68 Knots (26 page)

“Fine,” Marietta said, “but what about the
treasure
?”

“When she was done telling me about Blackgoat,” Arthur continued, “I asked her about the treasure. She just sighed, took out an old chart, and pointed to an island. Then she said, ‘You'd better hurry—sail all night, if you have to. Tomorrow morning, the tide will hit a half-year low. That's when you have to be there. You can't see the cave normally. It's underwater.' Then she rolled up the chart, put it away, and pointed toward the door. ‘You got what you came for,' she said. ‘Goodbye.' The next thing I knew, I was back in the dinghy.”

“What do you think all that meant?” Joy asked.

“I don't know,” Arthur answered. “I think we disappointed her—” he tried to look tough, “but I got what I wanted.”

Dawn opened a chart, and Arthur explained that the treasure was hidden just southeast of Vinalhaven Island, right in the middle of Penobscot Bay, on the southwest side of a small piece of rock called Brimstone Island.

“
Brimstone
Island?” Crystal asked. “Give me a break.”

“That's what she said,” Arthur replied. “It's right here on the chart. She said we should approach from the south, just west of the Buffalo Ledges. We'll come to a steep cliff with rocks at the base. The cliff is maybe a hundred feet high. At the base, way below the high-tide line, is a small opening that leads back into the rock. It's only visible when the tide is really low, like it will be tomorrow morning around eight o'clock. The cave goes back and up, and then it opens into a large room that Bonnie says has a big old box in it. She said that's the treasure—and she said she hoped, for our sake, that we don't ever find it.”

“She might get her wish,” Dawn said. “We'll never make it to Brimstone Island by eight tomorrow. The wind has died
down a lot, and even if we sailed for another five hours today and three hours tomorrow, I don't think we'd reach it. The only way to get there in time is to sail all night.”

Logan grinned. “We could totally sail all night,” he wheezed. The others nodded.

Dawn fixed them all with a serious stare. “Do any of you know the first thing about sailing at night?” she asked. “Can you tell a chime from a gong, just by the sound? You'd better, because that's how you know which buoy you're passing. Do you know what an occulting light is? You'd better, because otherwise you'll never know which marker you're looking at. If you mess up, we could all go down with the ship.”

“Now wait a minute—” BillFi argued.

“BillFi,” Arthur said, “Dawn is right. If we want to sail all night, we'll have to learn about night navigation. I'm sure Dawn can teach us—she's been reading McKinley's books. And whoever is at the helm should have someone else up there with them—it would be too easy to fall asleep by yourself. Besides, the night will be long, cold, and lonely. Some company will make it a little easier.”

Logan shook his head. “Well, then maybe we shouldn't, you know, do this at all,” he said. “Why don't you go back and, like, ask Bonnie when another really low tide will be. We'll just make sure we're at the island then.”

“That'll be tough,” Arthur said. “She's heading out to sea.”

He pointed to a porthole. The rust-colored sails of Bonnie's sloop were far off in the distance, fading in the foggy air.

“Great,” Logan said. “Then I totally change my mind. I think we should forget all about this stupid treasure myth and just keep on sailing, you know, the way we have been. It's probably all just a whoop-de-doo fairy tale anyway.”

“No,” Arthur said. “I say we find out what's going on. This is too great an opportunity for all of us. Just think—we spend the summer by ourselves at sea, and we end up rich in the process. We could each own an island with a mansion on it. We're going to find that treasure if we have to sail all night, and as—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Crystal interrupted. “As your captain.”

Arthur nodded seriously, trying to look authoritative. “Yes,” he said in his strongest low voice. “As your captain, I say we go for it. Who is willing to take the helm for the night sail?”

No one said a word. The possibility of treasure was tempting, but not if it meant standing on a cold deck all night, staring at charts and buoys and markers and lights, and trying to keep the ship from hitting an invisible rock. Arthur looked around the group, one face at a time. Never be afraid to let them see you mad, his father's voice flashed across his mind.

“This is great,” Arthur said to his crew, scowling in the best anger he could muster. “You spend all our money in Freeport, so now we're raiding yachts to stay alive. Now we have a chance at some treasure. Some of you want the treasure, but no one's willing to do the work. Fine. That's just fine. If you won't do it, I will. I'll sail all night. I'm not afraid to do what has to be done.”

An instant before Marietta could say a word, Dawn spoke up. “I'll do it with you,” she said.

With Crystal at the helm, the
Dreadnought
turned to catch the gentle fog-laden wind and head toward Brimstone Island. Marietta was supposed to be on bow watch, but as usual, she talked someone else into doing it for her. Logan took the job, happy for the chance to serve on duty with Crystal. He clung to the bowsprit rigging and watched for lobster pots with a self-conscious air of importance and gravity. He pointed out every lobster float he saw, even some that were harmlessly off to one side or the other. Anything to keep in contact with the vigorous and daunting Crystal Black.

Logan even took to calling out the color, position, and distance of each lobster float: “Pink and green, eleven o'clock, like, fifty yards!” “Solid orange, three o'clock, twenty yards!” “Black and white, one o'clock, like, thirty yards!”

Then he paused for a long time. His voice sounded different when he called back again. “White with orange and blue stripes, ten o'clock—and coming right at us!”

Puzzled, Crystal glanced off to port. Through the fog she could see the gray outlines of a Coast Guard cutter heading toward them.

