Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (41 page)

“Someone like me?” Philus sneered at Jim. “Look at me, boy! This is the real me. This is the me as I was over one hundred years ago. Do you think a man like this could stand up for himself in this world? I was a victim of all those bigger, stronger, and more powerful than
myself.” Philus held up the flute, his eyes, half-mad and glazed with fury, fixed upon it. “Magic gave me power. It is that power alone that has kept me safe. Think of all that has been taken from you, Jim. With the power of the very ocean itself at your command, you could be safe from all your enemies for as long as you live. You need never fear again!”

Jim and George went silent. Jim looked to the eldest Ratt Brother, his best friend, and saw that he too considered all the sadness and loss that had befallen them. He too wondered what it might be worth to be so strong that one would never suffer again. Lacey, however, never paused at all. She stepped forward with her fists clenched, glaring at the small sorcerer. Her eyes blazed nearly as bright as the lightning in the air.

“You all try and make it sound like magic will just fix everything, don’t you? But every time we’ve crossed magic, every time, it has almost killed us!” Jim had only to remember the tortuous ache of his poisoned hand to know that Lacey spoke the truth.

“Lacey’s right. You talk about protecting us from liars, but you’re just another liar yourself.” Philus’s narrowed his eyes at Jim and his friends. His frail shoulders and hands shook with rage. He jabbed the flute toward Jim’s face, his teeth clenched in an animal snarl.

“So be it, Morgan,” Philus growled. “But mark my words, child. The day will come when you regret passing this one chance by. You will curse yourself a fool for your weakness!”

Philus Philonius backed away from Jim and his friends and dropped his angry eyes to the shell in his hands. Its glow brightened and cast deep shadows on Philus’s aged face. Entranced by the magic, Philus put the flute in his pocket so that he might place both hands on the shell. Its power coursed into his arms.

“As for me,” Philus said, his voice high and shrill with ecstasy, “I shall have no such regrets.”

The violet light pulsed and shimmered. It threw magic arcs of purple and blue into the sky. The shell’s thrum grew louder and louder, and Philus Philonius cackled higher and higher with it. Above Jim’s
head, the red clouds of the crimson storm began to swirl tight and fast. Purple flashes bloomed within the billows, and thunder rolled over the ocean.

“Lacey, George!” Jim shouted. “Get to Peter and Paul!” He pointed to the two younger Ratt Brothers, clinging tight to the railing at the back of the ship. The swirling storm clouds lowered themselves toward the deck, drawn to the shell’s power. Jim had seen this storm before in his dreams. Somehow, in a way he did not fully understand, he knew the storm. He knew it would show no mercy.

“Philus!” Jim screamed as Lacey and George fought through the wind and rain to help Peter and Paul. “The storm! The storm is growing more powerful! Stop using the shell or you’ll destroy us all!”

“I cannot be destroyed, Jim Morgan,” Philus said, laughing as the shell’s power burned like a violet fire in his hands. “I am a master of magic. The shell will lead me to even greater power - the Treasure of the Ocean! Whether through you or Bartholomew Cromier, I shall—” But the last words of the magician’s boast were lost in a shuddering boom that shook Jim to his bones. The thunder clapped so sharply in the night that Jim was sure the sky had been split it two.

The truth was worse.

Jim’s hands dropped hopelessly to his sides as he stared into the storm. The swirling clouds spiraled down to the
Spectre
in a cyclone of fury. In the center of the funnel, a face formed of lightning like molten steel – the face of the skull from Jim’s dreams.

“Philus!” Jim tried one last time. “Stop this!”

But it was too late. Lightning bolts began to fall like arrows.

TWENTY–ONE

he first barrage of bolts struck the sea around the stalwart
Spectre
. The onslaught was so sudden and ferocious that the pirate battle came to a sudden halt on the ship’s deck. The Corsairs and Steele’s crew stared in horror at the impossible power descending upon them. Even Percival gave up chasing the owls. He drew his long body from the deck of the
Spectre
and held himself upright and stared into the clouds. The two giant birds fled for their lives into the night.

Another bolt came closer. Then another found its mark. A flash of sizzling heat and blue light blew open a hole in the center of the quarterdeck. The explosion tossed Jim into a heap by the
Spectre’s
wheel.

Jim’s ears rang as he struggled to sit back up. Lightning bolts were now pouring from the storm’s eyes. Before him, on the quarterdeck, a
perfect ring of orange fire burned around the hole where the lightning had struck. Jim saw Philus sprawled on the deck. The sorcerer was on all fours and reaching for the shell, which had fallen from his grasp.

Jim staggered to his feet. Not far from him, his tattered jacket still lay on the deck, soaked from the rain. A plan took shape in Jim’s mind. If he could beat Philus to the shell and cover it with his jacket, even hurl it into the sea – he might be able to stave off this magic storm and save the lives of his friends. But it was only then that Jim realized he no longer saw either the Ratts or Lacey on the deck.

Where were they? Jim’s heart pounded. For a moment he thought the worst, that they had been struck by the great bolt and thrown into the angry sea, or burned into nothing. Then Jim spied two small hands desperately gripping a frayed rope, which hung from the singed aft railing.

