But they were all looking at him. Waiting. Jem sighed and settled his fist on top of the others.
“No prey, no pay, mateys,” Scarlet said solemnly.
“No prey, no pay,” the others chorused.
“Go smartly now, and may you die peacefully in your hammocks rather than keelhauled under the belly of a ship.”
“Die peacefully!”
“Come on. Let’s go!”
Scarlet grabbed the rope and scaled it effortlessly, with Smitty and Tim close behind. When it was his turn, Jem peered down at the black water, knowing he’d end up in it if he slipped during the climb. He swallowed, gripped the rope, and began to pull himself up, walking his feet up the side of the Dark Ranger as he put one hand over the other. After a few moments, he settled into the drill. It reminded him of the climbing ropes in the King’s Cross gymnasium, which in turn reminded him of his sensible schoolmaster. Master Davis would have never gone on such a mission.
But what about Uncle Finn? Jem wondered. If there were even the tiniest chance that Jem were still alive and being held captive on board the Dark Ranger, would Uncle Finn raid the ship to find him? Jem pictured his uncle slogging through waist-deep mud filled with venomous snakes and persistent leeches as he had in one of his adventures. Yes, Jem decided, Uncle Finn would face this danger.
Just as he was clambering over the schooner’s edge and onto its main deck, a cry severed the silence and his thoughts.
“Invaders! We’re under attack, mates!” A hefty, bearded pirate ran toward them from the fo’c’sle, holding a lantern in one hand and waving a broadsword with the other as if it weighed no more than a twig. A few others, equally gritty-looking, tromped out behind him. Smitty grabbed Jem by the arm and dragged him over the edge onto the deck. “Stand your ground,” he said. “We’ve got to guard the rope until everyone’s on board.”
Hands trembling, Jem reached inside his trouser pocket for his knife. Tim never had found him a spare cutlass, which was just as well, because Jem couldn’t actually see himself using one. He took his place beside Scarlet and Tim to face the pirates, wondering if this would be how he’d meet his end. But when the pirates drew near enough to recognize the Lost Souls, they all froze. One let out a noise that sounded more like the cry of a small child than a crusty pirate. “They’re back,” he wailed. “It’s the Lost Souls!”
“Let’s get ’em!” Tim whispered. “Smitty, stay here and make sure the others get up safely. Jem, come on! You’ll love this!” And he bounded off after the pirates. Scarlet took off, too, and Jem had no choice but to follow. They circled the pirates, whose eyes were as big as doubloons, and backed them up against the mainmast. Cackling demonically, Tim and Scarlet began to skip around them in a kind of devilish maypole dance. Jem watched for a moment, unsure whether he could pull it off, but grew more confident the harder the pirates trembled. These sea dogs killed Uncle Finn, Jem reminded himself. Make them pay. And with that he launched himself into the dance, swerving in and out of the pirates’ faces, throwing in a few spooky moans to terrify them even more.
More pirates soon arrived on the scene, along with more Lost Souls itching for action. Cries of “Not again!” and “This time they’ll kill us all!” were answered by hoots and ghostly moans as the Lost Souls scattered across the deck, skipping and scampering and wreaking general havoc.
“Split up now!” Scarlet hissed after a few minutes. “Searchers down below. Stealers to the stern. Scarers, stay here with me!”
Breathless, Jem remembered his task. He wasn’t about to get his hopes up about finding Uncle Finn, but he’d come this far and had to look around. He took off toward the staircase. But as he flung himself full tilt down the stairs, he ran smack into a massive figure.
“Argh!” the pirate yelled, and Jem immediately recognized his voice. It was Thomas, the gigantic softie. The big man backpedalled as fast as he could, half falling down the stairs and back down the hallway to the cabins, yelling, “They’re back! The Lost Souls! Cap’n, they’re back!”
Jem paused and shook his head. This was amazing. A bunch of pirate children who could barely lift their cutlasses, let alone use them as weapons, could actually terrify these bloodthirsty pirates.
“Fantastic, isn’t it?” said the next ghoul over. It sounded like Emmett.
