The Treasure of Barracuda

by Llanos Martinez Campos

  “Those are old wive’s tales!” Erik the Belgian interjected. “Stories to frighten newbies and kids on stormy days! A Chinese pirate? Who has ever seen that?”

  “They’re not old wive’s tales,” Russian Kitty said from behind us. “And don’t speak his name again!”

  Even the captain was surprised by this turn of events.

  You will say, and with reason, that you haven’t heard of Russian Kitty until now. That’s true. I can’t go into every detail about every single pirate on the Southern Cross and what each did every time something happened; if I did, we’d never finish. I am telling you, above all, about the ones I interacted with the most. The Russian, in fact, spoke so seldom that some of us (myself included) didn’t even know what his voice sounded like. He learned to read along with the rest of us, but silently because we never heard him repeat aloud a single word. He only stared a lot, like an owl, and nodded his head up and down or left to right. The Kitty was a pale man, short and thin; he took care of the weapons and cannons along with Boasnovas. You wouldn’t believe how strong he was, given how scrawny he looked. He had been part of the crew of the Southern Cross for almost ten years, and, in truth, the only things we knew about him were that his name was Leon Paulovich and that he came from Siberia, deep in Russia. But, as you’ve already seen, pirates love to joke; since little Leon was not big like a lion, they began to call him the Russian Kitty. That’s how I was introduced to him.

  “I’ve also heard the story about this Chinese pirate . . . ” the Whale said. “But they told me it was a hoax that ran through the taverns, a bunch of lies to make greedy pirates go mad.”

  “It’s not a hoax,” Barracuda said, “nor a legend. It’s completely true. It’s in the book.”

  “Come on! Nobody is going to believe that!” Erik the Belgian protested, looking at the rest of us. “Many brave men have lost their senses searching for this treasure. Even the Pirate Morgan himself went in search of it! He lifted every rock on Martinique looking for it and lost almost his entire crew! And he didn’t find it!”

  “He didn’t find it because the coffer was never on Martinique!” Nuño explained, holding up the book. “It’s all in here: the story of Fung Tao and, what’s more important, the exact place where Phineas, with his own hands, hid the coffer . . . Until now, everything that old Krane has written has been true. Why would he lie about this?”

  “You’ve said the Chinese pirate’s name three times now,” the Kitty said. “This is not good . . . Not good . . . ”

  Heavens above! Five sentences in one day! Without a doubt, something was going to happen!

  My Life as a Pirate by Phineas Johnson Krane. Chapter Fifteen. I will copy it here just as it appears in the book:

  Southern Sea of China. It wasn’t the first time that we had heard talk of Fung Tao. Our paths had never crossed, despite his being a pirate famous throughout the Southern Seas. Between the Sea of Java and the Gulf of Siam, nothing moved without his knowing about it. The ships that traded silk and the merchants of the English Armada feared him, fleeing as soon as they saw on the horizon the red sails of his Dragon’s Blood, an imposing ship made from light bamboo that flew over the waves. His flag inspired the same dread: a red dragon with a skull between its claws upon a black background. He was almost untouchable because the emperor of China protected him and had even freed him on a few occasions from the jails of Sumatra and Malaysia, absolute cesspools where harder men have rotted for years.

  I had already decided to return to the Caribbean, when—because it was my fate or his disgrace—we met by chance during a game of cards on the island of Formosa, off the coast of China. He seemed to me too young for the fame that preceded him: he was barely twenty-five. He dressed like most men from that area: in a tunic with pants beneath it, white with gold trim; and he wore his hair in a long braid, with a little hat or skull cap of the same fabric as his outfit. Everything screamed wealth. But he was not alone. Two evil-looking henchmen from his crew stood behind him. They were tiny and thin but rumored to be so skilled in fighting with their hands and feet that they could each fight off eight men at once.

