X Marks the Spot (11 page)

I leaped at Long John's shoulder and grabbed for the bird.

“Arrrrh!” cried the parrot. It fluttered up out of reach. I jumped for it, but it managed to fly just too high.

“Get back here!” I shouted.

But the green bird flew up over our heads, out of the cave, and away over the island.

“Captain Flint!” Silver boomed. “Come back to me!”

But the parrot—and all those green feathers—didn't come back. I glanced at Frankie. “Did I just do something really dumb?”

She nodded. “I'm pretty sure, Devin, yeah.”

Chapter 19

Making me feel even worse, Frankie cracked open the book and showed me that there were only a few pages left. Our adventure, which seemed so long when we started, had moved so fast that it was now nearly over.

But before it was, the captain put us both to work.

“Ugh! Ooof!” In bag after bag, in chest after chest, we helped to lug the heavy treasure onto the ship and stow it down below. Frankie and I kept our eyes peeled, but we found no green feathers. No parrot, either.

When we finally got all the treasure and supplies on board, the captain set sail away from the island. As we rounded the northern tip, we heard faint yells coming from the rocks. And there they were, the last of the pirates, calling out to us not to leave them behind.

“Their hearts are black,” said Silver, shaking his head. “If they see the treasure on the ship, they'll turn against you as quickly as—”

“As you would?” interrupted the captain.

Silver grinned. “Arrh, quicker!”

But as a final gesture to his bad-guy friends, Silver yelled out as we sailed past. He told the pirates there were lots of supplies left in Ben Gunn's cave. They should be able to make it until the next ship passed by. The doctor and the captain nodded in approval, but said nothing.

Frankie, Jim, and I watched as Silver gave a final wave to his old crew.

“I know he's a bad man who has sort of tried to kill us and stuff,” I said. “But you know …”

Frankie nodded. “I know. He's sort of very likable.”

“I feel it, too,” Jim said with a smile. “Even though he deserves to be punished, it's hard to think that when we get back to England, he'll go on trial and probably, well, you know …”

“Lose more than his leg?” I said.

“Exactly.”

It was sad. Long John Silver really was a broken man.

Everyone was quiet now, gathered on deck and watching the island fade away in the distance.

When Spyglass Hill—the highest point on Treasure Island—sank away beneath the horizon, all we could see was the empty blue ocean around us.

I turned to Frankie. “So, what happens now? I mean, here we are, it's near the end of the story, and we've found no green feather bookmark. We're sunk.”

“Never say ‘sunk' on a ship,” she said. She held up the book. “We have five pages left. You gotta have hope.”

“Arrh,” said Long John Silver, overhearing us. “I know I always do.”

It was just about sundown when we dropped anchor in a really beautiful bay of a populated island nearby.

Boats filled with people came out to meet us and sell us fruits and veggies and, most importantly for Ben Gunn, chunk upon chunk of ripe cheese. He must have spent half his share of the treasure right there on the dock.

Seeing all those happy island people, the cool little buildings of their village, and all that food cheered everybody up, including Silver. We even started to forget how frightened we'd been on Treasure Island.

That night, as we were anchored in the bay, we all sat around and talked about our plans for the money.

Between bites of cheese, Ben Gunn told us he would build a house entirely of blocks of Parmesan. Jim was planning to help his mother open an even bigger and nicer inn. The doctor and the squire would give lots to charity. Captain Smollett wanted to buy a farm, far away from any boats, and never sail again.

After a while, the grown-ups went on night watch, leaving Frankie, Jim, and me to keep our eyes on Long John to see that he didn't escape.

“And what would you do with the treasure?” I asked Long John Silver. “Not that you can have any, I mean.”

“I wouldn't want more than a little,” he said with a sigh. “Then, I'd make myself a gentleman and find that bookish lady I met once. She'd keep me honest, I suppose. I'd settle down and read the good books she'd give me.”

Frankie laughed. “I know what you mean. Devin and I have people trying to get us to read all the time, too.”