Another ghoul sighed. “It’s a beautiful thing.” Edwin, probably.
“All right, on with it. Let’s find some clues.” That was Tim for sure. They ran down the rest of the stairs and burst through the first door they saw.
It was a sleeping quarter, crisscrossed with hammocks and reeking of sweaty feet and morning breath. Edwin dove in, gagged at the smell, then ran back out. All the hammocks looked empty, and Jem shut the door as fast as he could.
“Scurvy, that stinks. I hope all the rooms aren’t like that.”
They found the next door on their right locked, but it shifted on its hinges, and when the boys threw all their weight against it, it gave way without much fuss. They tumbled into the room to find two men hunched over a chest full of pieces of eight. The men turned in surprise, and Jem found himself once again face-to-face with the Dread Pirate Captain Wallace Hammerstein-Jones and his right-hand man, Iron “Pete” Morgan.
Forgetting his disguise, Jem ducked behind Emmett, remembering the captain screaming “Plank! Plank!” condemning Uncle Finn to death.
“Stand your ground,” Emmett whispered, taking a few steps toward the pirates. Jem gulped and shuffled after him. Captain Wallace and Pete stared up at them, transfixed, as they slowly backed away on their hands and knees. The terror on their faces eased Jem’s nerves, and as he reminded himself what these two had done to his uncle, his unease gave way to anger.
“P-p-p-please,” the captain said, crawling backward until he hit the wall. He wiped his rodent nose and squinted at the Lost Souls. “Don’t hurt us. Take a doubloon or two. Oh heck, take a sack of them. A small sack, mind you. And leave the shiny ones, please. Oh, and don’t touch the rubies. I’m partial to rubies—”
“Captain.” Pete shot his leader an incredulous look. “Captain, shut up!”
“Don’t you tell me to shut up. I know how to handle this.”
“Captain, you’re trying to reason”—Pete threw his arms up in the air—“with the dead!”
“Oh, and I suppose you have a better idea?”
“Well, actually—”
“Ahem.” Tim cleared his throat, and the pirates looked up as if they’d suddenly remembered the four ghouls standing before them. Jem rolled his eyes.
“Look, let me try,” Pete said. He turned to the boys. “Just listen for a moment. We’re good pirates. We follow the laws of the sea. If we’ve offended you in some way, we’re very sorry. Won’t happen again.”
Suddenly Captain Wallace jumped to his feet, hand on the cutlass at his hip. “That’s it!” he cried, and jerked his weapon out of its sheath. Its blade glimmered in the low light. “I’ve had enough of this. If I’m going to die at the hands of the Lost Souls, I’m going to die fighting! Make sure they bronze my boots, Pete!”
And with that, he rushed toward the Lost Souls, his blade aimed right at Jem’s nose. Jem ducked and dove out of the way, heart pounding, and the others spread out across the room. Pete scrambled to his feet and drew his weapon, too, looking less enthused at the prospect of dying a martyr.
Captain Wallace bounced off the wall and spun to face them again. Jem reached into his pocket and drew out his knife without tearing his eyes away from the captain’s twitching lip. With a great “Argh!” the pirate charged once more, straight for him. But just as Captain Wallace was bounding across the cabin, a foot reached out and connected with his shin. The pirate turned a double-somersault and landed in a heap at Jem’s feet. His cutlass spun across the floor, and Jem ran after it, snatching it up before Pete could. Then he turned tow
ard the door to see the scaring team pouring in and surrounding the pirates. He had no doubt it had been Scarlet who tripped the captain.
Her whispers soon emanated from a cloak beside him. “Great work, Fitz. We’ll take over now. Keep searching for clues.”
Sopping with sweat under his cloak, Jem grasped his new weapon and started for the door, flanked by Tim and the twins. Outside the cabin, the four stopped and burst out laughing.
“Did you see their faces?” Tim cried.
Emmett mimicked Captain Wallace’s moment of truth, brandishing an imaginary cutlass. “Bronze my stinky boots, Pete!” They doubled over, gasping for breath.
“All right,” Jem said, finally regaining his composure. “Let’s go on. We still have some searching to do.”
