Legends of the Ghost Pirates (8 page)

“What am I looking for?” But she doesn't answer.

Then I see something that looks like it's moving
through the fog and coming toward us. I take a second look and
realize I'm seeing a schooner. Putting the binoculars down I try
and see it with my naked eyes. I can barely make out a black form
of a hull.

“You see it, don't you?” Jo says more serious than
she's been the whole time.

“See what?” Sara asks as she climbs up from
below.

Squinting her eyes against the building fog, Jo
says, “The ghost pirate of Blarney Bart.”

Chapter 9

From the Fog

“
Blarney
Bart?” Sara says
grabbing the binoculars from me. “That's not even funny.” She looks
out over the water for a moment, then says, “I don't see
anything.”

Jo gives the tiller back to me then stands next to
Sara. “We're not yankin’ your chain.” Taking hold of the binoculars
while Sara's still looking, Jo gently nudges it more to the
left.

“Oh.” Sara gasps. “Are you sure that isn't a fishing
trawler?”

“Take a closer look at the bow,” I say. “There's a
sprit with a sail attached that's kind of hard to see because the
white sail blends in with the fog.”

Sara looks again. “Oh, I see it now. Fisher—ah—it
looks like it's headed at us.”

“That's what I was afraid of.” The schooner's still
a ways off, but I steer the sailboat a little more to the south to
do my best to stay away from it.

“And I see it has two masts,” Sara says handing the
binoculars over to Jo.

“See,” I say. “A two-masted schooner—just like
Blarney Bart's boat.

Not looking so tough anymore, Jo says, “It just
changed course toward us.”

“Son of a... Are you sure?” I stand up trying to get
a better look. The air is starting to get damp and my clothes are
starting to feel like a wet sponge.

“Of course I'm sure. I know what a boat looks like
when it changes course,” Jo snaps back.

Luckily the wind is steady, so for a little
sailboat, we're moving along at a good speed. This time I try and
steer even more to the south.

“Good Lord!” Jo says through clenched teeth. “They
just altered course
again
. He knows we've come looking for
his treasure.”

I shake my head. “That's impossible. How does a
ghost know we're coming after his treasure?”

Jo looks me square in the eyes, and says, “I don't
know much about these Maine ghosts of yours, but it's a good bet he
knows something’s up because he keeps aiming at us.”

“Let’s see if he can follow this!” I say as I jam
the tiller hard to port ducking my head. “Jibing!” Both the girls
instantly duck their heads just as the boom snaps across to the
other side. Our boat never loses speed as its rails dig into a hard
turn sailing back in the opposite direction.

“It's hard to tell from here, but I think it just
turned again,” Sara says.

The fog is getting a little thicker, but not so much
that we can't see the ghost pirate ship. I wipe my now damp hair
back. “At least the ghost pirate ship didn't sink Gus Emery; it
just evaporated before it hit. Maybe we'll get lucky and that'll
happen to us too.”

“Would you two listen to yourselves?” Sara stands up
again looking across the water. “There's no such thing as a ghost
pirate ship.”

Jo points at the black hull that's materializing out
of the fog getting closer by the minute. “No such thing? It looks
real to me. And it's going to feel real when it fires its cannons
at us. We're gonna find out what ghost cannonballs feel like!”

Sara climbs back down the ladder into the cabin,
then calls up, “Fisher, how do you work this thing?”

“What thing? Can't look right now, little busy
trying to keep ghost pirates from sinking us!” I give the tiller a
slight shove to starboard, but it doesn't seem to do any good. The
ghost ship is gaining on us. Blast it!

“Dang! If we were on my dad’s boat we'd just punch
the throttles and get the heck gone. What y'all got for weapons on
this ragboat?” Jo shouts to me while the ghost pirate gets
closer.

“Weapons? Why would we have weapons?” Looking back
over my shoulder I can see the black-hulled schooner's clearly now
in our wake.

“I'm not going down without a fight,” Jo says while
she starts rummaging underneath the seats looking for anything she
can use to fight ghost pirates. Getting down on her hands and
knees, she pulls out the mop I've got stowed for cleaning the deck.
“This'll do!” Standing up with the mop in both hands, she quickly
cracks the mop handle over her knee breaking it in half.