Philus had nearly reached the shell, still aglow in purple flame, but for Jim, there was now no choice. He stepped back against Mister Gilly’s wheel and took a deep breath, then ran and launched himself over the flaming hole in the ship. He landed hard and slid into the railing. Jim grabbed on to whoever’s hands held the rope and peered over the edge of the ship to find that those particular hands belonged to George Ratt. Below him hung, Lacey, Peter, Paul, and Cornelius in a chain of wide-eyed and terrified faces.

“You’ve all been eatin’ spare meals behind me back, ‘aven’t you?” George screamed, straining against the rope. “You feel like four great rocks tied to me legs!”

“George Ratt, we are no heavier than your big head!” Lacey screamed. But though Jim had arrived in time to help his friends, there was no one to help him. The rope snapped under the weight of the Ratts and Lacey. As they fell, they dragged Jim overboard behind them. A scream started in Jim’s chest, but when he hit the water the air was jarred from his lungs. The waves churned over Jim’s head and threatened to drag him into the deep. Jim blindly reached for his friends’ hands. If they were going to sink, he wanted to be together.

But two lights lit the darkness beneath the surface – two orbs like molten globes. Percival the water dragon had not abandoned his new friends. The great sea serpent brought his head beneath the children and lifted them up from the waves in one swoop. The entire clan plus one half-drowned raven broke the surface, all of them coughing and spitting seawater from their mouths.

“Thank you, Percival!” Jim shouted, patting the water dragon’s snout.

“You are still under my protection, are you not?” Percival growled. “I am bound by honor to uphold my duty!”

“Well, you’re doing marvelously!” Jim said. Then he turned to his friends. “Are you all alright?”

“Don’t worry about us, boy!” Cornelius squawked. “Get the shell, lad, the shell!”

“I’m after it, Cornelius,” Jim said. “Percival, take the others out of the storm’s reach!” Before his friends had a chance to protest, Jim leapt from Percival’s snout over the
Spectre’s
railings, as the water dragon swam back from the ship. But by the time Jim dove within reach of the shell, he found he was again too late. Philus was already on his feet. He held the shell in his hands. The purple magic burned bright and the old sorcerer wore a sneer upon his lips.

“How many times will you choose so poorly, young Morgan? You truly are a fool. You don’t deserve this magic.” Philus glanced up at the face in the clouds. It still bore down on the ship, eyes flashing with yet another burst of lightning. “Goodbye, Jim Morgan,” Philus said. “When I see you again, you shall kneel at my feet.”

Philus pulled his flute from his pocket, placing it to his lips to transform himself into some manner of beast, no doubt. But yet again, as he had so many times before, Dread Steele appeared from nowhere to fight for Jim and his friends. The Captain leapt over the burning hole and landed on his feet. With one slash of his cutlass he struck the enchanted flute with the flat of his blade and sent it clattering to the deck. Philus Philonius howled as he fell back from Dread Steele.

“Enough!” shouted Steele. “You have given us too much grief for one day, magician. You shall trouble us no more.”

“Stay back, dark shadow!” Philus squealed. “The shell is mine! And the Treasure of the Ocean shall be mine as well!”

Steele raised his sword to strike down the quailing wizard, but just before his doom, Philus Philonius burst into tears. Without his magic flute and the power to transform, he was lost. The little sorcerer fell to his knees, trembling shamelessly before the pirate captain. At the pitiful sight of a grown man groveling, much less one that had for so long masqueraded as a pirate of the sea, Dread Steele’s gray eyes softened. He lowered his blade, and like a father taking a toy from a disobedient child, the pirate captain contented himself to pry the shell from Philus’s grasp. Yet even in light of this mercy, Philus refused to relinquish his prize. He choked back his tears, screaming and cursing, and clung to the shell with both hands.

As Jim watched Steele and Philus wrestle for the shell, the magic talisman burned hotter and hotter. Violet flames washed over the deck and the railings. Jim looked to the sky and caught a startled scream in his throat. The lightning eyes of the storm’s face blazed to strike again.

“Steele!” Jim cried above the gale’s roar. “The storm!”

The crack of burning air and the rumble of shattered sky tossed Jim’s warning to the waves. With all its might, the storm lashed the deck of the
Spectre
with a crooked blade of lightning. A twisting tongue of blue fire raced down from the crimson face in the clouds and at last found its target. It struck the shell with a blow so powerful it swept Jim and his friends from their feet and sent them tumbling across the deck. The taunting, thunderous laugh of the storm rumbled above it all.

Silence followed.

The rain stopped falling and the wind ceased blowing.

In the stillness, Jim lifted his head, slowly, painfully. He saw Steele and Philus, thrown to the deck like scattered leaves in the wind. The shell lay between them, split perfectly in two halves, the shorn edges aglow like molten steel.

TWENTY–TWO

he crimson face in the black clouds melted away and the funnel withdrew. The storm, as if satisfied at last, gathered into itself and crawled across the sky. The last claps of thunder echoed off the ocean waves in its wake.