Henry Hunter and the Cursed Pirates

by John

  I closed the lid and looked round the room. I could still hear noises outside but there was less shouting. I realised that I was going to be missed soon enough and that someone would come looking for me. I didn’t like to think what might happen then.

  Desperately I stared around the cabin – and caught sight of the cabinet, noticing that one of the doors was not quite closed. I crossed to it and opened it up. Inside, hanging from the back of the cabinet, was a sword – a big straight-bladed weapon that looked nothing like the cutlasses the pirates wore on their belts. The hilt was elaborately engraved and seemed as if it was made of solid gold. Cut deeply into the blade near the hilt were two letters written in an olde-worlde curly script that was really difficult to read. But I was fairly sure they read ‘CC’.

  CC…

  Christopher Columbus! My brain whizzed double-time. Was this really the legendary Sword of Columbus? I looked at it and I was suddenly sure – it gave me a funny feeling, a sort of tingling at the ends of my fingers. It even seemed to have a kind of glow about it – but that could have been my imagination working overtime.

  In any case there was no time to linger. Leaving the sword inside, I closed the door to the cabinet and hurried away, slipping out onto the deck. I crouched down behind a barrel and looked out at the scene.

  The rest of the prisoners were over by the main mast, guarded by three particularly ugly-looking pirates. At first I could see no sign of Henry, but when I looked up towards the bridge my blood turned to ice.

  Blackbeard still had Henry by the collar – only now he was dangling him over the water. I froze. Henry Hunter was going to be thrown overboard!

  X MARKS THE SPOT

  As I was wondering if there was anything I could do to save Henry if he ended up in the sea – having to battle sharks, rough waves, the bottomless depths of the ocean, the odd octopus – Blackbeard seemed to change his mind. I could see Henry talking to him, but what was more surprising was that the pirate captain seemed to be listening! Abruptly he swung Henry back over the deck and dropped him. He nodded to one of the crew – Caraway – who grabbed Henry and shoved him down the ladder to re-join the rest of the prisoners. I took the chance to slip out from my hiding place and join them while they were all watching HH.

  I caught Henry’s eye and he winked, though I thought he looked rather pale.

  I didn’t have the chance to speak to Henry properly until we were both locked up in our cage for the night. I was bursting to hear what had happened with him and Blackbeard, and what he’d said, but before Henry would tell me anything he insisted that I spill the beans on what I’d found in Blackbeard’s cabin.

  When I told him about the chest full of treasure he barely raised an eyebrow, simply muttering, “Once a pirate always a pirate.” But when I came to the bit about the sword with the golden hilt he stopped me and made me describe it in as much detail as possible. Then he sat back on his heels and regarded me, his eyes sparkling.

  “Well done, Dolf! I’m sure that’s what’s keeping the ship and its crew preserved like this.”

  “There’s more,” I explained, for I’d been keeping the best bit until last. “Engraved right near the hilt were the letters CC.”

  I could almost see HH’s brain ticking over.

  “The Sword of Columbus?” he yelled, clearly forgetting to whisper for a moment.

  “That’s what I think,” I said excitedly.

  “Not so loud, Dolf,” Henry shushed me. “We don’t want anyone else to know what we know.” I raised my eyebrows but decided not to remind him it was he who’d shouted first.

  “At least we now know why Captain Trueblood is in league with Blackbeard,” he continued. “I reckon he thinks he’ll get the sword somehow if he brings enough people for Blackbeard to use to dig up all that treasure.”

  “Do you think Trueblood knows it’s the sword that’s keeping him alive – Blackbeard, I mean?”

  “No idea,” said Henry, “Trueblood probably just wants the sword because he thinks it will make him rich. I suspect we’ll find out pretty soon, one way or the other,” he remarked mysteriously.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but I knew it was useless trying to get Henry to say more until he was certain. Instead, I asked him what had happened when he’d spoken to the terrible captain.

