The Pirate Code

by Heidi Schulz

There was nothing she could do. She held out the map. He snatched it from her hand.

  Krueger peered closely at it, attempting to verify its authenticity. He translated a few words, working them out aloud to test the key Jocelyn had written. “I see you found the way to make it readable. Very good. Your grandfather will live—”

  Relief landed like a delicate butterfly on Jocelyn’s heart—then flew off, startled away by his next words.

  “—but I’ll keep him as payment for my missing flesh. I’ve always wanted a nobleman to scrub my chamber pot. Adds a touch of class. And when I claim the treasure, I’ll force him to carry it out. Let him feel the burden of another man’s riches across his back.” He laughed—a wet, nasty sound emanating from his ruined nose—caught up in his cruel fantasy.

  The gibbet creaked. When Krueger looked down again at the map in his hand, Jocelyn stole a glance. There, perched on the cage, was Roger! He had disobeyed her orders and had come to help. Jocelyn felt a mixture of annoyance and gratitude.

  The boy lit on the other side of Sir Charles’s prison and was stealthily trying to liberate him. He ignored the lock, instead working to loosen the hinges that held the cage together.

  Jocelyn edged away from the railing. “I feel sorry for you, you know,” she said loudly, pushing Krueger to keep his focus on her.

  Krueger’s laugh died out, his eyes flashing in anger. He turned his back to the gibbet so he could face the girl directly. “I have your grandfather,” he spat. “I have your map. I’ll soon have what should in all fairness be your gold. I have won. What reason could you possibly have to pity me?”

  Jocelyn took another step back, drawing him after her. He moved, almost unconsciously, keeping her close enough to strike. “Hook’s treasure is rumored to be the largest hoard in history. You will have more gold than anyone.”

  Krueger licked his lips greedily. “You are making a poor case for yourself.”

  His sword no longer rested upon the rope. Jocelyn wondered, should she strike? Or wait for Roger to open the cage? She feared what would happen to her grandfather should she make the wrong choice.

  “You will be the richest pirate on earth, and it will still not be enough.” She took another small step back, trying to create a bit more distance between him and the gibbet.

  Krueger followed, his eyes narrowed.

  Jocelyn stole another glance at her grandfather’s prison, hoping Krueger wouldn’t notice in the fog. Roger appeared to be having difficulty removing the hinges. She spoke louder, in order to mask any noise. “You know it to be true. You can never have enough. Your hunger for gold has already eaten holes in your soul. It will consume you as completely as the crocodile did my father!”

  “I will hear no more!” he barked.

  “The gold will never love you back!” Jocelyn yelled.

  In the ringing silence that followed, Roger finally succeeded in removing a pin. He attempted to put it in one of his pockets, but his fingers slipped and it fell to the river. Its splash hung in the air.

  Krueger whirled around and locked eyes with the boy. “Kill him!” he yelled. “Him and the girl!”

  Krueger’s men materialized out of the fog and advanced on Jocelyn. Even as Jocelyn drew her sword she knew she would never be able to fight them off. Instead she cast her eyes about for some way to help Roger free Sir Charles, perhaps a tool of some sort, but there was nothing. The girl shot into the air, flew over the railing, and pressed her hand through the bars, grabbing her grandfather’s arm. “Roger, hurry!”

  He pulled at the pin on the second hinge. “I’m trying, but it’s rusted! I can’t get it.”

  “Don’t let them get away!” Krueger commanded.

  One of the men reached for the gibbet. His fingertips brushed it, but he was unable to grab on.

  Another pirate began to untie the rope holding it in place. “Maybe we will just give them all a good dunking, then,” he said.

  The gibbet slipped a few inches.

  Her grandfather squeezed her hand. “Jocelyn, you have to go.”

  The gibbet slipped again.

  “Jocelyn, I can’t open it!” Roger called.

  She ignored him, focusing on her grandfather. “I won’t abandon you.”

  “I know. But you must leave now.”

  Krueger drew his pistol.

  “Go, child!” Sir Charles cried. “Take her, boy!” He pulled from her grasp and shoved her away, making the gibbet sway.