“By the way, what is that book you two have been reading all this time?” asked Jim.

Frankie glanced at me. “It's about a boy who goes on an adventure and grows up a little on the way.”

“Sounds like a good story,” said Jim.

“It's been fun, most of it,” said Frankie. “So was our adventure on Treasure Island. Pretty soon we'll have to say good-bye.”

Jim smiled. “I don't know if I would have done those dangerous things if you two friends weren't there.”

“I think you probably would have,” I said, taking the book from Frankie. “It's in your character.”

But when I opened to the page we were on, it struck me that we were only three pages from the end.

And there was no green feather in sight.

Then, as if by magic, I heard a quick flutter of wings overhead, and a flash of green circling the deck. Then there was a sharp cry. “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

I jumped. “The parrot!”

“Arrh! My own Captain Flint!” Silver shouted.

But the bird didn't settle on his shoulder. It shot across the deck and down the stairway to the storage rooms below.

“After it!” I yelled.

We rushed down the stairs to the storage rooms, and there, amid all the cartons and boxes and crates of treasure was the parrot.

But that wasn't the amazing part.

The amazing part was that the green bird was perched right on top of—guess what?

The flashing blue zapper gates!

Chapter 20

“Holy cow!” I gasped when we screeched to a stop. “The zapper gates are calling us home, Frankie!”

The room was sizzling and flickering in blue. Just beyond the gates was a black crack in the air. It was deep and smoking and scary looking, but I knew what it was.

“Frankie, it's our way back home.”

“But we can't leave until we get Mrs. Figglehopper's bookmark back,” she said.

“Figglehopper?” said Long John Silver, clomping down the stairs and eyeing the heaps of treasure.

“Figglehopper! Figglehopper!” the parrot shrieked.

We heard a sudden stomping rush of feet on deck. A moment later, everyone tramped down the stairs.

“What's going on here?” demanded the captain.

“Are they eating my cheese?” chirped Ben Gunn.

“No, Long John Silver is trying to escape!” said Jim, pointing at the deep crack behind the zapper gates.

“He can't go there,” said Frankie. “No one can. That leads to—”

“It leads to the way I shall escape,” growled Silver, pulling a pistol from one of the chests and aiming it as us. Then, stuffing his pockets with coins, he backed slowly toward the flickering gates. “There's still two crosses on the map of Treasure Island, marking where Flint buried more loot. Now that my parrot is with me, perhaps I'll be going back for them—”

“Stop him!” cried the captain.

“I will!” Jim shouted. He rushed Silver, but the pirate's crutch swung around swiftly and Jim tripped to the floor.

The blue light began to swallow Silver. The parrot fluttered to his shoulder, ruffling its feathers at me.

“Silver, get out of there!” Frankie yelled, rushing in.

“And we need a feather!” I shouted. “And we're not taking no for an answer! Parrot, it's you and me!”

“Me! Me!” it squawked.

I leaped at the bird, just as it flew across the light.

All of a sudden—
kkkkk
!—the storage room flashed blindingly bright blue, then crashed into total darkness.

“My friends!” Jim shouted. “Where are you?”

“Going home!” I yelled.

“Bye, Jim!” said Frankie. “It's been fun—ooof!”

Frankie and I tumbled into each other, and we were instantly sucked into the blue light of the gates.

It definitely felt like there were more than the two of us hurtling around in that darkness. I heard the sound of wings fluttering. And my back was struck by something that felt a lot like an old wooden crutch.

But when we tumbled out of the dark, dropping down into the library workroom, and slamming into a stack of heavy book cartons, it was only Frankie and me.

Well, almost.

As we lay there heaped on the floor, I looked up into the sizzling, fading blue light of the gates and saw a single green feather fluttering through the air. It landed on the floor, right on the map Mrs. Figglehopper had made for us.

I sat up, snatched the feather, and held it up.

Frankie rubbed her eyes and stared at it, too. “Whoa, was that weird or was that weird?”

“A little of one and a lot of the other,” I said.

Instantly, there was the noise of scuffling feet.