Together, they continued down the hall. The next two rooms were sleeping quarters, equally smelly as the first, with no sign of Uncle Finn or any of his belongings. They had only one more room to search, at the very end of the hall. Jem shoved its door open, stepped inside, and froze.
“What d’ya see, Jem?”
“Is it your uncle?”
It was not Uncle Finn, no. Jem wouldn’t have been quite so surprised to find his uncle mending sails on the Dark Ranger as he was to find Lucas Lawrence.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lucas Lawrence lowered his needle and thread slowly and with a sly half smile that made Jem’s fingers tremble as they closed around the hilt of Captain Wallace’s cutlass underneath his cloak.
“Visitors.” Lucas rose to his feet. “What a pleasant surprise.”
The Lost Souls looked at one another, eight bewildered eyes peering out from black hoods.
“Lucas,” Tim finally managed to squeak. “What are you doing here?”
“Wouldn’t you love to know?” Lucas smirked. “But I think you’ll just have to wait and see. For now, I’d get off this ship if I were you.” He cast a scornful glance at their disguises. “Those aren’t going to protect you forever. Not from real pirates.”
Jem was grateful for the hood that hid his open mouth. He had no idea how Lucas had gotten there or what on earth the boy was doing mending the Dark Ranger’s sails. But he did know one thing: If the other pirates still believed in the curse of the Lost Souls—and it seemed, judging from their reactions on deck, that they did—they wouldn’t be so easily fooled for long, not with Lucas around to set them straight. Jem also knew from the look in the boy’s eyes that there was no sense hanging around to reason with him. It was a satisfied look, a look that said everything was going according to plan.
“Let’s go.” Jem spun on his heel and marched back out the cabin door, followed closely by his three teammates. They stomped side by side down the hallway without a word, but Jem could feel the confusion and fear hanging over them. He swung into the cabin where they’d left Scarlet to torture Pete Morgan and Captain Wallace.
She and her crew had been busy. The pirates’ hands and feet were bound with scraps of cloth that looked like they’d been ripped off Captain Wallace’s now-raggedy trouser legs. The captives sat back-to-back in the center of the room as the Lost Souls, daggers and cutlasses drawn, marched around them in a circle shrieking, “Give us our man, give us our man.” The captain, who’d been declaring his intention to die a hero the last time Jem saw him, was now blubbering like a baby.
Jem stepped right into the middle of the circle and grabbed the sleeve of the ghoul whose shrieks sounded most like Scarlet. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered. “It’s Lucas. He’s here. He’s joined the Dark Ranger pirates.”
Scarlet froze. For a moment, she said nothing. Then, from the depths of her hood came the nastiest curse Jem had ever heard—so nasty, in fact, that it made both Captain Wallace and Pete Morgan blush and look down at their boots. Scarlet broke away from the circle and swept out the door, leaving Captain Wallace and Pete Morgan tied up on the floor and looking bewildered.
“Where? Where is he?” Her voice sounded strangled. Jem pointed, then hurried behind while Scarlet charged down the hall toward the last door. “Lucas!” she yelled, throwing herself across the threshold and right onto the boy’s worktable where she proceeded to lunge for Lucas’s throat. “What the flotsam do you think you’re doing? Answer me! This is what you do, after all the Lost Souls have given you?” She released his neck and began to pound his chest with her fists. “How could you?”
“Pull her off,” said Tim, who had appeared beside Jem. Together they grabbed Scarlet’s arms and pulled her back. Lucas looked a little surprised, but all in all unfazed by Scarlet’s wrath. He almost looked like he wanted to laugh, and Jem prayed he wouldn’t; that would send Scarlet over the edge and straight for her cutlass for sure.
“Captain, stop,” Jem said to her. “It’ll do no good. We’ve got to get off this ship.”
“That’s right,” Lucas spoke up, straightening his collar. “Listen to little Fitz and get your sorry selves off my ship. Or you’ll pay for it, mark my words.” Then he smiled with all his yellow teeth. “Actually, you’re going to pay for it, anyway.”
Scarlet stopped struggling at that point. Her fists fell to her sides. “Swig, gather the crew. Let’s go.”