“Aw! Why'd you have to go and break my mop?”

“If you had proper weapons on board I wouldn't have
had to do that.” She looks at me squinting hard and with the
mop-handle in one hand gives it a swish back and forth through the
air.

“You really think you can club a ghost?” By now,
even through the fog, I can clearly see the bow aimed right at us
and its full sails pushing it along. I can tell it's got some good
speed by the frothy white wave where the bow meets the water.

“Jo! Can you see if they've got cannons aimed at us?
Gus Emery said they aimed cannons at him.”

“Negative!” she calls back. “But they're ghosts, and
ghosts are sneaky. A cannon could materialize right before our
eyes.”

I take a quick look behind me. Without a doubt the
black schooner's grown bigger. It's going to easily catch us. Will
it fire on us or simply run us down? I've never dealt with ghosts
before; I have no idea what to do.

Looking up at our sails I realize, in all the
excitement I forgot to check the sails. The jib sail in front is
flogging just a little. That'll slow us down. “Jo! Trim the jib
sheet. We should be able to coax a little more speed out of
her.”

“The jib sheet? I'm a powerboater! What in Elvis's
Ghost is a jib sheet!”

I call back, “The rope lying on the cabin top by
your right hand. It controls the front sail. Pull it tighter until
the flogging stops. Then cleat it down.”

She does it perfectly. The sail takes a better shape
and the boat heels over a little more. In a sailboat,
unfortunately, going 'faster' is ever hardly noticeable. Again I
take a quick look over my shoulder. We might be moving faster, but
maybe not; it's hard to tell. The one thing I'm sure, though, is
the black schooner is still gaining on us. And it won't take long
for them to run us over, or fire their cannons at us.

From below in the cabin I can hear some crackling
sounds. What's she doing down there?

I'm about to ask when Jo shouts, “They're just about
on us!” Shouting at the schooner, she yells, “You're nothing but a
lotta hot air! You're not even real! Come on, let's see what you
got!” The broom handle in her hand is swishing back and forth in a
deadly arch.

From below I can barely hear Sara say,
“Schooner—schooner—schooner, off our starboard quarter, this is the
Sticky Wicket
. Over.”

Almost instantly there's another voice below, but
muffled. “
Sticky Wicket
. HOLD YOUR COURSE!”

Chapter 10

Embarrassing

“
Fisher!
Did you hear that?” Sara
yells from below in the cabin. “They want us to hold our
course.”

“Who wants us to hold course? What are you doing
down there? We're trying to outrun ghost pirates up here!”

“Good Lord, Fisher! Stop fooling around and just
hold course!” I don't think I've ever heard Sara talk like that
before, but then again I bet she's never been chased by a ghost
before.

From below there's the muffled voice again,
“
Stick Wicket
, this is the schooner
Adelaide
.
Requesting you HOLD COURSE.”

Suddenly it all makes sense; Sara's talking on the
VHF radio, and she's speaking to the schooner that's about to run
us over.

Sara keys the mic, “
Adelaide
, this is the
Sticky Wicket
. Holding course; over.”

After hearing that I hold the tiller straight, close
my eyes and rub my temples. What a fool I am.

No longer than a minute after their radio
transmission, the two-masted schooner,
Adelaide
, passes us
to starboard. As it passes, I see many passengers at the rail, all
wearing bright yellow life jackets, and most of them are waving to
us. Jo waves back, then turns around to me and shrugs. When it
passes us completely, the captain at the wheel looks back at me and
gives me a salute. The transom, the rear of the boat which I can
now see clearly, has the name
Adelaide
painted in gold-flec.
Underneath the name it reads,
Boothbay ME
. Of course; I
remember there's an old restored schooner out of Boothbay that
takes people out for day sails. Tourists. I let out a heavy
sigh.

Sara has joined me in the cockpit and also watches
as the schooner begins to disappear back into the fog ahead of us.
She doesn't say anything and simply smiles at me.

“Maybe we should turn around and head back toward
Damariscove Island,” she suggests.

