Legends of the Ghost Pirates (15 page)

It doesn't take long before we're standing in front
of life-saving station, and as rapidly as we can, try to figure out
how to get in. Off to the side there are two very large garage
doors that look like they should swing out. Coming out from under
the doors are rails, that look like train tracks, leading over the
rocks and into the water. It's a rail system for launching
lifeboats that's behind the closed doors.

“If there's going to be a boat or dingy in here,
that's where it's going to be,” I say pointing to the doors. We
walk in front of the big doors to get a closer look, and in the
middle of the fading paint is a sign posted from the US Coast Guard
saying it's been closed down and we are trespassing. Under the sign
I notice the big heavy paddle-lock and latch going across the
doors. Without thinking I quickly grab the handles of the two doors
and start yanking on them with all my might. Everything’s pretty
old and weather beaten, so it shouldn't take much to burst them
open. I pull even harder with everything I've got, but they will
not budge. “Son of a ...” I give the doors a swift kick with my
foot.

“Maybe there's another way to get out to our
sailboat,” Sara says as she looks back out over the cove.

Jo walks up to the doors and grabs hold of the
paddle-lock, and turns it upside down while giving it a good look.
“Hmmm...” she says nodding.

Sara points down toward the old wharf back toward
the north part of the cove. “It looks like someone's lobster boat
is docked at the old wharf.”

I look where she's pointing. There's something very
familiar about the boat when it instantly becomes clear. “That's
Skinny Pete's boat! I get it. When they have a delivery scheduled
they just dock the boat there and walk up the island where they're
set up. It makes sense because there really isn't a safe place to
anchor a boat where their stereo equipment is stacked.”

“Then let's go see if there's something on his boat
we can use to get into the life-saving station,” Jo says.

“Are you completely nuts?” Sara says. “They'll be
headed straight back there any minute now.”

“Then we better hurry,” I say and start to run back
down the path we just came toward Skinny Pete's boat. I know Skinny
Pete; he's never in a hurry to do anything, and certainly not
walking almost two miles back to his boat. But we still have about
a quarter of a mile to get to the old wharf so I keep up the
run.

When the three of us run out onto the old wharf, we
stop to catch our breath. I turn to Jo and say, “Last time I was on
his boat it was kind of a mess. I'm not sure if we'll find anything
useful to open those doors.”

Jo doesn't say anything and instead hops immediately
onto the lobster boat. I swing a leg over and climb onto the aft
deck as does Sara. I start picking around the stern of the boat
where there's some old traps and gear. Nothing strikes me as
useable.

“Guys,” Sara says, “we have to do this quick.
They’ll be back any minute.”

“I know, I know,” I say. “But there's gotta be
something around here we can use to pry open the doors.”

“Fisher!” Jo shouts. “Grab these and put them in a
sack.” She hands me two handfuls of firecracker bricks.

“WHOA! Why does he have these on board? And what are
we
going to do with them?” I ask while looking at them.

“Would ya just put them in a sack? Here; take these
too.” Jo hands also hands me a pair of binoculars. There's a canvas
bag under the gunnel with a bunch of rusty parts in it which I dump
out.

“Sara!” Jo shouts. “Grab those lobster buoys over
there in the corner.” She points to four brightly painted
bullet-shaped buoys, about the size of a milk jug, which are used
to tie to the traps. Sara looks at me and shrugs her shoulders then
fills her arms with four buoys. While she's doing that Jo finds two
coils of rope and also shoves them into the bag I'm holding.

Next, Jo pulls up the floor-board in the cockpit
then hops down to the engine. “Fisher,”she yells. “Hand me a
screwdriver; Phillips’ head.” I quickly find one lying near the
helm and hand it down to her. A moment later, she says, “Here, grab
this.” She hands me up a thing that looks like a large black cup
with eight sockets around the underside. Turning it over in my
hands I look closely at it.

“It's the distributor cap, lunkhead. The engine
won't run without it. Put it in the bag.”

Jo sticks her head up from the engine well and looks
around for something. “See if you can find a can of oil.”