“What’s going on?” some of the Lost Souls murmured as they climbed the stairs back to the main deck. “Someone tell us what’s up.” But they had to wait until the stealers had been alerted and herded back to the grappling iron, and all three teams had slid back down the rope onto the Hop before they found out the reason behind the hasty retreat.
“Lucas Lawrence?” Ronagh screeched when she heard.
“That scurvy swine! That scourge of the seven seas!” Smitty slashed the rope that connected the two ships as if he wished it were Lucas’s right arm.
Jem looked up at the Dark Ranger as the Margaret’s Hop began to pull away. Captain Wallace peered over the edge at them, lips twitching into a slow smile. “Ha!” the captain yelled, then turned back to his crew. “I scared off the Lost Souls! Did you all see that? The Lost Souls cowered at the very sight of me!”
Well, Jem thought, it seemed that Lucas hadn’t gone and revealed their identity just yet. But it was only a matter of time.
A few Lost Souls scurried about tending to the sails, but most stayed to watch Scarlet pace the main deck, muttering, “What does it mean? What does it mean?” Then she stopped and scanned the crew. “Gil Jenkins! Where is he?” she bellowed.
Smitty plunged into the crowd and emerged, after a brief scuffle, with a squirming Gil Jenkins, who’d been a stealer during the raid. Someone produced a chair, and Smitty shoved the boy down onto it.
“Ow!” Gil protested. “Why me?”
“Should I tie ’im up?” Smitty asked Scarlet, who regarded Gil as if he were a shark circling the ship.
“Yes. Get the thickest, itchiest rope you can find.” To Gil she said, “I’ve got some questions for you, and you’d better be ready to answer.”
“Right,” Smitty chimed in, “like what do you know about this?”
“And how did this happen?” Tim hollered from his place behind the ship’s wheel, steering them through the black night.
“And what does this mean?” Scarlet bellowed.
“All right.” Jem stepped forward, hoping he could help by keeping a logical, cool head. “Everyone calm down. One question at a time.”
“Right.” Scarlet took a deep breath. “Gil, you might be Lucas’s friend, but you’re also a Lost Soul. You must tell us what you know. First off, how would the pirates have found Lucas on the island?”
Gil grunted and shrugged. Smitty whipped his dagger out of his boot and pointed it between the boy’s eyes.
“All right, all right. I’m guessing that since Lucas went to the trouble of learning all about the other pirate ships over the years, he used some kind of code or smoke signal to
attract their attention.” Gil shrugged again. “But since I wasn’t there, how would I know?” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
The answer made sense to Jem, who recalled Lucas’s friendly exchange with Deadeye Johnny a few days earlier.
Scarlet drew another deep breath, evidently trying to keep a cool head herself. “All right then,” she said through clenched teeth. “So Lucas decided he’d rather be a Dark Ranger than a Lost Soul. The next question is, what about our identity? Will he tell his new crew who we really are?”
“Of course he will,” Smitty moaned. “He wants to see us fail, and he knows his new crew’ll thank him nicely for telling our secret.”
“He didn’t even take the oath when he left!” Monty whispered.
“That’s it. We’re doomed!” Emmett wailed.
“We’ll never fool anyone now,” Edwin added.
“Wait a minute,” Ronagh called out, and twenty-two heads turned to her. “Do you think Lucas’ll take the pirates to the treasure?”
Twenty-two heads swiveled back to Gil, who was studying the calluses on his big toes.
“He couldn’t,” Smitty said. “He doesn’t have a map.”
“Would he need one? He might be able to remember the directions,” Tim said.
“Um . . . ,” Gil said to his calluses. He tugged at his collar as if it were a noose.
“Um what?” Scarlet’s voice held daggers.
“Um . . . Lucas . . . um . . . might have, maybe . . . oh, scurvy. He’s got the map.”
“What?” Jem had to grab Scarlet’s arms so that she wouldn’t throw herself on Gil and wring his neck before he could explain. “What do you mean he has the map? When did he take it?”
“When he stole Jem’s knife.” Gil’s voice was quiet now.
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