Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull Read online

  Jim took a good, long look at the old man, and found that he indeed seemed to have aged some years in but the last few moments. All but ignoring Jim, Philus Philonius trudged to his wagon and dropped down on the little step. He withdrew his flute once more and began to play that same sad song he’d been playing when Jim had first stumbled upon him.

  “Thank you, Mr. Philonius,” Jim said. But the old man’s eyes were now closed and Jim’s words fell on deaf ears. So Jim pulled his box from his pocket and gently set the blackened rose stem on top of his father’s letter for safekeeping. Then he strode off down the beach, the flute song playing softly as he went. Jim had gone but a few paces, when a last pang of guilt or regret struck him. He thought back to his silver necklace. He turned about to ask Philus to at least take good care of it for him, as it was special, or perhaps to hold it for him to buy back once he’d regained his fortune. But when Jim spun around, the wagon, the fire, and the little man were gone. Only the song lingered in the air for a few more lonely notes before it too faded away.

  Jim took a deep breath, knowing now for certain that what was done was done. There was no turning back. As he made his way down the shore, the moon shining on the restless ocean waves, his thoughts dwelt on his forthcoming chance at justice. He thought on the rose stem in his father’s box, which felt heavier in his pocket than it ever had before.

  Hot-blooded dreams of revenge bubbled over in Jim’s mind nearly the entire, long walk down the beach. It was only when the stables came in view that a small sting pricked Jim’s heart, like a bothersome splinter in his thumb. There would be no way he could properly explain the rose to his friends just yet. The Ratts would probably love the idea of vengeance, Jim thought, but MacGuffy and Lacey would most certainly disapprove, especially of his trading away his mother’s necklace.

  So Jim concocted a slight bending of the truth as he stepped from the sand onto the grassy hill leading up to the stables. He came up with a story about how he lost the necklace while running down the beach, and how he failed to find it in the dark no matter how hard he searched. He loathed the idea of lying outright, but there was no other way. Jim had just formulated the right words when he pushed open the stable doors.

  Lacey, MacGuffy, and the Ratts all sat on the dirt floor in a half circle about an old lantern. Jim knew from the looks on their faces that he was in for a rough reception. MacGuffy furiously squinted his one good eye beneath a furrowed brow, tears glistened on Lacey’s cheeks, and not one roguish smile stretched across a Ratt Brother’s face. Jim sighed deeply. He expected his friends to be none too pleased with him for running off the way he did, but he hardly thought it would be this harsh.

  “I’m sorry,” Jim began. “I know I shouldn’t have run off like that. I just needed to get away for a few moments. But I’m back now and there’s no need to worry.”

  “Oh, but we were worried, young Morgan,” a voice replied – but this voice belonged to none of Jim’s friends sitting on the floor. It came from a shadow on the wall. “We are so, so glad, that you have finally returned. In fact, you’re just in time.” Jim’s heart froze in his chest. His arms and legs turned to stone. He knew that voice. It often times echoed in the depths of his worst memories from the night he lost his father.

  From behind the stable, in the farthest corner of the room, the owner of the voice stepped into the lamplight. His black coat and black hat oozed from the shadows. A crimson wig fell in long curls about a pale face and a purple scar ran the length of his left cheek. Jim trembled where he stood. An anguished cry froze in his throat.

  Count Cromier had returned to finish what he started. He had returned to kill Jim Morgan.

  EIGHT

  ount Cromier emerged from the back of the stables, hand on the pommel of his sword. An eager, cruel smile played upon his mouth. It took Jim a moment too long to remember his new weapon against these villains, the enchanted rose thorn hidden in the box in his pocket. Before Jim could even reach for it, a cold, sharp point tapped him beneath the chin. Jim followed the slender blade at his throat to a black-gloved hand, to a red-coated arm, and to a pale face beneath crow black hair. Bartholomew Cromier stood above Jim. His blue eyes quivered with so much hate that Jim’s knees shook beneath him.

  “Do you remember that night on the docks, Jim Morgan? When you ran away and I swore to you this was not over? I always keep my promises.”

