you’re such a good engineer,” Lazlo told her. “You shouldn’t have any problem. Besides, it’s not your, uh, job to question.” He glanced at his father. “I’m the expedition leader!”

  “But we’re shipwrecked,” Kemal said. “There is no expedition anymore, Lazlo. The expedition was a disaster. Don’t you see that? You can forget about Mr. Mountmorris’s gold.”

  Lazlo rose up to his full height and turned on Kemal. “The expedition is not a disaster, Kemal. I am going to find the oil and I am going to win the prize.”

  Leo Nackley had been silent, listening to us argue, but now he raised a hand and said, “Lazlo is in charge. He will make the decisions about how we are to proceed. I, for one, feel that we are in good hands. And now I’m going to rest my leg.” Lazlo helped him up and watched his father limp back toward the tents.

  “Lazlo,” Sukey said once his father was gone. “We’ll be lucky if we get off this island alive. You can’t do it. Zander, don’t go with him.”

  “I decide who goes and who stays,” Lazlo said.

  They kept arguing but I didn’t say a word. I was too busy panicking. If Lazlo went out in Amy looking for the trenches at the site of the shipwreck, he might find the underwater city.

  But I didn’t think the turtles would let that happen. They would probably sink the lifeboat and Lazlo—and Jack and Zander with him.

  Once it was dark, we all sat there watching the jellyfish light up the water off the beach and listening to the eels slither up the coconut palms.

  “What do you think everyone else is doing right now?” Sukey wondered. “How do you think Mr. Wooley’s feeling? And where do you think Maggie is?”

  “Maybe she’s giving Mr. Foley a foot massage,” I suggested. Everyone laughed except for Lazlo.

  “That’s not a very respectful way of talking about your headmaster. Or the director of the ADR,” Lazlo said. “Someone tried to kill him at the Kickoff Dinner, or have you forgotten?”

  “Oh, come on,” Kemal said. “Nobody tried to kill Mr. Foley. Everyone knows it. They set that bomb behind the elephant. They staged the whole thing. If that had been real, do you think they would have let all the guests leave before they figured out who it was?”

  We all stared at him in surprise, even Lazlo.

  “But why would they do that?” M.K. asked. “Why would they pretend?”

  “Why do you think?” Kemal asked bitterly, and suddenly I remembered what Joyce had said about those two days she was being questioned.

  I leaned forward to poke the fire. “Because they wanted to be able to search us, to put the extra agents on campus. They wanted an excuse to know exactly what we were up to. Because they wanted to be able to ask Joyce and Kemal for the names of their friends and families.”

  “He’s right,” Joyce said quietly. “It was pretty clear when they were questioning us that they weren’t trying to figure out who put the bomb there. That was just the pretense.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” Lazlo said. “This is ridiculous.”

  Zander leaned forward and poked the fire too. “I knew they were low when they let you steal our proposal, Lazlo. But I didn’t realize they were quite that low.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Lazlo said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No. I didn’t.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure his father hadn’t come out of his tent. “They . . . they gave it to me. Said I had to turn it in and that if I did I would be chosen as leader. They said it was an old one. I didn’t know it was yours.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Jack said. “He really didn’t know it was yours.”

  “But why?” Joyce asked.

  Lazlo looked at Zander, M.K., and me. “Because you’re hiding something. My father thinks you have a map that shows exactly where the oil is. He’s not going to stop until he finds out what it is. We need it. The country needs it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Zander said, but he didn’t sound very convincing.

  I didn’t say anything; I didn’t dare.

  “It’s so cold,” Sukey said, trying to change the subject. “It’s so hot during the day that it seems hard to believe it could cool off so quickly at night.” Zander put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him.

  “I’m going to work on Amy,” M.K. announced. “If you find any rubber cement or durable composite patching material, you let me know, Lazlo. I’ll get right to work on that raft.”

  “I’ll go with you.” I jumped up and followed her along the dark path through the trees to the little rocky beach where they’d managed to get Amy up on dry land.

  “How’s it going?” I asked her as she started tinkering, using her vestlight to illuminate the parts of Amy’s engine and boilers.

  “Pretty good. I’m almost there, but don’t tell Lazlo. I need to reconnect the internal steam filter to the exterior pressure gauge, but I don’t have any extra wire. I’m using the first-line plugs to make the connection and . . . you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “No, but it all sounds good.”

  M.K. looked up at me. “Do you believe Lazlo? That he didn’t know?

  “I think so.”

  “So what do you think about Dad’s map now that we’re here? Was that King Triton’s Lair back there? The waves or whatever it was that sunk the ship?”

  I’d never lied to M.K. in my life, but suddenly I heard myself saying, “I don’t know. It might have been,” and she was giving me a strange look.

  “Are you okay?” she said. “Did you find something on the other side of the island?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just tired. I need to get some sleep.” I made my way back along the path to Camp Castaway. Hearing Zander and Sukey’s laughter rising from the circle around the campfire, I went straight to my tent and got under my reflective blanket. I listened to them all talking and laughing.

  It was so strange. I was relieved to know they were all okay, and yet I was filled with regret that it wasn’t just Sukey and me on the beach anymore. I felt suddenly and deeply alone and I remembered the Explorer’s words: And you should know that it isn’t about your brother and sister. I was directed by your father to give the book to you. Just you. Not to Zander, not to M.K. To you, Kit.

  I knew now why Dad had sent us here. I knew why he’d given me the map, why he’d given me the whistle. But I didn’t know how I was going to get back to the secret map at the bottom of the sea before BNDL arrived.

  It was a long time before I fell asleep.

  Thirty-eight

  The next morning, after we’d eaten fish for breakfast, M.K. and Zander started work on a contraption for collecting drinking water. They had made a number of baskets out of palm leaves and put them
around the beach to collect rainwater, but we had discovered that they leaked and hadn’t collected much at all from the rainstorm.

  While they tried to repair the baskets, I emptied my vest pockets to see if there were any gadgets or utilities we could use to collect drinking water. The spearfishing utility had been in the upper right-hand pocket and I remembered a few other things in there that I hadn’t recognized.

  “What are those?” M.K. asked as I spread out three large circles of fabric, coated with a smooth substance. “There’s some kind of marking on them.”

  She was right. A little cartoon diagram showed a stick figure digging a hole in the ground, then placing a cup in the bottom of the hole, and then placing the circle of plastic over the top and weighting down the edges.

  “It’s a condensation device!” M.K. exclaimed. “Look at the picture! Help me dig some holes. The fabric will make them airtight, and when water condenses on the inside, it will drip down into the cup. Quick, Kit, see if you can find some palm leaves that we can twist into a better cone receptacle.”

  We got busy and pretty soon we had the three water condensers set up on the beach.

  When we were done, I announced that I was going for a walk.

  “Take a sword with you,” Zander said as I was leaving. “That’s the rule we made after we discovered the eels.” He showed me how to attach a scabbard to one of the loops on my vest, and I set off up the path toward the top of the volcano, keeping an eye out for the constrictor eels and trying to figure out what to do. If all had gone well, Njamba may have already reached St. Beatrice. It would probably take BNDL another day or two to reach us, if they could. Lazlo might try to go out in the raft and force Zander and Jack to go with him. I knew that I needed to get back to the city to warn the turtles. But how? The Nackleys were already suspicious. If I disappeared for too long, they would try to come and find me, and I couldn’t risk them seeing the turtle as he came up on the beach to get me.