Island of Thieves (13 page)

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said my uncle. And then he laughed. “Yes! I can see her now.” He slapped me on the back. “You're good at this, aren't you?”

“I do my best.”

“What is it?” demanded Otto. “What can you see?”

My uncle showed him the angel.

“Ah, yes. I see her. Very good. But where do we dig?”

It was a good question.

This wasn't what I had been expecting. Ever since we arrived in Peru—no, ever since Uncle Harvey pushed the page across his kitchen table and told me to read it—I had been carrying around a picture of the Island of Thieves in my imagination. I could see exactly what it looked like. It was a small island with long sandy beaches and hundreds of lush palm trees, swaying back and forth in the brisk sea breeze. Green parrots flitted between the fronds. We would hack a path through the jungle and come to a rotting old wooden cross standing upright in the sand. In my vision of the island, I could see us, too, me and my uncle, stripped to the waist, digging down into the sand, waiting for the moment when our shovels jarred against something solid.

So what were we doing out here on the open sea? Where were the palm trees and the parrots? And, like Otto said, where were we supposed to dig?

The fierce waves buffeted us back and forth. Above us, the cliffs were grim and tall. We could see the angel, but she didn't offer us any help, any suggestions. She just lay there on the rock, blank and vast, staring out to sea.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a damp piece of paper. The water had seeped through my jacket, making the ink run, but I could still read John Drake's instructions:
We placed them at the Northern tip of the Islande in a line with the small rocke which lookes likke a fishes head. If anyone comes after us, you must go to the angel. Look to her fifteen feete. Her mouth is black. She has no teethe but she has a deep hart and ther you will find it.

I must have read this short paragraph a hundred times already and now I scanned it three or four times more, but it still meant nothing to me.

Look to her fifteen feete.

I could see the angel in the rock, but she didn't have one foot, let alone fifteen. Only the upper half of her body was clear; her head, torso, and wings.

Her mouth is black.

I looked above her, below her and all around her, but couldn't see anything interesting. Anything worth exploring. Anything at all, in fact, apart from solid rock sprinkled with a few sprigs of salty vegetation.

Miguel was getting impatient. He was talking to Otto in a low voice. I could imagine what he was saying.
Let's chuck the kid overboard! He's only weighing us down.
I could see Otto listening to him, deciding what to do next. He glanced at me and my uncle, then spoke quietly to Miguel.
There's no point killing these gringos yet,
he would be saying.
They might still be useful. They found the fish, didn't they? Let them find the treasure too. And then we'll toss them overboard.

My uncle looked over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Reading the instructions again.”

“Found anything interesting?”

“No.”

“Let me see.”

I handed over the paper. The boat was swaying violently from side to side. Uncle Harvey read John Drake's words to himself. I looked up at the cliff and remembered what I had just read.

If anyone comes after us, you must go to the angel. Look to her fifteen feete.

From here, it was hard to measure distance, but I looked all around the angel, trying to guess how far fifteen feet would be.

Below her and to the left, three or four yards above the level of the raging waters, there was a black space in the rock. I hadn't noticed it before. I don't know why not. Now my eyes were drawn to the darkness, wondering what might be hidden there.

It's probably nothing,
I told myself.
Just a shadow.

Then I realized the sun wasn't shining.

I stood at the side of the boat and prepared to jump.

The waves were washing us back and forth. My legs felt unsteady. I was holding my arms out on either side of my body like a tightrope walker, trying to keep my balance. If I fell in now, I wouldn't even have time to drown or die of hypothermia; I'd just be crushed between the boat and the rocks.

Otto was standing at the wheel, struggling to put us in exactly the right position; close enough that I could leap ashore, but not so close that our hull would be smashed to pieces. On either side of me, Miguel and my uncle stood with their arms outstretched, their palms flat, ready to push us away from the cliffs if a sudden wave swept us onto the rocks.

When I'd volunteered to go ashore, I'd assumed they'd say no. I thought Otto or my uncle would insist on being the first to find the treasure. But they let me do it. I don't know why. Maybe they wanted to keep an eye on one another.

