Treasure Trouble (2 page)

My friends scratched their heads. That meant they were thinking really hard about what I’d said. They also scratched their bellies, their arms, and their legs. But that had nothing to do with thinking. It just meant that the sand was very itchy.

“Arrr, maybe Pete’s right,” Vicky said when she was done scratching.

“Aye,” Inna agreed. “Pirate duty is serious business. Maybe we should stop bellyaching and start digging again.”

“Arrr! And digging sure beats rowing,” Aaron said.

“Aye,” Gary added. “At least we can take breaks and build sand castles.”

“That’s the spirit, mateys,” I said. “We’ll find the treasure first and prove we’re the best pirates on the seas, even if we are only kids!”

Then we all put our hands together in a circle and gave our pirate cheer. “Swashbuckling, sailing, finding treasure, too. Becoming pirates is what we want to do!”

We picked up our shovels and started digging again.

Everyone except Gary. He was too busy jumping around trying to get the sand out of his skivvies. He jumped around so much that his glasses fell off. When he bent down to pick them up, he tripped over his shovel.

THUMP!

He tripped right into Inna.

Then…CRASH!

They both tumbled into a big hole that Vicky had dug.

I ran over to the hole and peeked in.

“Blimey! Are you guys okay?” I asked.

I thought for sure Inna was going to pull Gary’s hat down over his ears and bop him on the head. That’s what she always did when Gary made her mad. Only when I poked my head down, Inna didn’t look mad at all. She was actually smiling!

Aaron and Vicky rushed over to me. They peeked in, too. “She must have bumped her head a little too hard!” Aaron suggested when he saw Inna smiling.

“Aye,” I agreed.

“I didn’t bump anything,” Inna hollered. Then we watched as she brushed away the sand under her feet. “I’m smiling because I think we found something!”

Gary helped her brush away the sand. They were both standing on something. And when all the sand was brushed away, we saw what it was.

One giant treasure chest, just like Captain Stinky Beard had said!

“HOORAY!” We all let out a great big cheer.

Aaron, Vicky, and I danced around outside the hole. Inna and Gary danced around inside the hole. Then instead of bopping Gary on the head, Inna gave him a hug.

Sometimes being clumsy was the same as being lucky!

“Arrr! The last one there is seaweed slime!” Vicky called out as she ran across the beach.

“Aye! You better get ready to be slimed then,” I hollered.

I was right behind her, running as fast as I could. We were racing to tell Rotten Tooth the good news.

Aaron stayed behind to guard the treasure. Inna and Gary stayed behind, too. They weren’t really guarding. They were just too small to climb out of the hole.

“Avast! There he is,” I said as soon as I saw Rotten Tooth.

Vicky and I ran faster.

We were so busy racing, we forgot to
look where we were going. So we didn’t see Rotten Tooth step in front of us until it was too late.

DOUBLE CRASH!

“Arrr! What’s gotten into ye pollywogs?” Rotten Tooth roared.

We gulped!

Rotten Tooth looked even madder than the time Aaron was pretending to swashbuckle and buckled him right in the tummy!

“We’re sorry,” I said. “We were racing.”

“Racing?” Rotten Tooth bellowed.

“Aye,” Vicky admitted. “Did you see who won?”

“ARRR! Ye both lost!” he growled. “When we get back to the
Sea Rat
, ye’ll be racing to see who can wash the most dishes!”

“But we were racing to tell you something important,” I said.

“Aye?” Rotten Tooth asked.

“AYE!” Vicky said. “We found the treasure!”

The rest of the landing party stopped digging and turned to look at us. They dropped their shovels and cheered. “Hooray for our little shipmates!”

I couldn’t tell if they were happy because we found the treasure or because they didn’t have to dig anymore. Probably both.

Rotten Tooth was the only one who didn’t look happy. He thought us pirate kids were only good for being deckhands.
He didn’t like it one bit when we did shipshape pirate work.

“Arrr, ye better show me,” he grumbled. “And ye better not be fibbing, or else!”

“Nope. No fibbing,” I said. Then I grabbed one of his hands and Vicky grabbed the other. Together, we brought him back to where our friends were waiting.

Only when we got there, we didn’t see any of our friends. We only saw a bunch of holes.

“Arrr! I don’t have time for games,” Rotten Tooth barked.

“But it’s not a game,” I said. “They were just here.”