  Jocelyn had spent her life carefully cultivating a habit of disobedience where her grandfather was concerned, but Roger had no such principles. He immediately stopped working with the pin and grabbed Jocelyn’s arm, tugging her away.

  She fought him, desperate to stay with her grandfather. “No! I won’t leave him! I promised Evie I would save him!” She wrapped her fingers around the bar.

  Roger tugged, and the gibbet spun, swinging Jocelyn close to the deck. A hand closed over her leg, but she kicked out, hitting the pirate in the teeth. His grip slacked, and she jerked away.

  The gibbet slipped a few more inches.

  An explosion ripped through the air. Krueger was firing upon them. Roger flinched at the sound. “We have to go! We’ll come back for him.” He wrenched Jocelyn’s hand from the bar. Krueger fired again, but they were already gone. Jocelyn looked back, watching, as the fog swallowed the only family she had left.

  When I was a child, my schoolmaster would occasionally suggest a game of Who Can Be Quiet the Longest? The winner would receive a small piece of taffy the master kept in a tin on his desk. The loser would have his tongue removed—by the winner. How we laughed the day the schoolmaster sat on a tack, screamed, and lost the game himself. Not only did we all feast on taffy that day, but we also learned that arithmetic is a lot more interesting when taught by pantomime.

  Jocelyn and Roger kept their tongues (pardon the pun) on their flight back to the Hook’s Revenge, each reflecting on their own failures. Jocelyn flew ahead of Roger, wanting to be alone. It wasn’t until they landed on the deck that she saw the blood that ran down his arm and dripped from his fingertips.

  “Oh, Roger! You’ve been shot!” she cried.

  Roger shook his head. “I have?”

  The girl pointed at the blood, unable to speak through her worry and guilt. She should have protected him somehow—just as she should have been able to save her grandfather.

  “Oh, I have.” He sat on the deck. “I couldn’t even feel it.…” He took in a sharp breath. “Until now.”

  Jocelyn tore his sleeve out at the shoulder, exposing his upper arm. Thankfully, the bullet had only grazed him. She ripped off another section of her hem and pressed it to the wound. Her men had gathered around when they landed, watching in silent shock, but now Smee stepped forward, armed with a needle and thread.

  “Why don’t I take you into the captain’s chambers? I’ll mend that tear in no time,” he said.

  “Can you do that?” Jocelyn asked.

  Smee looked affronted. “An itty-bitty thing like that? Of course I can. I’ve mended worse splits in my sleep. Velvet jackets slashed ragged by a dull blade, silk waistcoats torn by the flick of a careless hook…those were hard mends, but a tiny flap of arm meat won’t be a lick of trouble.” He led Roger beside him. “Come along, you. I’ll let you pick what color thread you like, and if you hold still, I’ll even do some fancy needlework.”

  Jocelyn started to follow, but a question from Blind Bart held her back. “It was difficult to hear what was happening in all this fog, Captain. Where is your grandfather?”

  She ground her teeth. “Krueger still has him. We have to get him back.”

  “How can we help, Cap’n?” Nubbins asked.

  “You can’t. I need to do this on my own,” she said. But how?

  An idea took form in Jocelyn’s mind. She patted the journal in her pocket. “We know where he is going, and when he arrives, we will be waiting. This will be our final battle. It’s Krueger or me this time.”


  The Hook’s Revenge immediately set sail for Miss Eliza Crumb-Biddlecomb’s Finishing School for Young Ladies. Jocelyn was banking on having at least two advantages over Krueger. Thanks to Starkey, she knew the location of the caves that held the treasure; she didn’t need to work out any coordinates. And Jim McCraig had already translated the instructions written on the map. Krueger had surely not had it long enough to do so.

  When he did finally make his way into the treasure chamber, she intended to be waiting for him.

  They anchored the Hook’s Revenge in a sheltered inlet bordered by sheer cliffs. There was a more convenient mooring place, closer to where they needed to be, but Jocelyn hoped to remain undetected by Krueger to keep the element of surprise on her side. Knowing he would not set foot on the school grounds, she reluctantly left Starkey aboard, warily trusting that her ship would be there when she returned for it. She, Roger, and the rest of her crew piled into two dinghies and began rowing ashore.