  Henry grinned. “I went up to him and addressed him by his proper name – Captain Teach. I think that got his attention, or maybe he was just surprised that any of us would try to talk to him. He didn’t say anything right away, just stared down at me like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe. So I went ahead and asked him what it was like to stay alive for over three hundred years. I wanted to keep him distracted while you got into the cabin, so I asked if he missed his old mates or if he got bored sailing about on Destiny’s Wyrd for years on end.

  “The next thing I knew I was dangling over the water while he glared at me and told me I was a foolish puppy and asked if I’d like to feed the fish… ”

  “What did you say that made him change his mind?”

  “I apologised if I had offended him but said I had heard so much about him and that I was a real fan. Then I mentioned a couple of famous events from his life and that seemed to calm him down. I think he was actually pleased. Always appeal to the bad guy’s ego if you’re in a tight place, Dolf. They usually can’t resist a bit of praise. Anyway, that was when he stopped dangling me overboard.”

  “Lucky you knew so much about him,” I said.

  Henry grinned. “Are you actually telling me you think knowing stuff is useful, Dolf?”

  I went a bit red. Sometimes I have to admit I’m a bit hard on HH about all his knowledge. This incident proved how valuable it could be. I resolved there and then to listen more carefully to what Henry had to say in future – assuming there was any future, of course.

  The next day Destiny’s Wyrd dropped anchor. We had no idea where we were, or even in which direction we’d been sailing. The cloud of mist put paid to any chance of discovering that. All I could tell from where I sat in the cage was that we had stopped moving, and I thought I could hear the cries of gulls. I knew that usually meant we were near land.

  Then Caraway appeared and unlocked our cage, and the one containing Mr and Mrs Stevens too.

  “Up ye go!” he growled, shoving us towards the deck.

  I was surprised to see the mist had thinned – we were anchored close to the shore of what looked to be a small island. It was edged with a strip of golden sand, beyond which lay a line of palm trees and then thick, tangled undergrowth.

  To be up on deck with solid ground in sight made me feel a lot better – though I wondered what was coming. Digging for treasure for Blackbeard, if the Stevenses were right.

  When all the prisoners stood together in the shadow of the poop deck, Blackbeard appeared and glowered down at us.

  “Listen well,” he growled. “You’ll all be goin’ ashore, and there’ll be diggin’ to do. Diggin’ for treasure. My treasure! But don’t ye try anything foolish like runnin’ off. This island is only a few leagues long and even fewer wide and it’s a long way off the trade routes – so no other ships are likely to come this way in a long while. If ye want to see home again, ye’ll work as hard as ye can to get my treasure.”

  No one said anything. The rest of the prisoners looked as dazed as ever. Even the Stevenses were starting to look that way. I wondered how long it would be before Henry and I started feeling zombie-like too, and hoped we might somehow be immune. Otherwise we had no chance of ever getting away from Blackbeard.

  Caraway and Pockmark issued us all with shovels and sacks then pushed and shoved us towards a little rowing boat (apparently called a jolly boat – not that there was anything funny about it).

  Just as we were about to get in, Blackbeard beckoned Henry to him. “Since ye know so much about me and my life, I’ll give ye the honour of being the one that carries this,” he said in his cold voice that made all the hairs on the b
ack of my neck stand up.

  He handed Henry a rolled-up piece of parchment. “Follow the instructions and ye’ll find the treasure. And see ye get up to no tricks – or else.”

  It only took a few minutes of rather inexpert rowing to get us to the shore. We stumbled onto the land like a bunch of drunken people. It felt weird to be on a surface that wasn’t constantly moving. But we were alone – for the first time in weeks there were no pirates watching our every move.

  Henry unrolled the parchment.

  If you’ve ever seen a drawing of a pirate treasure map you’ll have an idea of what we were looking at. Lots of wavy lines and little pictures of palm trees and landmarks, and sometimes a few directions like Walk ten paces, turn left and walk five paces, then dig. It even had a big red X in the middle.

