by John
My head was still hurting and when I tried to sit up everything swam about. Then I heard Henry’s voice.
“I’d stay put if I were you, Dolf,” he said quietly.
“Where are we, HH, and who was that?” I managed, though my tongue felt several sizes too big for my mouth.
“I’d say we’re on board the ghost ship – you recognised him, right?”
“Recognised who?” I asked.
“Come on, Dolf – it’s Blackbeard.”
“Black—” I stopped myself, realising I had almost shouted the name. I tried again, this time in a whisper: “Blackbeard… you mean the one with the tapers in his hair, the one at the museum?”
“The very same,” answered Henry – far too cheerfully, I thought.
“But that means… ”
“Exactly. He’s dead. Or at least he should be.”
“But… ” I found I couldn’t remember what I had been about to say. The words just wouldn’t come out.
Henry said them for me.
“It means he’s some kind of ghost. Which is hardly surprising if you think about it – since we’re on a ghost ship.”
“How did we get here?”
“As far as I can tell we were picked up by some sort of weird tentacle and pulled onto the ship.”
“Wh… what do you think it is?” I asked shakily. “Is there a monster hidden away below deck?”
“I don’t think so,” answered Henry. “I’ve been thinking about it and I reckon its some kind of ectoplasm attached to the ship.”
“Ecto-what?” I said.
“Ectoplasm,” Henry repeated. “It’s the stuff ghosts are supposed to be made of when they manifest in our world.”
“Is that why they seem so… well… solid? I always thought ghosts were supposed to be all wavery, so you could put your hand though them?”
“Not necessarily,” replied Henry. “I’ve read about some ghosts that are totally solid. And I suppose if they are then the ship can be as well.”
“That’s because they aren’t really ghosts,” said a man’s voice from the shadows. We both jumped. Peering into the darkness we saw another cage just a couple of metres away. In it were two people. I couldn’t see more than that, but Henry spoke up excitedly.
“Mr Stevens?” he said.
“Who’s that?” asked the voice, suddenly high-pitched.
“It’s me, Henry Hunter. I’m here with Dol – ”
“Henry? Is that really you? Gracie, wake up. It’s Henry Hunter!”
The second figure stirred in the darkness and a woman’s trembling voice spoke. “Henry? How on earth did you get here? Charles… he’s not with you, is he?”
“Don’t worry, Mrs S,” Henry said. “He’s safe back home with Cousin Jack.”
“Thank goodness. How… how did you get here?” asked Mrs Stevens again.
“The same way as you, I think,” replied Henry. “One minute we were on the Moby Dick… then we were here.”
“The Moby?” said Mr Stevens. “Isn’t that old Iron Jake’s boat?”
“You know him then?” asked Henry.
“Everybody that comes to the Caribbean looking for treasure knows Jake,” answered Mr Stevens. “I tried to get him to help me.” A note of eagerness crept into his voice. “Is he with you?”
The question reminded me abruptly of the last time I had seen Jake, mouth wide open, falling backwards off the deck of the Moby Dick.
“Not right now, I’m afraid,” said Henry, who must have had a similar image in his mind. “We’re not sure what happened to him.”
“Oh,” said Mr Stevens, sounding a lot less happy.
“You haven’t told us what you’re doing here,” said Mrs Stevens.
“Actually, we’re looking for you,” said Henry. “Charlie didn’t believe you were really lost. He asked us to help and, well… here we are.”
“You are very brave boys,” said Mr Stevens. “But I’m afraid you’re in a really dangerous situation. Blackbeard –”
“So it really is him?” I interrupted.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Mr Stevens. “And the rest of the pirates seem to be his original crew.”
“And they are every bit as nasty as the stories told about them,” added Mrs Stevens.
Henry sat forward, not seeming to be the least bit bothered by any of this.
“At least now we know why someone scratched out the death date for Blackbeard in the museum,” he said, his eyes gleaming.
“Er… why?” I asked, feeling a bit foolish.
“Because whoever owns the museum knows that Blackbeard didn’t die when the stories tell us,” said Henry. “I’ll bet you anything Trueblood runs the place… and I’ll bet he was the one who sent that goon to grab you, Dolf.”
“But why would he be working for Blackbeard at all?” I asked, thinking that no one in their right mind would choose to do that.
“I don’t know,” Henry replied. “But I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.” He looked at Charlie’s dad. “You said Blackbeard isn’t really a ghost – that none of the pirates are. What are they then?”
“We’re not really sure,” said Mr Stevens, a grim tone to his voice. “Basically they’re dead but not dead – if that makes any sense.”
It certainly didn’t make any sense to me, but Henry, as usual, was immediately interested.
“Dead but not dead,” he repeated. “How’s that possible? Unless they’re vampires… or zombies… ”
No one said anything for a minute. Then Mr Stevens leaned right up to the bars of his cage and said, very quietly, “They’re not vampires and they’re certainly not zombies. We think it has something to do with a deal Blackbeard made.”
“Deal?” Henry said. “What kind of a deal?”
“The kind that made him the most feared and successful pirate of all time,” answered Mr Stevens.
“Ah ha… ” said Henry.