  That blasted Fung Tao played well and bet a lot. From a red leather sack, he carelessly pulled gold coins as if they held no value. I don’t trust people who don’t respect money . . . I don’t remember if I won or lost in that round of cards because I was distracted with watching Fung Tao’s every move. He didn’t say much during our card game, but as soon as dinner and wine had their effect, the other participants loosened their tongues. Those fools joked about a red coffer decorated with two black dragons, where apparently Fung Tao guarded his most prized pieces: diamonds, pearls, rubies. I also knew that he was so mistrusting that he always carried it with him. On board his ship, instead of caching it with his other treasures, he slept with his head resting upon the coffer. All this I discovered without asking a single wretched question. I would have hung them all for lesser indiscretions.

  We finished in the wee hours of the morning, and when I returned to the Prince of Antigua, I already knew I wanted that little pillow full of riches for myself. The occasion was favorable: I would carry out a masterstroke of a raid and then disappear forever from those latitudes. I was born to battle with soldiers, not with merchants. And if I remained in the Southern Seas for much longer, I would wind up turning into a cursed spice merchant myself . . .

  To be victorious, I had to overcome these obstacles: Fung Tao’s crew (no less than thirty men who were all expert fighters); and his ship, which was lighter and faster than my own, and with which he could surely overtake us. Helped by Khaled, my second in command, I prepared a precise plan by which, using only six men and in less than an hour, we would make off with the loot. Khaled the Syrian was as tiny as a child but as clever as the devil himself.

  The Dragon’s Blood was anchored in a very broad cover, almost half a mile from the port of Formosa. I sent as my spy Layo the Sevillian, a Spaniard capable of hiding even in a flat, open desert. He spent two days on the coast, in the sun, so motionless that no one noticed him sitting among the rocks of the cliffs. That’s how good he was at what he did. When the sun set on the second day, he returned to our ship with a detailed account of the guard shifts, the crew’s habits, and their weapons, and he drew us a detailed plan of Fung Tao’s ship.

  With the plan perfectly drawn up, I let Layo rest. I formed a small group of five of my best men: Khaled the Syrian, Hans the Beast, Silent George, Congo, Pancoli the Sicilian, and also myself.

  First, we sailed the Prince of Antigua onto the open sea, on the other side of the estuary of the port, to ensure a quick escape. We dropped anchor, and I ordered the entire crew to be on high-alert to set sail as soon as our group of six returned to the ship with the coffer.

  There was a new moon, and the night was eerily dark. We approached the Dragon’s Blood in a little boat, carrying only our weapons and flints to set fires. We paddled to the ship as silently as possible. We managed to arrive undetected, accomplishing half of our surprise mission. George lit some kindling and placed two points of fire on the hull of the Dragon’s Blood: one fire where Layo said the hold was located, with all the provisions; and the other fire (with a longer wick) under the gunpowder storage.

  At the ship’s stern, I went up first, and the rest followed me. Just as Hans stepped onto the deck of the Dragon’s Blood, we smelled burning rice. The pantry, in the prow, was already burning fiercely. The ship’s crew began shouting. Right before us, under the command bridge, Fung Tao emerged from his quarters, in his underclothes and with his hair a tangled mess. The night was so black that, amid the anxious shouting, Congo and I managed to slip into Fung Tao’s chambers while my other men kept watch. And there . . . on Fung Tao’s bed . . . by all the sea’s dead, was the black and red coffer!

  We grabbed it immediately, but as we bolted back out, our luck ended. We ran straight into three Chinese crewmen who began shoutin
g as if they’d seen the devil himself. Without hesitating, Congo tossed the chest into our small boat; then he threw me overboard and jumped after me. Above us, still on the ship, my other men fought tooth and nail against Fung Tao’s crew. Suddenly, Hans jumped, followed by Silent George and the Sicilian. Right then, an enormous explosion ripped through the gunpowder chamber. Half the ship blew apart with pieces flying through the air amid the crash of breaking bamboo, and Khaled splashed near us like a sack of potatoes. We heaved him onto the boat, while all around us, it was raining Chinese crewmen into the sea. Some tried to climb into our boat, but the Sicilian fended them off while Congo, Hans, and George rowed with all their might toward our ship.

  As we rowed away, the Dragon’s Blood was fully engulfed in flames. Total confusion reigned; flames illuminated the sky, and shouting and cursing filled the night.