  “Where do we go, Henry?” Mr Stevens asked, excitement in his voice. He suddenly looked a lot less dazed than he had done on board the ship. I understood why. After all, he had been hunting for pirate treasure for much of his life and now, here he was, actually about to dig some up. The fact that he was Blackbeard’s prisoner didn’t seem to matter right now.

  HH studied the map carefully, glancing up at the skyline and towards the edge of the trees, where dark shadows pooled. I hoped he was thinking about how we might possibly escape. It had to be possible, didn’t it?

  “That way, I think,” he said, pointing towards an almost invisible track that led off into the jungle.

  We began heading in the direction Henry had indicated when something happened that stopped us in our tracks. Two of the cursed pirates joined us.

  TREASURE!

  The possibility of escape suddenly seemed a lot less likely. Behind us were Caraway and Pockmark – although they looked a lot different now.

  If I say they were mere shadows of themselves you’ll get the idea. They looked like shreds of drifting smoke, and I could see right through them. They seemed to have no legs or feet – just ragged strands of darkness that trailed slightly above the ground. Even their faces looked thin and insubstantial – except for their eyes, which glowed like hot coals.

  They looked a lot more like my idea of ghosts than they did when they were aboard the ship. Not very nice at all, I can tell you. The pirates seemed unable to speak in this form – they could only make unpleasant hissing noises like a threatening snake. But with those glowing eyes trained on us, they made it pretty clear by pointing at the map, then straight ahead, then at the map again, that they expected us to get on with finding the treasure.

  So with Henry leading the way we entered the jungle. The light was greenish and the air warm and sticky; the undergrowth on both sides of the narrow trail was virtually impenetrable. Together with the bugs that were soon biting everyone and the ominous rustling sounds, the place was far from wonderful. I started to wish I was back on the ghost ship.

  The cursed pirates followed us, as if they were afraid we would steal their treasure – though I’m not sure what they thought we would do with it.

  Most of the time the path, turning and twisting, climbed steadily. We had waded through thick undergrowth for about two hours, I guessed, before Henry stopped and pointed to the big red X on the map.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, striding on and emerging into an open space.

  We carried on, awash with sweat by now, tired and bitten to death. From there the path climbed a few hundred metres further to an opening in the rockface.

  Henry consulted the map again. “It looks like the treasure is hidden in that cave,” he said.

  The ghostly pirates were clearly excited, waving us on and hissing a lot as we shuffled towards the entrance of the cave, which was really little more than a crevice between two big rocks. Henry scavenged some bits of dead tree root and lengths of creeper vine, tying them together to make a rough torch. Then he produced a box of matches that – don’t ask me how – he had not only managed to hang onto since our capture but which, even more amazingly, still worked!

  The torch smoked a lot and didn’t smell that great but it gave us enough light to see by as we entered the cave.

  We all squeezed in. Henry raised the torch and my eyes widened. By its jumping, flickering light I saw that we were not alone.

  Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway – because the two people already occupying the cave were not only dead but, unlike Blackbeard’s crew, looked as if they’d been that way for some time. Their skeletons lay propped up against the back wall of the cave. I realised they were both clutching cutlasses, the blades of which stuck out of both bodies around the area of the rib cage.

  I shuddered – if I had been frightened by the fake skeletons at the museum, these terrified me. Henry however marched over and took a really close look at the two bodies.

  “I’ll bet these are the ones who buried the treasure,” he said. “Perhaps they fell out afterwards and killed each other.”

  I imagined a grizzly image of the two men struggling desperately, stabbing each other at the same moment. But Henry had already moved on to examining the floor of the cave.

  “This bit has definitely been disturbed,” he said. “I think we should dig here.”

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that we were prisoners of the infamous pirate Blackbeard and that there were two scary dead men hounding us, this could have been pretty cool. As it was, we were all hot, tired and nervous – not to mention itchy from all the insect bites.