  From behind the stable dividers, ten men or more ambled into the light. These were no soldiers with torches and bayonetted muskets as had chased Jim from his home the first time. They were unshaven, swarthy sailors - bandanas, eye patches, and unkempt, wild hair curling about their faces. To a man, each had pistols shoved into cracked leather belts and naked knives at the ready, dried blood from their latest dark deeds still fresh on the blades. Pirates – and of the worst sort, Jim knew.

  “Thought you’d made a joke of me back in London, didn’t you, Morgan?” Bartholomew growled. He gripped his sword so tightly that the blade trembled beneath Jim’s chin, stinging his skin. “Thought you’d seen the last of me when you sailed away that night? Thought I’d fall for all of Dread Steele’s lies and chase him round the globe for the rest of my days while you took your dead father’s place and became Lord of the Manor? Well, welcome home Lord Morgan.”

  “Still yer tongue, ye wretched, raven-headed blackguard!” MacGuffy shouted, twisting and fighting the bonds about his wrists. “Leave these pups be and let an old salt teach ye a lesson!” Bartholomew’s eyes flicked to where MacGuffy knelt. His mouth folded into a cruel sneer and gave a quick nod to a burly pirate from the crew. The pirate, scars like dreadful tally marks running down his arms, stepped forth and viciously kicked MacGuffy in the ribs. He then cracked the old salt on the back of the head with a pistol butt. MacGuffy slumped into the dirt with a weak groan.

  “Still your tongue old man, and perhaps I’ll allow you to keep your remaining eye a little longer!”

  “Leave him alone!” Lacey cried, her eyes wet with tears for poor MacGuffy. But the pirates only laughed, gleeful and loud. Even Bartholomew’s sneer melted into a wolfish grin to match his father’s. Jim balled up his hands into fists. He wanted desperately to say something – or better yet to do something. His hands itched to take hold of the magic rose, but Bartholomew’s cold blade left him nothing to do but tremble in anger. Hot tears welled up in Jim’s eyes.

  “Tears?” Bartholomew mocked, his voice cracking in mirthless indignation. “We’ve taken everything from you, Jim Morgan! Everything! And you can do no more than weep? At least your father had courage. You should be glad he never saw the coward his son became!”

  “Jim’s not a coward!” Lacey cried. “He went into the Pirate Vault of Treasures all by himself and defeated that awful place. Then he beat the King of Thieves and rescued us. He’s the bravest person I’ve ever met! You’re the coward! What did he ever do to you to deserve this?”

  “Oh, but he does deserve this.” Bartholomew’s ice-cold eyes latched onto Jim’s face. His voice burned at the edge of every word. “He has taken more from me than he knows, more than I have ever taken from him. I’ll show you what he deserves. I’ll show you what I’m not afraid to do!” Bartholomew pressed his sword point against Jim’s throat so firmly that it drew a trickle of blood from his neck.

  “Bartholomew!” Count Cromier barked from the shadows, lashing his son with such a brutal stare that it seemed to startle Bartholomew nearly as much as it did Jim and Lacey. The Count stormed across the stables and slapped away his son’s blade as a mother would slap a child’s hand. “Not now, boy. Not yet!”

  Bartholomew’s eyes opened wide at his father’s command. Jim could not tell if it was from hurt or anger, but nevertheless the pale captain eased his hold on his sword. He withdrew the point from Jim’s throat, the tip touched with a red drop of Jim’s blood. Count Cromier ran his gloved hand down the length of his son’s sword until he wiped clean the red spot. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, glancing b
ack and forth between Jim and the blood on his fingertips.

  “Young James - or is it Jim now? I would never have allowed my son to disrespect his heritage by taking such a common moniker. Jim? So low and beneath your class. But alas, you have no father to keep such rules, do you?” Jim stiffened at Cromier’s harsh reminder, but the Count had only just begun.

  “Nevertheless, you did indeed show courage and resourcefulness after our last meeting. You escaped my soldiers. You outwitted a great London thief. You navigated the Vault of Treasures. And…” The Count’s eyes flashed at Bartholomew. “You even managed to escape my son.”

  A quiet rage brewed just behind Bartholomew’s face. Jim could all but see the hate growing within the younger Cromier – and he knew that hate burned for him.

  “I see you forgot to bring soldiers along with you this time,” Jim finally managed, his voice shaking as he tried to steer the conversation from Bartholomew’s failure in London. “Or perhaps they just weren’t up for hunting down children anymore?”