  We paddled furiously and finally reached the Prince of Antigua; it was ready to set sail. We climbed aboard, pulling the anchor with us to save time. We knew Fung Tao was smart enough and influential enough that we couldn’t underestimate his ability to react, so we had to escape from Formosa immediately, abandoning the Southern Seas as quickly as possible. Not only had we earned the enmity of the terrible Fung Tao, but also that of his friend, the emperor of China. May the devil’s lair swallow us! We must never return!

  For months, now in Caribbean waters, I carried the coffer with me. But it was only a matter of time before some other nasty adventurer like myself would learn of its existence and try to steal the coffer from me—history repeating itself. I decided to hide it until things cooled off. What’s more, stories ran rampant of a mysterious ship, full of Chinese men who searched unceasingly throughout the Caribbean for a pirate who sounded suspiciously like me. I never saw Fung Tao, that’s true, but many nights I felt his gaze on the back of my neck, searching restlessly for his dragon coffer.

  Yes, it was necessary for our treasure to sleep until the whole business was forgotten. Khaled said he knew the perfect hiding spot. It was in a place so dangerous that only someone sick with madness would attempt to enter it. It had an entrance so hidden that no one would ever find it. And its passageway was so narrow that only someone small and thin would be able to squeeze through all the way to the end, where the coffer would be placed. It seemed perfect, and Khaled was trustworthy.

  Following Khaled’s indications, we set sail for the island of Dominica, where we docked the Prince of Antigua. Then, Khaled and I prepared a small launch, and in the middle of the night, we slipped away with the coffer. At dawn, we were on the high sea. With tremendous effort, we reached Guadeloupe, to the north, our true destination. Guadeloupe is actually two islands separated by a narrow arm of the sea. We headed to the largest of the two, to the west, called Basse-Terre, a wild, green island full of waterfalls and trees. To the south of the island, is an enormous volcano called Soufrière, which means “sulfur” in French. It was as if we were at the door of the devil’s furnace; the ground smolders and the air burns. That’s how terrible this place is, and that’s where the Syrian led me.

  I drew the route so as not to forget it. And by the devil’s whiskers, it’s a good thing I did so, because two years later, my faithful Khaled died of a fever from an illness he caught in Barbados. This is the map.

  Old Phineas did me a favor: if he hadn’t included the warning from Khaled about “only someone small and thin could fit,” I would have been left behind on the ship. It was a dangerous excursion, and the other pirates didn’t want to take me along. But I was the smallest person on the crew. Well, the truth is, I wasn’t that much smaller than Russian Kitty, but he wouldn’t let go of the mast, even when threatened with a dunking into boiling water. Such was his terror about everything that had to do with Fung Tao and his coffer.

  The Southern Cross dropped anchor in an uninhabited area to quell the suspicions of the French detachment billeted on the island. We were six who disembarked—Barracuda, Nuño, the Whale, One-Eyed Boasnovas, Erik the Belgian, and I—like the six who had stolen the chest from the Dragon’s Blood. I don’t know if the captain did this on purpose, but I like these kinds of coincidences.

  We crossed a thick and humid jungle. We were eaten alive by enormous mosquitoes that made a deafening buzz when they flew. That’s how our misfortunes began when a mosquito bit Boasnovas on the eyelid of his only eye, and the bite swelled up into such a large welt that he was now truly blind. We couldn’t send him back because he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, so the captain ordered me to take care of him and to guide him through the underbrush. Poor Boasnovas fell often, banging his head against branches and constantly sticking his feet into stinking puddles. At first, it made me laugh, but soon it wasn’t funny because with him walking behind me and holding onto my shoulder, when he stumbled, we both stumbled. But I couldn’t get mad; I would look at him and see that single eye, which had swelled bigger and bigger until it looked like a peach, and I just couldn’t stop laughing.

  Soon, our path ascended steeply. The landscape was now barren; it was as if the vegetation had suddenly disappeared. In front of us rose a bare mountain, without a peak, as if it had been sliced off. It was the Soufrière volcano. We were still near the foot of the volcano and already the heat was unbearable. We climbed along a narrow, steep path. The rocky terrain was so sheer; it was as if it had been cut by a knife. At times, we had to advance almost on our hands and knees, with Boasnovas banging his head into my backside every time we stopped.