  Facing Krueger would be far more difficult than facing the crocodile. Though both were driven by a malicious will and an insatiable greed, Krueger possessed the will and greed of man—far stronger than any dark power on earth. The girl would need more than a belief in herself to prevail, though exactly what, she wasn’t sure.

  The group beached their boats on the shore, hiding them in tall sea grass. Far in the distance, Jocelyn could see small squares of light shining from the windows of her old school. She couldn’t be absolutely certain, but one seemed to glow with a rosy tint. How long ago, it seemed, that she stood staring out the glass of her dreadfully pink room, looking toward the sea and adventure. Adventure had found her—both great and terrible—in ways she never could have imagined from the other side of the panes.

  The crew followed their captain as she and Roger silently walked side by side up the path toward the carriage house. They hadn’t spoken much since returning from their disastrous ransom attempt. Jocelyn’s reticence was due to shame. She should have helped Roger free her grandfather somehow, or—even better—freed him on her own. Instead, her grandfather remained a prisoner, and Roger had nearly been killed. He claimed that his arm didn’t pain him too badly, and the men made much over him for the scar he was likely to develop, but Jocelyn felt terrible just the same.

  For the most part, the crew’s mood was the polar opposite of Jocelyn’s. Blind Bart listened eagerly, whispering a running commentary about the variety of insects and small mammals secreted in the vegetation nearby. “And that was the soft sigh of a red-tailed squirrel—quite distinctive, with a higher pitch and less forceful breath expulsion than its black-tailed cousins.”

  One-Armed Jack had “armed” himself with a cricket bat. He kept whacking it against tall grass and leafy branches to “break it in.” Jocelyn was concerned he was going to break it off.

  Nubbins planned their victory feast: “Salted cod with truffle oil. No—chipped beef on a rustic bread and a salad of young greens…”

  Jim McCraig and his parrot chattered unintelligibly, but with great enthusiasm, to each other. Jim flanked Mr. Smee; they carried a box of supplies between them.

  Even Meriwether darted about, softly jingling with excitement. As for Smee, his emotions were more erratic: thrilled at being so close to a place beloved to his dear Captain Hook, yet despondent all over again at Hook’s death. He bounced on the balls of his feet, exulting, “Just think, Johnny, this here was where the captain kept his treasures! I wonder if he ever walked past this very tree?” before being overcome with sudden sobs. “He was ever so indifferent to trees, the devil take his dear soul. What I’d give to have him here now and see him ignore that one.”

  Jocelyn did her best to offer solacing scolds, in an effort to keep him quiet. Presently they arrived at the carriage house.

  “Allow me,” Roger said, and stepped to the door.

  “Don’t forget, it sticks,” Jocelyn said, standing back.

  Roger put his uninjured shoulder into the door and pushed hard. The hinges grumbled in protest, but the door swung inward, admitting them into the dusty old carriage house. On the arm of the horsehair sofa, Roger’s favorite book, Impress Your Friends, Confound Your Enemies: 1001 Poisonous Jungle Plants and How to Use Them, lay open, one page torn out. Other favorites, including Gulliver’s Travels, The Last Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, and Man-Eating Beasts of the Amazonian Jungle, lay about in piles. The marble bust of a forgotten dignitary wore a rather undignified and moth-eaten bonnet, unearthed from one of the old trunks. Broken pieces of the grandfather clock’s face still lay scattered on the floor from the night Edgar delivered Captain Hook’s letter and took Jocelyn away.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing was the same.

  Jocelyn could hardly believe how the room, once her favorite place on earth, could look both comfortingly familiar and absolutely foreign at the same time. Such is any true homecoming. Why, I remember arriving home for a visit the first time after I went to sea. Everything about the old place was exactly the same—except the front door locks.

  Jocelyn shared a look with Roger—their first such since failing to rescue Sir Charles. The boy appeared as lost and bewildered as she felt, but in that moment, at least, they had each other. It didn’t last. They both looked away.

  Jocelyn pulled the logbook from her pocket and read, “‘From the carriage-house door, take twelve paces in a southeasterly direction.’” She instructed the crew to remain outside and out of the way while she and Roger found the passageway. The carriage house was crowded enough without adding five grown men, a mischievous fairy, and a parrot to the mix.