Luckily there's one sitting just under the port
gunnel. Things certainly are not in any kind of order on Skinny
Pete's boat, but there seems to be everything we need.

“Open the can,” Jo barks at me. My jackknife is
still in my pocket, and I quickly flip open the can-opening blade
then swiftly punch triangle holes into the oil can. Being careful
not to spill any, I hand it to Jo. After she grabs hold of it, I
lie down on my stomach and peer down into the engine-well to see
what she's doing. Very carefully she is pouring all the oil over
the engine block. Normally the oil is supposed to go inside the
engine block, not the outside.

“What in the world?” I ask. But Jo doesn't say
anything and quickly climbs out and places the floor boards back in
place.

Looking at me and Sara, Jo brushes some of her red
hair out of her face, and says, “Let's get out of here.”

I scrunch my face and say, “But we don't have
anything to burst open the doors with.” Jo points to the canvas bag
in my hand and jumps off the boat onto the wharf. “Come on, let's
go. We don't have much time.”

I turn to Sara. “What's up with your cousin? She's a
strange chick.”

With her arms full of lobster buoys, Sara also jumps
over the side onto the wharf. “I don't know. But she might just
surprise us.”

We're starting to tire with all the running around
we're doing, and it's taken us almost fifteen minutes to get back
to the life-saving station. Skinny Pete and Turk
have
to be
on their way back by now. I wonder if they realize we've escaped
from the barrel. If they didn't, they will when they get back to
Skinny Pete's boat and it doesn't start.

I set the canvas bag down by the big doors and Sara
dumps her armful of lobster buoys. Jo quickly reaches into the bag
and pulls out the distributor cap. “Let's have some fun with your
pirate friends.” Without wasting any time she heads over to the
graveyard where I fell through into the open grave.

Jo hops the low fence and kneels down by the open
grave. “Fisher. Cut some thin branches off that bush over there.
I'm going to need a lot of them,” she says pointing. “And Sara. See
if you can find a lot of big leaves. I'm going to need a lot of
those too.” Sara and I both get to work. I pull out my jackknife
and start cutting off the thin branches. When I collect a good
amount I hand them to Jo.

I stand just outside the short stone wall watching.
I have no idea what she's doing. I shout to her, “For someone who's
deathly afraid of ghosts and graves, you don't seem to have a
problem with it anymore. What gives?”

She smirks. “This is too much fun to be scared of
ghosts.” She goes back to what she was doing. As I watch closely I
can see she's carefully placing the branches I just cut across the
open grave. The way she's laying them across, she's sort of making
a square pattern. Just then, Sara dumps a pile of large leaves next
to Jo. Jo looks up at Sara, smiles, and says, “Thanks, cousin.”

She carefully places them over the branches making
sort of a cover. After she's satisfied with how it looks, she
starts to sprinkle dirt and grass over the top. Finally, she stands
up, looks over at us and gives a thumbs-up.

I get it. She's made kind of a Burmese Tiger Trap
just like the one Wily E. Coyote makes to catch the Road Runner.
And sure enough, she takes the distributor cap and gently places it
in the center without disrupting the cover she's made.

Jo quickly hops back over the short stone wall, and
says, “Come on. Let's get back to the life-saving station.” Both
Sara and I quickly follow Jo to the big doors.

“I still don't get it,” I say. “How the blazes are
we going to get these doors open?”

“You'll see,” Jo says as she reaches into the canvas
bag.

“Guys!” Sara calls out. “Look down there. It's
them.” Jo and I stop what we're doing and look where Sara's
pointing. Back at the old wharf we can see Skinny Pete and Turk
climbing aboard their boat.

“Don't worry, I got this,” Jo says with
confidence.

“You got what?” Sara says with a look of confusion.
“We need to get to our boat. And it may be too late.”

Jo reaches into the canvas sack and pulls out the
block of firecrackers. Pulling a single firecracker off she hands
it to me. “Here. Use your jackknife and carefully cut the tops
off.”

I do as I'm told and carefully slice through the top
that's really just a paper tube. “Now what?”