  Cromier laughed, shaking his head so hard that his curls bounced on the sides of his face. “Oh, but you have your father’s haughty cheek, don’t you? It’s as though I’m speaking to Lindsay himself! No, it was less the soldiers’ moral quibbles than the fact that for this particular adventure, we shall be doing some travelling, young Morgan. Oh, the places we’ll go and the things we’ll do!” The Count laughed. “These sort of quests require a different sort of man, Jim. Wouldn’t you agree, Splitbeard?”

  At the sound of his name, another pirate swaggered through the stable doors. He was not a terribly large man, nor overwhelmingly powerful, but one look told Jim this was a true pirate of the seas – and a dangerous one at that. Long years beneath the sun had burned his skin dark as smelted bronze. Two daggers and a pistol leaned ready against his hips, tucked into a dirty sash about his waist. From beneath a blood red bandana about his head fell a single lock of black hair. Black also was the beard from which Splitbeard drew his name. It fell in two braids like a forked dragon’s tongue over his chest, tied off at the ends with jagged shark’s teeth. When the man spoke, a thick accent from somewhere far to the south of England drenched each and every word.

  “You speak the truth, oh magnificent Red Count. Dangerous work requires dangerous men, yes? And the sea is very dangerous. But only Splitbeard the Pirate and the Corsairs of the Sea Spider have faced more than flesh and blood or earth and water and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Where have you been, pirate?” Bartholomew snapped, apparently quite unimpressed with Splitbeard’s boast. “We pay you well for your services and your men, not to wander around like a useless lay-about!” But Splitbeard only smiled and laughed as though the insults were jokes.

  “Alas, I was but surveying these once most beautiful grounds, oh great son of the Red Count. It was furthest from my desires to insult your graces by suggesting you needed my aid corralling such…fearsome quarry as this.” Splitbeard slapped Jim hard on his shoulder and squeezed him tight, drawing a wince on Jim’s face. “I assure you all is well, oh pale Bartholomew.” Splitbeard finally released Jim with a small push and wandered over to his men. He leaned casually against a stable wall as though he were quite bored. “When the time comes, you shall see all that Splitbeard is, and will know that he has been worth every piece of gold he will be paid.”

  “And you shall be paid handsomely,” the Count said. “Once we find what we came for.”

  “What have ye come for, eh, Cromier?” MacGuffy said stiffly. He forced himself back to his knees, still bent over from the kick to his ribs. “Can ye not see that ye’ve left the boy nothin’? He’s as penniless as I am, with naught but the clothes on his back left to him, ye vile sea serpent!”

  “Oh, please – do you really think you can play dumb with me, MacGuffy?” said Cromier. “You know perfectly well why we’re here. And so do you, don’t you, Jim?” Cromier came to stand directly in front of Jim, looking down on him with a knowing smile on his face.

  “You’re still looking for the Treasure of the Ocean.” Jim whispered. His thoughts flashed back to that night so long ago. With Aunt Margarita’s help, Count Cromier had killed Jim’s father for the secret to the Treasure of the Ocean. Bartholomew would have done the same to Jim if he had not escaped on his pony, Destroyer.

  “Right you are! And you are going to help me find it.”

  “I don’t know where it is! I promise you that’s the truth! It disappeared. I saw it for just a moment in the Pirate Vault of Treasures. But then it all disappeared like smoke. It’s gone. Gone forever, just like everything else that was ever my father’s or mine. You’ve won, alright. So just leave us alone.” A lone, burning tear dripped onto Jim’s cheek. It ran fast down to his chin and fell like a raindrop onto the earthen floor between his feet.

  “Oh, Jim, Jim, Jim,” the Count said. His tender voice hardly masked the mocking cruelty beneath it. “You are such a clever, clever boy - as clever as you are courageous, to be sure. So do not play the fool with me.” The Count snapped his fingers and a pirate brought him a stool from one of the stables. Flipping the tails of his black coat behind him, Cromier sat down and looked Jim in the face.

  “As much as I hated your father and as much as I hate him still, he was never a fool. He was a brilliant strategist - a planner of plans and plans within plans. He would have protected this Treasure in a web of schemes to rival the Minotaur’s maze! He would have done everything in his power to ensure it was you, you and only you, young Jim, to whom the Treasure would eventually fall. Now, before he died, he must have told you something, or given you something, yes?”