  Roger removed his compass from its special pocket and pointed them in the right direction.

  “…nine, ten…Help me move the sofa, will you?…eleven, twelve,” Jocelyn counted off. “Now it says to find a knothole in the floor that looks like the profile of a young Lady Jane Grey.”

  “There!” Roger said. “Aw, she looks sad.”

  “Can you blame her?” Jocelyn asked.

  He grinned. “Not a bit. What’s next?”

  Jocelyn found it was easier to talk to Roger while they focused on the instructions. “‘Count three floor planks to the east and find one stained a slightly darker color.’ We need to pry it up.” She handed Roger the book, worked the tip of her sword into a crack along the edge of the board, and succeeded in lifting it. A hollowed-out compartment lay beneath.

  Roger looked down at the instructions. “Do you see a handle in there?”

  “I do,” she said, reaching for it.

  “Wait—” but Roger spoke too late.

  The girl tugged on the handle. Wooden doors slid out of the compartment, trapping her wrist.

  “Arrrggghhh!” she yelled, trying to free her hand.

  “Arrrr!” One-Armed Jack yelled from the doorway in response, before Mr. Smee shushed him. “She wasn’t talking to you—were you, Cap’n?” He started forward, but Jocelyn stopped him.

  “Wait, Smee. We don’t know what other traps may be in here. Stay back, all of you.”

  “Are you hurt?” Roger asked.

  She tugged again at her arm. It didn’t budge. “No. Just stuck. Are there instructions?”

  “Try rotating the handle three and one-quarter turns counterclockwise and pushing on it.”

  Jocelyn did so, and the doors slid away, freeing her wrist.

  He scanned the next few lines of instruction. “Now give it a very gentle tug. Want me to do it?”

  Jocelyn flexed her wrist. “No. I will.”

  She pulled, gently. An entire section of flooring lifted up in her hand. They had found the trapdoor!

  “Begging your pardon,” Smee called. “But can we come in now? Jim says the ache in his phantom leg is calling for rain any minute.”

  “Oh. Yes. Just be mindful you don’t knock anything over.”

  Mr. Smee dug into the box of supplies, purchased with the gold Evie had pilfered from Krueger, and passed around brass oil lanterns. Jocelyn lit hers, but if anything the
increased light made the passageway below look even darker.

  “Follow me, men,” she called out, with false bravery.

  She stepped down into the dark.

  When the last man stepped through the trapdoor and closed it behind him, Jocelyn felt a moment of panic, as if the last shovelful of dirt had been cast on her own grave. The air was cold and damp, filling the girl’s lungs with the taste of mildew. It was dark, so dark, even with the glow of their brass lanterns. Their tiny flames gave weak light to a set of rough steps, slick with moisture, that hugged a stone wall ringing a circular void. Jocelyn stayed close to the wall, unsure how far below them the bottom lay.

  As a precaution, she coaxed Meri into coating the party with fairy dust, though she held doubts as to whether it would work on the grown members of her crew. She hoped this would not be the time to test it. Jocelyn walked slowly, holding her light high for those who followed, but she felt an urgency building inside her. Had Krueger finished translating the map’s instructions? Was he, at that very moment, on his way up the path to the carriage house? Would they be able to make it to the treasure chamber before him and have time to set up their attack?

  Meriwether had no such concerns. He flew out over the abyss, playing a game of tag in the dark with Jim’s parrot. The fairy’s tiny blue light was a single shooting star in the darkness. If only Jocelyn could have wished on it and had her grandfather back, safe and sound.

  So distracted was she by the fairy’s flight, Jocelyn nearly led her men right into the abyss. She took her eyes from Meriwether just in time to see a section where there were no stairs at all. The gap yawned out over empty space. Several feet beyond, at the edge of her lantern light, the stairs continued as before, on and down.

  “Everyone stop a moment,” she called. Her words bounced around in the enclosed space, making her heart pound. Krueger could be above them in the carriage house even now. She had to get to the treasure undetected.

  “Roger,” she whispered, “are there instructions for how to move on? Should I fly to the other side?”