My brain was working overtime but I could not work it out. Fortunately, Henry saw my confused face.
“Remember what I told you when we were in the museum?” Henry said. “How Blackbeard was supposed to have struck a bargain with the Devil?”
“You mean that was for real?”
It was Mrs Stevens who answered. She had that wavery note in her voice again. “That’s what we think… It’s why we’re all here. And the others… ”
“You mean there are more prisoners?” asked Henry.
I could see Mr Stevens nodding in the dimness.
“At least another four or five,” he said. “They’re in the forward area of the ship. But they’re… not quite the same as us.”
“What do you mean, not the same?” asked Henry.
“It’s like they’re dazed and half asleep,” answered Mr Stephens. “They were here when we arrived, and it seems the longer you’re on the ship the more likely you are to start forgetting who you are… ”
No one said anything for a few minutes after that. But I had more questions. I finally plucked up the courage to ask, “Why? What does he want with us all anyway?”
Neither of the Stevenses said anything and I began to feel little prickles of apprehension doing a dance up and down my spine.
“We’re his workforce,” said Mr Stephens at last. “It seems that he and his men are only solid when they’re on board this ship. As soon as they step off it they turn into wraith-like creatures. Horrible!”
So that must be why we hadn’t heard Blackbeard’s footsteps when we were aboard the Spinnaker. I’d already worked out it had to have been him – the burning smell must have been the tapers in his hair.
I still had more questions. “But what do you mean by workforce?”
“Remember what you thought you overheard in the museum, Dolf?” interrupted Henry. “Something about needing more diggers… ”
“Blackbeard is still a pirate, still possessed with the same greed for gold he always had,” said Mrs Stevens. “He’s looking for treasure – all the t
reasure buried by his old friends. He needs us to dig for it.”
WALKING THE PLANK
So there we were – prisoners of the dreaded Blackbeard and his dead-not-dead pirate crew.
We found out just how nasty they could be the day after we had been brought on board the ghost ship.
That morning the pirates hauled Henry and I, and Charlie’s mum and dad up on deck to “get some exercise”. This consisted of walking round and round the big main mast in the centre of the ship. As well as us there were six more prisoners brought up from the forward hold. All of them, like the Stevenses, had been grabbed a few at a time from Captain Trueblood’s vessel by the mysterious glowing tentacle which, as far as we could tell, seemed to be part of the ship itself. They were all adults and judging by their dirty, ripped clothes they had been captive much longer than us. Just as the Stevenses had told us, these prisoners seemed not to understand what had happened to them, and behaved like zombies (not the brain-eating kind, the kind who stare at you in a puzzled kind of way as if they’re not sure who or even what you are). It was pretty obvious that they had given up all hope of rescue.
Except for one.
We learned later that his name was Cyrus Firestone and he’d been brought on board only a day or so before us. Unlike the rest of the prisoners in the forward hold he was extremely disinclined to accept his situation. It was that first day aboard, walking round and round the main mast, that we first heard his loud voice.
“I’m an American citizen,” he roared. “You have no right to treat me this way! When my government finds out about this they’ll send a tactical force to rescue me, and believe me you won’t like that!”
Several of the pirates sniggered, and they pushed and shoved the large American wearing a once pristine white suit that was now very wrinkled and stained. He went on protesting and shoved one of the pirates back.
At that point Blackbeard himself appeared. Though Cyrus was almost as tall as him, the pirate captain grabbed him by the collar and lifted him right off the deck, just as he had done with me. Face to face with Blackbeard, the prisoner suddenly stopped yelling and went limp.
“Enough!” barked Blackbeard. He dropped Cyrus to the deck and turned to address us all. His cold eyes swept across his prisoners and he rested a hand on one of his pistols.
“’Tis time ye understood yer purpose here. Ye’ll work for me and ye’ll do as yer told or face the consequences.” He turned away and muttered something to two of the pirates. Then he looked down at us all again. “I’ll brook no mutiny on my ship. Those as disobey or cause trouble’ll be punished.”
The two pirates he had spoken to picked up the dazed American and pushed him towards the side of the ship. At the same time several of the crew began to run out a long piece of wood. It fastened to the deck at one end while the rest hung out over the sea. With a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach I realised they were going to make Cyrus Firestone walk the plank!
Henry, who was standing beside me, shook his head. “That’s strange.”
“It’s pretty nasty,” I said.
“That too,” said Henry. “But what’s strange is that pirates almost never made anyone walk the plank. It’s a bit of a myth. Seems like they’ve been listening to too many of the stories told about them.”
Everyone watched as the man was hoisted onto the plank and then, accompanied by the jeering calls of the pirates, forced to move along it by pirates prodding him with their sharp cutlasses.
The scene was pretty dismal, but there was nothing HH and I could do. Blackbeard stood glowering down at us from the poop deck (yes, it’s really called that – HH explained that it’s where the wheel sticks up near the back end of the ship), his huge arms folded across his barrel-like chest. Above us the ragged sails hung unmoving, though the ship continued to plough through the water, moving by some unknown means. The timbers groaned all the time – it sounded as if the ship was in pain.