  On the streets in London Jim had learned to be a very good liar, and he did his best to keep his face stony and still. But all of Jim’s anger and all of his hurt were too much to fight at once, and the Count read Jim’s face like an open book.

  “Yes! He gave you something, I can tell!” The Count rubbed his gloved hands together. He leaned in close to Jim, his eyes wide and greedy. The Count looked him over from head to toe until his eyes came to rest on the square bulge in his jacket pocket. Panic nearly overwhelmed Jim as the Count reached into his pocket and withdrew his father’s box. Cromier held it in his hands, trembling with an uncontainable excitement.

  “The symbol!” The Count cried, stomping his feet up and down like a spoiled child. “The treasure’s symbol is carved onto the lid of this box! How long, how long I’ve waited to see this symbol again.”

  “All this time and all this gold you’ve spent on soldiers and pirates and fighting my father,” Jim said with a thick voice. “Will the treasure even be worth it by the time you find it?”

  Cromier stared at Jim for a long moment, as though not quite sure whether or not Jim was serious. Then the Count erupted in laughter. He threw his head back so that his blood red curls shook like a lion’s mane. Bartholomew and all the pirates in the room joined in the Count’s laughter, shamelessly heaping their derision on Jim – all that was, save for Splitbeard. The pirate captain silently leaned against the stable walls, staring hard at the box in Cromier’s hands.

  “My boy, I already have more gold than I could ever spend! I am a Count after all and they don’t just make anyone a Count, do they?”

  “Then what do you want?” George demanded. “What are you doin’ all this for?” But Cromier never turned around. His eyes glazed over and he stared into some far away time and place in his memories. His gloved hand went to his face and slowly began to trace the purple scar that ran from his left eye to his jaw.

  “Your father never had the chance to tell you what the Treasure of the Ocean really is, did he? You see, all the other gold, gems, treasures, and baubles you saw in the Vault were merely window dressing, decoration lying in heaps around the true Treasure of the Ocean. They are nothing in comparison – dust and shadows. Amongst all that wealth there is but one item, one talisman of ancient magic older than you can possibly imagine.” The Count’s finger stopped halfway down his s
car and pressed hard into his cheek. The lamplight in the stables glowed in the watery pools that became the Count’s eyes until it seemed to Jim that Cromier had gone quite mad. “The one who possesses the Treasure of the Ocean, the one who knows its secret, will gain the only possession on earth more valuable than gold. Tell me, Jim. When you hear the waves crash against the beach, do you fear the ocean?”

  “No,” Jim whispered. But he did fear the madness swimming in the Count’s face.

  “That’s because you are young,” said the Count. “When you’ve seen what the ocean can do when it runs wild - the waves, the wind, the lightning, and the thunder. The ocean is the most frightening thing in all the earth. Imagine all that might under your control. The Treasure is as its name suggests, boy. It is the Power of the Ocean.”

  “Even magic power fades with time and tide, oh magnificent red one,” Splitbeard interrupted from where he leaned on the wall. “But gold is always gold.” The pirate’s words finally brought Cromier back to where he sat in the stables and he blinked his eyes free of the reverie that had gripped them.

  “You shall have as much of it as you like, Splitbeard. Once I unlock the power of the Treasure of the Ocean, I shall have surpassed the need for such trivialities as wealth and riches.” The Count opened the box. The moment his eyes fell on the letter and the vial of moonwater, his scarred face lit up with dark joy. “Here it is,” he said. He withdrew the parchment and the vial and tossed the box down on the floor by Jim’s feet, the rose thorn still resting inside.

  NINE

  f nothing else, Lindsay was brilliant to the end,” Cromier said. He held up the vial, admiring the shimmering blue liquid within. “Moonwater – ingenious! You love gold, Splitbeard? The substance in this one bottle is worth more gold than you and ten men could carry at once.”

  “We are strong, oh glorious one. Our arms can carry much,” Splitbeard replied. In spite of the carefree grin on his face, the pirate leader’s eyes, along with those of his men, remained fixed on the mysterious vial. The Count unfolded the letter and quickly read the words. He snorted with disgust when he reached the end and shook his head with a sad sneer.