Mrs. Figglehopper slid in between the boxes and looked down at us. “I hope you didn't come away empty-handed?”

“Um, no,” I said. “We have the bookmark … and the book.”

“Ah, the book!” she said. “Talk about treasure. You two hit the jackpot. Classic books are the richest treasures of all.”

The librarian took the feather from me, ran her finger along the green edge of it, and smiled a sort of faraway smile. “This came from a friend,” she said.

Then, as if she shook herself awake, she blinked. “Yes, well now, you two had better scoot back to class, or Mr. Wexler will come looking for you.”

She scampered away with the bookmark.

We got to our feet, edged through the maze of boxes, and out to the library doors. With
Treasure Island
firmly in hand, we headed back to Mr. Wexler's class.

To make a long story short, Frankie and I aced our book reports. Mine was all about how Long John Silver was a bad pirate who had probably taken down a whole crew of people in his day, but was both smart and sometimes kind, and even funny. He'd probably saved Jim's life as often as he'd threatened to hurt him. I wrote how the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, probably sort of liked Silver, too, which is why he let him escape at the end.

Frankie's report was excellent, too. She told how by the end of the book Jim Hawkins had become really brave and could stand up for what he believed in. The whole adventure with pirates had made him more sure of himself. He wasn't such a kid at the end, but he was a real nice guy.

Mr. Wexler's long, hedgy eyebrow wriggled and twisted all the way through reading our reports, but at the end he nodded and put a big A on each of them.

Mrs. Figglehopper read them and liked them, too.

“You're right about people liking Long John Silver, she said. “Despite all the bad things he did, they really do!”

But the weird part happened when the dismissal bell rang that day.

As Frankie and I rushed down the hall for our bus, we heard a strange sound coming from the library.

It was Mrs. Figglehopper, singing.

Singing a very familiar song.

“
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest
—

Yo-ho-ho—
”

I screeched to a halt, and Frankie screeched with me. We froze outside the library doors, listening to that old pirate favorite one last time.

“Not exactly the librarian national anthem,” said Frankie.

I gave her a nod. “No kidding. Um, Frankie, you don't think Long John Silver's ‘bookish lady' is, you know, our own, sort of Mrs. Figglehopper … do you?”

Frankie frowned at me. “No way. Uh-uh. Nope. Can't be. Never in a million years. Do you think?”

“Not unless I have to,” I mumbled. “But if I did have to, I'd have only one thing to say about it.”

“What?” asked Frankie.

“Arrh, arrh!” I said.

“That's two things,” she said.

Then she chased me all the way down the hall and out the doors to the bus.

F
ROM THE
D
ESK OF

I
RENE
M. F
IGGLEHOPPER
, L
IBRARIAN

Dear Reader:

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm sure sailing to a distant island with a crew of nasty pirates is not my idea of a good time. But what fun it is to read about! And
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson is high adventure at its best!

Certainly, Frankie and Devin seem to have enjoyed their trip! By reading the book, I mean.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1850. Unfortunately, he developed tuberculosis, a terrible lung disease, at an early age, which kept him in bed much of his youth. Thankfully, he used the time reading and writing. And by the time he was sixteen, he had penned his first historical tale.

He continued writing all the way through college and afterward, beginning to publish stories in his twenties.

Alas, his ill health continued to bother him, and so he took to traveling to warmer countries. In 1880, his journeys took him to sunny California (not too far from Palmdale, I might add!), where he married a woman named Fanny Osbourne.

Now, here it gets interesting. Legend has it that one day Fanny's son from an earlier marriage, Lloyd, together with Robert, sketched a treasure map of a made-up tropical island. When Lloyd wished that there were a book about the island, the idea for
Treasure Island
was born! Robert began his great pirate adventure at once, and it was published to great acclaim in 1883.

This was followed soon after by his other major adventure novel,
Kidnapped
, and his classic horror tale of a man with a severely split personality,
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. Talk about scaring the biscuits out of you! Don't read that on a dark and stormy night!