  Nuño had copied the map from Phineas’ book, and it turned out to be quite precise.

  “Well . . . ” Nuño said, examining the map. “Now the difficult part begins. We need to go up along there.”

  He pointed to something that no one in their right mind would call a path: an inclined track, suitable for mountain goats only. The end—somewhere up the volcano—was obscured by a fog of sulfur and smoke.

  “Now the difficult part begins . . . ?” complained Boasnovas, who of course couldn’t see what we saw. “You’ve got to be kidding me! My elbows and knees are scraped raw from banging into things! And now it’s going to get worse?”

  “From here on, we advance single file,” Barracuda ordered. “I will go first. Whale, you’ll go last, right behind Sparks and Boasnovas. Be careful; this trail is extremely narrow, and you can hardly see a thing.”

  We began to climb with great effort. I suppose I wasn’t the only one who wondered how we would get down again if, as Phineas promised, up above us, in some cranny of this terrible place, was Fung Tao’s coffer. Nonetheless—and this is another lesson that I learned in those years as a pirate—one must worry about things when the moment comes, not before and not after.

  With every step we took, the air became more unbreathable and the path even steeper. Behind me, Boasnovas was constantly slipping, yanking on the rope that connected him to me and kicking his feet in the Whale’s face. He even pulled off my boot a few times. At last, the Whale couldn’t stand it anymore and suddenly shouted into the silence of the volcano, “Captain! Permission to change the order!”

  “As you wish, Whale, but don’t shout,” Barracuda answered him.

  Then, enormous Whale grabbed Boasnovas as if he were a bundle and threw him over his shoulder. Boasnovas protested for a while, but everyone ignored him. We advanced more quickly this way, and the Whale lugged Boasnovas as if he weighed nothing.

  We reached an area, on the edge of a precipice, where the path was barely as wide as two hands placed side by side. The fog prevented us from seeing to the bottom, but I assure you, had you been there, you wouldn’t have wanted to test for yourselves where it was. We continued our ascent, scooting sideways, our backs pressed against the rocky wall.

  “If you don’t stop squirming, Boasnovas, I’m going to tie your head to my belt and leave you dangling like a keychain,” Whale said, utterly serious, and Boasnovas stopped flailing his arms and protesting.

&nbs
p; The Whale looked like he was wearing a scarf—a scarf that had a patch over a missing eye and the other eye swollen to the size of a small melon (it hadn’t stopped swelling).

  “Here it is,” Nuño said suddenly, and we immediately stopped.

  “Here?” Erik asked, looking all around. “Here where?”

  “There,” Nuño said, pointing ahead a few steps. To the right, a short distance away, was a hole in the ground, out of which spewed steam and a reddish glow.

  “That’s the entrance?” the Whale asked. “It looks like an oven! I don’t think I can go down there.”

  “You’re going to have to!” Barracuda replied, approaching the hole. “Are you certain this is the place the book describes, Nuño?”

  “Not the least doubt, Captain. The description is clear.”

  “All right then,” exclaimed the brave Barracuda, and he jumped inside the hole without hesitating.

  That’s how he was: the bravest there ever was. Of course, after that, who could balk at going down? Erik held his enormous ax in his teeth and jumped after him. Without warning, the Whale tossed Boasnovas into the hole. Then the Whale went down, but not without effort. For a moment, Nuño and I thought that the Whale was stuck, blocking our way down and trapping the others below. Finally, we helped push the Whale—as he huffed and puffed and sucked in his belly as much as he could—through the hole. It was like trying to squeeze squishy bread dough into a small tube.

  Then, hands appeared from the hole, and I heard the Belgian tell me, “Come on, Sparks! I’ll help you!”

  You’ve come so far on this journey with me; now is not the time to back out. Although I assure you, if you had really been there, even the hair on the back of your neck would have stood on end. But this was no time for cowardice! Shout as I did: “For Barracuda, after the coffer!” And leap down into the hole with me!