Logan scrambled back to the cockpit. “What do you think?” he asked Crystal, standing just a bit too close. “Are they, like, after us? Do you think they know about McKinley? Should we, you know, say anything to them? Hold our course? Turn and head back to port? Totally raise a white flag and surrender? What do you think we should do?”

With an exasperated sigh, Crystal said, “Look, Logan, they probably don't even—” But then she stopped. Logan's only courage, she thought, comes from a pathetic booze bottle. He wouldn't understand the value of a showdown. “We're holding our course,” Crystal declared.

Logan dashed downstairs. Arthur was in the captain's quarters, getting some sleep before the night sail, and Dawn was in her bunk, reading sailing books. Joy was in the galley, extracting life from the ancient kerosene stove with a level of violence that seemed to clash with her peaceful attitudes. The other Plunder Dogs were sitting around the dining table, playing poker.

Logan threw open the door to the captain's quarters and shouted, “Get up top, everyone! The Coast Guard is, like, bearing down on us! We're in a lot of trouble!”

Arthur leapt out of bed and dashed up the ladder. The others followed right behind him. They gathered on deck and watched the cutter grow steadily nearer.

“Crystal,” Arthur said, “what's up?”

“Coast Guard cutter,” Crystal said flatly. “I hear the U.S. owns one or two of them. Tend to cruise around the offshore waters. Big deal.”

The nervous energy on deck sank a bit in the fog. “Is it trying to intercept us?” Arthur asked.

“It's been on a collision course ever since we first saw it,” Crystal answered. “Doesn't mean a thing. The worst thing we could do now is turn around and run away. I'm holding my course.”

“Maybe we could just steer a little bit away from them,” Logan wheezed. “You know, like, slowly and innocently. Like nothing was wrong.”

Arthur shook his head. “Bad call. If we turn away, they end up crossing our wake just a short way behind us. Too close. I think we should turn a bit toward them, so we cut in behind them and let them sail on their way. That way, if they do want to talk to us, they'll have to change course—and we'll have some time to plan what we're going to say.”

“Forget it,” Crystal commanded. “I'm at the helm, and I've already told you what we're doing. We're holding our course.”

“But didn't you say it was a collision course?” Joy asked.

Crystal nodded with a tight grin. “You bet your ass,” she said. “Sailboats have the right-of-way over powerboats—right Dawn?”

Dawn nodded.

“So let's make
them
turn away,” Crystal said.

The nervous energy on deck returned. All eyes watched the foggy cutter growing ever larger. Five minutes passed, and no one on the
Dreadnought
said a word.

“Crystal,” Logan broke the silence. “I think this is a totally bad idea.”

“So?” Crystal shot back.

The cutter came closer, holding its course. Crystal held course as well, staring defiantly at the giant mass of metal moving toward them. She could see a few of the Coast Guard
sailors on the cutter's deck, leaning against a rail and watching the
Dreadnought
. They seemed calm.

The distance between the two ships dwindled. Arthur thought he could see the Coast Guard sailors grinning as the cutter maintained its collision course. The
Dreadnought
stayed true to course as well.

Closer. . . .

Closer still. . . .

BOOOOOOOOPP! The cutter sounded an air-shredding blast on its horn—and then slowly began to turn to starboard. Crystal held the
Dreadnought
's wheel steady, letting the cutter pass close to the schooner's stern. As the
Dreadnought
slipped in front of the cutter's wave-slicing bow, Crystal saluted to the sailors on deck. They waved back, and one of them, laughing, blew her a kiss.

As the afternoon faded toward evening and the fog dwindled into mist, Arthur noticed BillFi on bow watch by himself. With nothing else to do and feeling too awake to get another nap before the all-night sail, Arthur climbed out onto the bowsprit and joined his little friend.

BillFi was not cut out for bow-watch duty. The incessant swelling up and plummeting down, crashing and soaring and crashing again made his stomach uneasy, and the powerful curve of his glasses magnified the effect. He held tightly onto the rigging with a tension that was both reassuring and draining. He tried not to throw up, and he kept reminding himself that he felt no immediate danger coming.

One day a few weeks ago, when BillFi had been on bow watch, Logan had decided to be irritating. He called up to
BillFi and asked whether he could see the lobster float at eleven o'clock. BillFi, clinging to the rigging and paying attention only to his digestive processes, shouted back, “Yes! We're clear of it!”

But there was no lobster float. Logan got a shallow chuckle out of the joke, and when BillFi realized the trick, he felt even more out of his element on this narrow shaft of wood that jutted perilously over the jaws of the icy waves.

Arthur lay back across the bowsprit rigging across from BillFi, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared up at the swaying and bobbing clouds. He let the minutes go by lightly, with the crashing of the ocean and the breathing of the wind, hoping to put BillFi at ease through the sheer force of relaxation. After a long moment of calm, Arthur asked BillFi the question that had been bothering him since they voted to stay on board the
Dreadnought
after McKinley died.

“So, BillFi,” Arthur said. “I've been thinking about how all this should end. Eventually we'll wake up one morning, and it will be the day our families are supposed to pick us up in Rockland. They'll all be there at the dock waiting for us, and they think they're going to thank McKinley for taking such good care of us all summer. The way they imagine it, we'll pour across the gangplank, all sunburned and skinny and happy, with stories to tell about how much we learned on board. We'll talk about discipline and leadership and strategy, the tools young people need to get ahead in this world. And they'll give things to McKinley—nautical clocks and model square-riggers and checks—to show their appreciation for a wonderful and educational summer.