A wave swept us in. Another dragged us out. Then we were going in again and it was my chance. I hurled myself out of the boat. For a moment so brief that I almost couldn't even feel it, I was nowhere, and then I landed on the ledge. My knees crunched against the rock. My legs flailed. My fingers scrabbled for a hold. I found a grip and pulled myself in, and I was ashore.

When I turned around, I saw that Otto had already backed the boat away, not wanting to risk the hull against these jagged rocks.

I was squatting on a narrow slab of slippery cliff. Seaweed and wild grass sprouted in the cracks. Every incoming wave crashed over me, adding another layer of water to my already soaked clothes. I was so wet through that I wouldn't have thought I could get any wetter, but I did. Water was running down my face and squelching in my shoes.

Stop complaining,
I told myself.
Stop worrying. There are more important things to think about. I'm ashore. My feet might be slithering about on the rock, my hands icy, my fingers stiff and my clothes soaked through, but who cares? I'm on the Island of Thieves.

It was time to get moving. Time to find this treasure.

I put my head back and looked up.

The cliffs towered above me, blocking out the sky. I didn't have far to go—twice my height, perhaps, or even less—but a single wrong move would send me sliding down the sheer slab of rock and plunging into the waves. On the descent, I'd probably split my skull open, and that would be the end of me.

I ran my hands over the surface of the rock. To my relief, there were lots of good holes for my fingers and ledges for my toes.

I pushed myself against the cliff and started climbing, moving slowly, stopping all the time to explore the cracks in the rock with my fingertips and the ends of my sneakers.

I was lucky. The good holds didn't run out. As I clambered higher, I found more crevices for my feet and more jagged rocks to grab with my hands. I shimmied straight up the cliff and hauled myself into the entrance of a narrow cave.

I lay on the cold rock for a few seconds, catching my breath, then stood up and peered into the gloom.

I could hardly see anything. Just the shadowy outline of some rocks, the sides of the cave, and, further in, an impenetrable darkness.

Her mouth is black.

I stepped back onto the ledge and looked down at the boat, bobbing on the waves. Three round faces stared up at me. I gave them a quick wave, then turned my back on them and walked into the cave.

It was a good height. I could stand entirely upright. I didn't even have to bend my neck.

Leaves and twigs crackled underfoot. The cave was very dry. Even in a fierce storm, the tallest waves wouldn't reach this high.

I can't imagine how they found it, but the Drakes had discovered an excellent hiding place. The narrow entrance kept all kinds of weather out of here. It kept the light out too. As soon as I stepped inside, the darkness surrounded me. I walked more tentatively now, spreading my arms, feeling my way with my fingers, waiting to touch cold rock at the back of the cave.

She has a deep hart.

My eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom. I could make out the walls of the cave, narrowing on both sides.

My foot stubbed against a heavy object.

“Ow!”

That was me speaking.

“Ow-wow-wow,”
my voice echoed back at me, the sound fading with every repetition.

I kneeled down and felt it with my hands, whatever it was that I'd just kicked. A block of gold? An old wooden chest? A sword? A skeleton? A skull? No. Nothing so interesting. Just a rugged chunk of cold rock.

I stepped over it and shuffled farther forward.

With each passing moment, although I was moving deeper into the darkness, I could see a little better. There were my hands, either side of me, stretching ahead, feeling their way. There were the sides of the cave, tapering inward toward a patch of intense blackness directly ahead.

She has a deep hart.

There was the floor, rough and unsteady, littered with obstacles, sticks and stones, waiting to trip me up. And there, stacked up against one wall, I could just make out a collection of shapes that looked man-made, too regular and straight to be natural. As I shuffled closer, the shapes became clearer and I realized that they looked just like boxes.

I touched the nearest.

It was a box.

Made of wood.

Old, dry wood.

Feeling my way around the sides of the boxes, pushing my fingers into the cracks and along the ridges, I counted them.