Vicky crossed her arms and frowned. “I bet this is all Aaron’s fault,” she mumbled. She always thought everything that went wrong was Aaron’s fault.

Just then, we heard a scream coming from one of the holes.

“INNA!” I shouted.

We followed the screams. They were coming from the hole where we had found the treasure.

“Shiver me timbers!” Vicky yelled when she peeked into the hole.

“Aye!” I said. My timbers were shivering, too! That’s because not only were our friends in the hole, so was a giant sand crab! It was almost as big as Gary!

Inna was covering her eyes. She didn’t like crabs at all. She said they were the same as spiders, only worse. And she thought spiders were the second-scariest thing in the world besides snakes.

Gary didn’t have to cover his eyes. He still didn’t have his glasses on, so he didn’t know what was happening.

“Arrr! This is our treasure, you scallywag!” Aaron yelled as he tried to hold the crab back with a shovel. But the giant crab grabbed the shovel with its claw and snapped it in half!

“Stand back,” Rotten Tooth said. Then he reached down
and picked up that pinchy crab by the back legs! He swung it around and around over his head, then tossed it into the sea.

My mouth dropped wide open!

“Arrr! He might be mean, but Rotten Tooth sure is one brave pirate,” I whispered to Vicky.

“Aye.” She nodded.

“Arrr! Don’t stand there like barnacles,” Rotten Tooth said to us. “Help your little mates out while I get the treasure.”

“Aye aye!” we said, and gave Rotten Tooth a pirate salute.

Aaron gave Inna and Gary a boost while Vicky and I pulled them up. Rotten Tooth lifted the treasure chest out of the hole. Then he lifted Aaron out, too. Before long, everyone had two feet on the ground…even the giant sand crab!

“It’s back!” Inna shouted, pointing to the crab crawling toward us.

“Aye, and it brought friends,” I said, pointing at an army of crabs marching behind it.

Rotten Tooth scooped up the treasure chest and pointed to the rest of the crew. “Let’s go, buckoes!” he ordered.

We all hurried as fast as we could. It was like the race Vicky and I had run, except that this time, the last one there would be crab bait for real!

“All hands back to the
Sea Rat
!” Rotten Tooth hollered. The crew loaded the boats as quickly as they could. Then we leaped on and started to row away. By the time we were out to sea, the beach was covered with sand crabs.

“That was a close one,” I whispered.

“Aye,” Inna said. “It almost pinched us in two!”

“Lucky for you mates, I was there,” Aaron said. For once, being a show-off had actually come in handy.

“But what were those crabs there for in the first place?” Vicky asked.

“I heard a pirate tale on my old ship about crabs that guarded treasure,” Gary told us. He had heard tons of pirate tales.
The ship he was on before the
Sea Rat
had an entire library of tales, and Gary had heard all about them.

“Aye?” we asked.

“Aye!” Gary said. “It said crabs guard only cursed treasure!”

We all made spooky
ooohhh
and
aaahhh
noises. That’s because cursed treasure was super-spooky business.

Rotten Tooth heard us whispering. He had the best hearing of any pirate ever born. He could hear a mouse snoring even if it was on a ship anchored two days away!

“Stow that talk,” he roared at us. “There’s no such thing as cursed treasure. Those are just tales to scare wee pups like ye lot.”

“Aye?” I asked.

“AYE!” he yelled. “And ye better not go blabbing to the cap’n about curses and crabs! ’Tis bad luck, ye savvy?”

“Aye,” we mumbled. No sailor wanted to bring bad luck to their ship.

“Now if ye don’t mind,” Rotten Tooth said, “ROW! ROW! ROW!”

“Shipshape work, matey!” Captain Stinky Beard said as Rotten Tooth unloaded the treasure chest onto the deck of the
Sea Rat
.

“’Twas no work at all, Cap’n!” Rotten Tooth bragged.

“Aye, because he didn’t do any work to find it,” Vicky whispered.

I covered my mouth to keep from giggling. It wasn’t polite to giggle while the captain was on deck. That was in the pirate code.

“With that spotty map, I thought it would take twice as long to find this here treasure,” Captain Stinky Beard said. “I’m very impressed.”

That made my friends and me smile real proud.

But then our smiles disappeared because Rotten Tooth took all the credit. “Aye, it was right where I thought it would be,” he told the captain.