Grabbing the paddle-lock, Jo turns it over so the
bottom is pointing up, and balances it there. She holds her hand
out to me. “Hand that to me. Then cut another one.” I hand it to
her, but I want to see what she's going to do with it before I cut
the next. Carefully she takes the firecracker and pours out the
little amount of gunpowder into the keyhole. I hand her the next
one and she does the same. I think I get it.

She points to the ground. “Sara, grab that little
twig over there.” Sara hands it to her, and Jo holds her hand out
toward me. “Jackknife.” I put the jackknife in her hands.

With the jackknife she whittles down the twig so
it's very thin. Once she's done that she pokes it into the keyhole
where she poured the powder, and begins to tap lightly. “Another
firecracker,” she demands.

Off in the distance, as Skinny Pete tries to start
the engine it is whining loudly without catching. It just keeps
making that awful noise, but we know that's the only noise it's
going to make. Without the distributor cap, they're dead in the
water. The engine keeps whining for about thirty more seconds, and
when it stops, from up here we can see Skinny Pete stepping out
from behind the helm scratching his head.

I promptly start cutting the tops off more
firecrackers and keep handing them to Jo.

Sara says, “He's opening the engine hatch and
climbing in. He's going to figure it out any second!”

Just after that, Jo says, “That should be enough to
do the trick.” Then from one of the firecracker tops I had cut off,
she gently removes the fuse and sticks it into the keyhole. She's
made a sort of bomb out of the paddle-lock. I gotta say, I'm
impressed with this idea.

“Just one problem,” I say. “we don't have any
matches to light it with.” I smirk because I'm getting tired of her
thinking she's so smart all the time.

“Would'a relax, I said I got this.” She reaches into
the canvas sack and pulls out the binoculars. Not wasting a second,
she unscrews the large lens off the end and holds it up to show me.
“We don't need matches.”

I still don't get it. Next she holds the lens to the
sun then aims the very fine point of sunlight that's going through
the lens at the fuse. To my amazement, the fuse suddenly starts to
pop and sizzle. It's just like the magnifying glass trick to start
a piece of paper on fire.

“RUN!” Jo screams.

The three of us dive around the corner just as it
goes off!

BOOM!

There's instantly a puff of smoke and the smell of
gunpowder in the air. The noise was so loud I can't hear anything
for a moment.

“That got their attention!” Sara shouts pointing
down at the lobster boat. Sure enough two surprised heads pop up
looking in our direction. In an instant, both of them are
scrambling off the old wharf. I can see Turk still has the three
pronged trident in his hands. It won't take them more than a few
minutes to get here.

We don't waste another second watching them and run
back around to the big doors. Hanging from the latch is what's left
of the paddle-lock, violently ripped apart and barely hanging by
the U- part.

“Wow, it really worked!” I say, grabbing the smoking
lock then looking at it in my hand.

Tossing the blown-apart lock off to the side, I grab
hold of one of the big doors and start pulling on it. It hasn't
been opened in a long, long time, and it's almost impossible to
budge, but once both Sara and Jo help, we can swing it open.

Peering into the darkness of the boat garage we see
it; an old lifeboat, about twenty feet long, sitting on a little
railcar. This is it—our escape plan.

Chapter 20

Rail Ride

The
lifeboat has been sitting on
the little railcar for many years, but the lifeboat itself looks to
be in great shape. Its white paint is dull, but it's not chipping
off, and the red boot-stripe across the waterline still looks good.
With a little luck it'll float as good as it looks. When we peer
over the sides of the gunnels, we can see there are still oars left
in it. What stroke of luck.

The railcar is a lot like a little train car which
the lifeboat rides on top down to the water. The tracks run deep
into the water, so no matter how low the tide gets, the car will
roll into the water launching the lifeboat.

“Throw the canvas bag in!” I yell. Jo grabs it and
tosses it into the boat. While she's doing that Sara scoops up the
lobster buoys and heaves them in too. In the next second, the three
of us grab hold of the boat and try to roll it down the tracks.
Nothing! “Pull harder!” I shout. Still nothing. I look down at the
wheels of the railcar, and see they are covered in a heavy rust.
Metal things like iron don't do well when they're in salt air like
it is in the life-saving station.