One, two. One, two. One, two. One, two.

That was the lot. A row of four, stacked two tall. Eight boxes altogether.

Here we buried five chests filled with gold and three more chests filled with silver.

Which one to open?

It didn't matter. I chose the one nearest the entrance, closest to the light. My eyes could see better now. There was neither a clasp nor a lock, just a lid fixed into the top of the chest.

I dug my fingers into the crack, trying to lift the lid. The rotten wood splintered and fell away. A splinter dug into my palm. I cursed and pulled it out. Then I tried again. This time I pushed harder, then harder still. In a sudden movement, the lid slid away, exposing the contents of the chest.

It was empty.

Oh.

I felt a great wave of disappointment.

Someone had been here before us. They'd found the eight wooden chests and looted their contents, walking away with a fortune in gold and silver. Some penniless villagers, a couple of struggling fishermen, they'd probably stumbled upon the cave by chance, searching for shelter in a storm or just mucking around when they couldn't find any fish to catch. Now they were millionaires.

Where did that leave us?

All this travel, all this effort, all for nothing.

I thought of my uncle, waiting in the boat. What would he say?

And what about Otto? What would he do? Since flying down to Las Lomas, he'd been fairly friendly. As if he liked us. How would he feel now? Would he demand his hundred thousand dollars from my uncle? Or would he just kill us right here, right now?

Wait a minute,
I told myself.
Don't give up so easily. Perhaps they haven't taken everything. Someone might have sneaked in here, grabbed an armful of loot, and then bolted. They might have left a few scraps. Even a little gold or silver would be better than nothing.

But if looters had raided these boxes, why would they put the lids back on? And stack them so neatly?

I put my hand inside the chest. And that was when I realized my mistake. It wasn't empty. It was just so dark that I hadn't seen what was inside. But I could feel it. A piece of cloth.

I gave it a little tug and felt resistance. Yes. The cloth was wrapped around something solid.

A lump.

I lifted out a heavy piece of metal about the size of an apple, wrapped in a piece of dark cloth.

I let the cloth drop to the ground, and there it was, squatting in my hand, a misshapen hunk, yellowish and glowing even in this dim light.

I'd never really understood the allure of gold. Why is this dull, soft metal worth so much? My mom has a gold wedding ring. It's nice enough, but I wouldn't say it was anything special.

This was different.

I knew that right away. By the look of it. By the weight of it. By the feel of it in the palm of my hand.

Oh, yes. This was very special. For this lump of metal, you wouldn't mind spending three years sailing around the world, enduring the cold and the damp and the danger. For this, you'd attack a Spanish galleon, dodge cannon balls, risk death.

I shuffled toward the entrance, holding the lump in my right hand, and squatted there, out of sight of the boat, not wanting to be seen by the others, letting daylight play over the surface of the gold.

I wondered how much this apple-size chunk might be worth. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Then I thought:
The whole crate is full of this stuff. And there are eight crates. Sure, three of them are going to be filled with silver, but that's not cheap, either. Five crates of gold and three of silver, right here with me. I'm sitting in a cave with a fortune.

I wrapped the gold in its cloth and put it back in the crate. Then I walked out of the cave and stood on the edge of the ledge.

Otto had taken the boat farther out into the ocean, keeping the fragile fiberglass hull away from the rocks. The three of them looked up at me. Uncle Harvey shouted something. I could see his lips moving, but the crashing waves and roaring wind drowned out whatever he was saying.

I didn't even try shouting back. I just gave him a thumbs-up.

Otto brought the boat closer,
then handed the wheel to Miguel. A strong wave forced the hull against the cliffs. A bigger bump and the fiberglass would shatter and crack open, sending our small boat to the bottom of the ocean. Miguel thrust the throttle down, taking the boat back out, then brought it slowly in again. When the boat was only two feet from the cliff, Otto sprang ashore. He was followed by Uncle Harvey, who turned and placed his boot on the boat and pushed it away. Miguel revved the engine and steered it back out to sea.