  We dug in silence. The dazed prisoners barely spoke any more anyway. Several blisters later, our spades hit something hard.

  “Aha!” Henry remarked. I was just glad we might soon get to stop – I was exhausted.

  It took a few minutes to uncover the lid of a wooden chest and dig around it enough to drag it out onto the floor of the cave.

  Of course it was locked – and of course Henry wanted to smash the lock and take a look inside.

  I had my doubts that was a good idea, but Mr Stevens was as excited as he could possibly be, under the circumstances. “Open it, Henry,” he said.

  Henry hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Well, they did give us these sacks, so they must intend us to fill them with whatever’s inside! He grinned. “I for one am not going to do all this digging and not know what’s in there. It might be full of rocks!”

  He had a point. As no one had anything more to say, Henry gave the chest a thump with his spade. The old wood groaned and he hit it again. This time the bit around the lock split open with a crack. Henry lifted the lid and we craned to look inside. My heart pounded with excitement. Pirate treasure! Even the dazed prisoners peered in and Mr Stevens looked as if he was going to faint from excitement.

  Needless to say the chest was not full of rocks. It was, in fact, bulging with coins, jewels and some old plates and cups – all made of the same shiny stuff. No one said anything. We all just stared. I think we might have stood there for a long time, but eventually Henry slammed down the lid of the chest with a bang that made everyone jump.

  “OK,” he said. “Let’s get this outside. Our floaty friends will be wondering what we’re up to.”

  It was only then that I realised the two cursed pirates had not come into the cave with us. Had something about the place kept them out? Maybe they had once known the skeletal sailors? Maybe it reminded them that they were actually dead? In any case, they were waiting for us as we hauled the heavy chest outside. Their red eyes seemed to gleam all the brighter and the hissing noises got louder, which seemed as near as they could get to cheering.

  Gold is heavy stuff, and I was glad of the sacks we had been given before we left the Destiny’s Wyrd so that we could spread the load between us. We emptied the chest and filled the sacks as fast as we could.

  While everyone was busy, Henry pulled me to one side.

  “Listen, Dolf,” he said. “On the way back to the ship we’re going to make a break for it.”

  “But they’ll see us, won’t they?” I exclaimed. “And if they do they’ll leave us here alone w
ithout food and water!”

  “We’re not going to be left behind,” said Henry. “And I don’t think we’re alone, anyway.”

  “What!” I said, probably too loudly, because Henry shushed me.

  “Didn’t you notice all that rustling in the underbrush?” Henry asked. I had, of course, but I’d been thinking of large scary animals.

  “You mean someone’s following us?”

  Henry nodded. “Almost since we left the beach. I thought it was monkeys or something at first, but there was a glint of something metallic – and to my best knowledge birds or animals don’t carry anything made of metal.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked, resignedly.

  “Once we get back into the jungle, fall behind a bit. As soon as the others are out of sight we’ll get off the path.”

  I thought of the thick undergrowth, where anything could be lurking. But I knew it was no use arguing with Henry; he had that determined look he gets when we are up to our eyes in trouble and he’s thought of a way out.

  Once the treasure had been transferred into bulging sacks the cursed pirates made it clear they expected us to get a move on and head back to the ship. There was a bit of grumbling among the adults, which showed they were actually beginning to wake up – maybe because they were no longer on the ship. I heard Cyrus Firestone say something about ‘slave labour’ but the two ghostly shades flew around us in circles, glaring and hissing and pointing until finally everyone swung a sack over his or her shoulder and began to stumble back down the slope towards the beach and the waiting ghost ship.

  Fortunately for Henry’s plan, Caraway and his chum Pockmark were so eager to show off the haul (as if they had done all the work instead of hanging about outside the cave!) that they went ahead. I suppose they thought there wasn’t anywhere much for us to go so they weren’t worried.