As the American inched his way along the plank, the plank began to bend – until suddenly, with a cry, Cyrus Firestone vanished, followed by a loud splash, a second later.
The pirates raised a ragged cheer, while the rest of us looked on dumbly. Then Blackbeard nodded and, to our astonishment, the pockmarked pirate threw a rope over the side. A few minutes later, Cyrus, bedraggled and very subdued, was pulled back on board.
Blackbeard stared down at the rest of us. “Let this be a lesson to ye all,” he growled. “I’m bein’ merciful… this time. But next time I’ll not think twice ’afore I sends any one of ye to the bottom o’ the sea.”
After that we were all herded back down to our various prisons.
That night Caraway brought us platters of very unappetising food – dry, grey biscuits, which Henry told me were called hardtack, and some stale bread. If we had been offered anything like this under normal circumstances, I for one would have refused it – but by then both Henry and I were so hungry we fell on it like it was a slice of the most delicious stuffed-crust pizza.
“At least they aren’t going to let us starve,” Henry said, cramming a handful of the nasty-looking hardtack into his mouth. It was a good point, but it didn’t make the food taste any better.
What with the disgusting biscuits sitting inside me like a handful of rocks, the smallness of the cage and the big, black bugs crawling about in the straw, I didn’t sleep too well. When I finally did, I dreamed of ice-cream floats and burgers.
BLACKBEARD’S GOLD
The Stevenses told us that the name of Blackbeard’s ghost ship was Destiny’s Wyrd. Henry explained that ‘wyrd’ wasn’t a funny way of spelling weird but that it meant destiny – so the ship’s name was really ‘destiny’s destiny’. That made no sense at all to me, but Henry chuckled – he obviously found it funny.
How the ship kept sailing at all was a mystery. There were rotting timbers everywhere, and large holes probably made by cannonballs. The sails were mostly rags, and the ropes hung like big cobwebs from the masts. Yet Destiny’s Wyrd sailed on, fast and smooth, surrounded by its own dark cloud. I guessed this meant that no one at sea could see it, but it also meant that we had no way of knowing where we were going.
“I don’t understand what’s keeping us afloat,” Henry said as we walked about on deck for one of our exercise periods. “Everything seems solid enough – including the crew – and the ship keeps moving, even though there’s no wind and the sails are a mess. Something must be keeping all of this together.”
“What about the deal Blackbeard made – with You Know Who?”
“It could be the reason,” said Henry, “but I reckon it’s some kind of curse… ”
“Curse?”
“At least half the stories about pirate ghosts are connected with some kind of curse,” Henry told me. “Usually it has to do with an object they stole that has some sort of strange power.”
“So maybe there’s some kind of weird object on board?” I suggested.
“Exactly!” Henry exclaimed, eyes bright. “All we have to do is find out what.”
“But how?” I muttered.
Henry looked around at the several pirates hanging about, keeping an eye on us. The tall and sombre figure of Blackbeard stood by the wheel, staring out into the mist that surrounded us, as though, for him, it wasn’t there.
“We need a diversion,” said Henry. “I’ll take care of that. The rest is up to you, Dolf… As soon as they aren’t looking at us, see if you can get into the Captain’s cabin. Look for anything a bit unusual.”
My eyes widened – how would I know what was unusual and what wasn’t? – but I nodded. I wondered what kind of ‘diversion’ Henry had in mind and hoped it was a good one.
I soon found out.
We were walking around the main mast in a circle, most of the captives slumping along, heads down, eyes glazed. Even Cyrus Firestone had nothing to say. Since his plank-walking experience he had stopped demanding to contact the American Embassy and generally did as he was told.
As we came to a ladder that led up to the poop deck, Henry suddenly darted up it. The next moment I saw him standing in front of Blackbeard. I heard him say something that sounded like “Excuse me, Captain” and Blackbeard turned with a scowl.
Meanwhile the rest of the prisoners had all stopped where they were to look at HH and so the pirates began to shout at them to keep moving. Three of the crew took off towards Henry and Blackbeard.
In the noise and confusion a couple of the prisoners tripped over some ropes that were coiled across the deck and fell in a tangle of arms and legs. I glanced up at the bridge again and saw Henry dangling from one of Blackbeard’s large hands.
For a moment no one was looking at me.
I was close to the bulkhead with the door that I hoped led to the Captain’s cabin. I quietly darted towards it. Luckily, it opened easily and I slipped through.
The room beyond was dark. I made out a big table and a couple of chairs, all bolted to the deck to stop them moving about in rough seas. A cabinet was fastened to one wall and a wooden chest stood beneath the windows.
My heart was pounding so much I was sure everyone on the ship would hear it. My first thought was to look in the chest. I heaved up the heavy lid and gulped.
The chest was full of treasure! Coins, plates and goblets, ropes of pearls, bags of gems and piles of jewellery! I must have looked crazy, my jaw dropped and my eyes bulging, but enough of my brain was still working to remind me of my mission.
Any of these things could be the object I was looking for. Any of them could be cursed. But then I thought: If there’s just one thing keeping the pirates from dying properly then it has to be special. And if it’s special, surely it’s not crammed into this chest with the rest of this loot…