“Yeah,” I mumble. “You're right. We should head back
to Damariscove. Tacking!” Both girls know that's the command that
I'm going to turn the boat around, so they duck their heads to
avoid the boom swinging across overhead. Once we're on the new
course Sara shows Jo how to set the sails on the new side. Jo seems
to be a fast learner.

It's a good thing I asked Sara take a compass
bearing to the island before we entered the fog. Now using the
numbers she wrote down, all I have to do is steer the boat toward
that compass heading, and with a little luck we should find the
entrance to the cove. I think we're still a ways off because before
the 'ghost pirate' incident, the island was just barely on the
horizon. The three of us settle in for some long sailing.

No one's spoken of it yet, but I keep thinking about
what a chump I was to think the schooner was a ghost pirates’ ship.
It feels like the topic is as heavy as the fog; we know it's there,
we saw it, but we're not talking about it. Maybe it's just me, but
the tension seems to be building.

Finally, I can't stand it anymore. “That
was...ah...kinda funny, thinking the
Adelaide
was a ghost
pirate ship, huh?”

Jo lets out a big sigh. “Sure was. I probably won't
be telling this story anytime soon to the gang on the dock back
home.”

Looking down at the cockpit floor, I say, “I feel
kind of stupid about it now. It's really embarrassing.” We all
smile a little, but none of us really laugh. The only sound that we
can hear is the water rushing past the hull while we consider for a
moment about what just happened.

Sara finally breaks the silence. “That's not so
embarrassing. Once when I was in grade school I was eating my lunch
sitting next to my friend Bev. I had just taken a big gulp of milk
when Bev said something really funny and the milk came pouring out
of my nose.”

“Big deal,” I say. “That happens to everyone.”

Sara continues, “That's not the embarrassing part.
When I stood up I realized milk had gone all over the front of my
pants. It looked like I-wet-myself. When I left the cafeteria
everyone was laughing and pointing at me. Even Bev was making fun
of me.”

“That
is
pretty embarrassing,” I agree.

“It took me a long time to get over it. Do you have
any idea what it's like to have everyone laugh at you?” Sara
says.

Jo jumps in. “That's nothing. Last year I was
sitting in class, and I had to pee
really
bad. I mean
bad
. But I didn't want to raise my hand to be excused to go
to the can; everyone would've laughed for sure. So I sat and
watched the clock on the wall while I waited for the bell to ring.
I've never seen a clock move so dang slow. I thought my insides
were going to explode like a water balloon. Finally, when I
couldn't hold it for another second, the bell rang. I jumped up to
run to the girls’ room, but I got tangled up in the desk and hit
the floor. When I landed on the floor—” Jo pauses and looks at Sara
then me. “—I peed all over myself. I don't have to tell you how bad
that was. I was so humiliated I told my mom the next day I was sick
and couldn't go to school for the next three days.”

Sara and I begin to chuckle a little. Jo smiles too
and starts to laugh also, and soon, the three of us can hardly stop
laughing.

After a while we
do
stop laughing, and Sara
looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Fisher. Your turn.”

“Wasn't the ghost pirate enough?” Sara and Jo both
shake their head.

“Okay.” I reluctantly give in. There are so many, I
have to think of just one.

But one story stands out from the rest. “Last year,
I was sitting in math class and we were taking a big test. The
classroom was silent. The problem was, I had a lot of baked beans
at lunch, and I had to fart—bad. Holding it in was so bad I
couldn't even work on the test. I just sat there. Then, by accident
I dropped my pencil, but the gas was so awful I couldn't even bend
over to pick it up. The teacher saw me drop the pencil and noticed
I wasn't moving to pick it up. Finally she demanded I pick it up;
so I did. I was like the Hindenburg exploding. And it was long,
too. It just kept coming and coming like when you let go of a
balloon that you're trying to fill with air. Everyone in the room
couldn't stop laughing. But that wasn't the worst part. It was one
of those really stinky ones. Like a baboon had just left a steaming
pile on the floor. It was so bad the teacher had to clear everyone
out of the classroom until the air cleared.”

Once again we start on a laughing attack; one of
those where anything you do after that is funny no matter what.
It's too bad it wasn't that funny when all the kids were making fun
of me. It took a while, but eventually we calm down enough to
remember why we are out here in the fog.