Balto Treasure Island 

 Please note: This story is based on a classic children's book, and is written with a young audience in mind. Readers should be advised, however, it does have violence and some alchohol content.

Footnotes marked with *s can be found at the end of the story to explain key points about the setting and actions of characters.

My name is Balto. Balto Hawkins. I grew up at the Admiral Benbow Inn, which was owned by my mother. She had her paws pretty full raising me without the help of my father, who had gone away when I was a pup about three months old, and sometimes strangers distrusted her for being a wolf. But she managed to run the inn smoothly and neatly enough to draw, if not a constant flow of customers, enough to provide us with the income we needed to get by.

I spent most of my time working at the inn doing various chores, but when I had free time I would go down to the harbor and look at ships. I liked to think that maybe, just maybe I might bump into my father, whom my mother said had gone away on a winter voyage because the inn was seriously in debt. He had been hoping to come back in a few months with enough money to pay off our loans, but no one had seen him since. By the time I was thirteen, my trips to the harbor were more out of an interest in ships than any hope of finding him, but I never stopped thinking in the back of my mind that maybe someday he would get off one of those ships and come home. Would he recognize me? Would I even remember him? I only knew him by his painting on the wall and by what Mother said about him, which wasn’t much.

One day as I was cleaning tables in the dining room, a dog came in dragging a sea chest in a hand cart and carrying the usual waft of tar, tobacco, sea salt, and rum. He had fur as brown as the leather vest he wore, a tall strong figure, and a somewhat generous waist. I noticed a saber cut on his left cheek and briefly wondered how it had gotten there. He looked around and then sang in a high, cracked voice,

“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,

Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!”

He looked straight at me and called roughly for a glass of rum. Before I could fetch it for him, he snatched one from another guest and gulped it down*. I quickly ran to the tap and filled two mugs- one to replace the guest’s, the other to keep handy in case the greedy newcomer wanted seconds. I was used to unruly sailors coming in, but mother always said to treat them with courtesy as long as they didn’t break anything. I suspect this was because she had one of those looks that could make all but the rowdiest poltroons sober up at least a little. And if that didn’t work, there was the gun she kept behind the counter (never loaded, but they never knew).

I ran back to the door and replaced the guest’s drink with a quiet apology. The old sailor finished his drink and looked down at me. “This be a handy cove,” he said with a pleasant growl in his voice. “Much company, mate?”

I shook my head. “Hardly any at the moment, sir,” I replied.

He laughed. “Well then, this be just the place I need!” He strode over to the counter as I followed. “I be a plain man,” he said as he walked. “Bacon, eggs, and rum is what I want, and that cliff fer watchin’ ships.”

“That should be quite easy, sir,” I replied, running the empty rooms through my head. “I think we have a nice room looking right in that direction.”

He beamed. “Right perfect,” he growled. “But enough o’ this ‘sir’ talk. Call me captain.”

“Aye, captain,” I agreed.

Mother came in from the kitchen wiping her paws on her apron. “Balto,” she said in that calm voice of hers, “I see we have a guest.”

“Yes, mother,” I nodded.

“Yer boy here was jus’ telling me you’ve a room lookin’ out to sea.”

Mother checked the list she always kept on the counter. “Yes we do,” she confirmed.

“I’ll take it,” growled the captain firmly. He reached into his pocket and slapped down three or four gold pieces. “Just tell me when that runs out!” he laughed.

While Mother checked the coins with her thumbnail to make sure they were real gold**, I hurried to show the captain his room and where he could put his sea chest. It was one of my favorite rooms, a front one with a big window looking out over the cliffs and the vast blue ocean.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver piece. “Would ye like this, lad?” he asked.

My eyes grew wide. “Yes, very much, captain.” A silver piece was more than I usually made in two months! 

He laughed. “Well, you can have it then! Jes’ keep a sharp eye out for…” he stopped and his expression fell as if he were about to utter the name of the Devil himself. “… fer a sailor with one leg,” he finished. “Yeh do that, lad, and I’ll give you a silver fourpenny the first of every month, jes’ like clockwork.”

One leg? I thought. Should be easy enough to spot. “Gladly, sir!” I agreed eagerly. “I mean captain.” My tail was slapping the air like a windmill in a storm.

He flipped me the coin. “There you are. Now, if you sees such a dog, be sure and tell me straightaway, clear?”

I nodded as I caught the coin. “Aye-aye, captain!” And I left to go show Mother what he had given me.

“A silver fourpenny every month?” she asked when she saw it.

“Yes,” I confirmed handing her the coin so she could check it herself.

She tested the coin with her thumbnail, then gave it back and put a paw to her chin. “This sailor must be either a good friend or a deadly foe,” she observed. “And whichever it is, it could be trouble for us if he turns up.”

I remembered the look on the captain’s face. “Probably enemies,” I said. “He looked like he was talking about Blackbeard.”

Mother nodded. “Well, if you see the dog, be sure to tell the captain, and me.”

Months passed, and the captain paid me every month as promised. He stayed on at the inn as the bright summer changed to a blistering winter. But while the seasons changed, his habits never did. Every day, as rhythmically as the sun and the tide, he went out to the cliff with a brass spyglass to watch for ships. In the evenings he would sit in the dining room drinking rum and telling all sorts of “fish stories,” as my mother called them- tales at once wonderful and terrible, full of pirates and hanging and buried treasures vast enough to fill a room from floor to ceiling. Many of them included deadly pirates, cursed gold, ghosts, and monsters of the sea. My mother worried that he would drive off the other customers with these tales, and some guests certainly did tend to leave when he got too rowdy and made everyone join him in various ship songs, chiefly the one about the fifteen men. But at the same time, a number of guests were drawn to his wild tales, and many people came night after night to hear them. I think it must have been the business from these customers that lessened Mother’s persistence in getting payment, since the gold pieces had run out long ago.

As for myself, while I wasn’t unhappy about the extra business, I can’t say I liked his stories as much. At first I enjoyed listening to them while I cleaned tables. But when I tried to sleep on those nights, I had nightmares like I’d never imagined a dog could have. I dreamed of massive squids and serpents and monsters that looked like lobsters, but were so big they could crush an entire ship in a single claw. I dreamed about storms with waves as high as mountains, and ghosts seeking vengeance on those who had killed them. But my worst nightmares were about the one thing even the captain, or Billy Bones as I had come to know him, feared – the seafaring dog with one leg.

I remember one particular dream about him. In it, I opened the door to throw out a bucket of water I had used to scrub the floor. As I did, I heard a great booming sound coming from the bridge. I looked and saw a sight that made every hair on my body stand up and salute. Leaping toward me was a giant beast like a werewolf, dressed in ragged sailor's clothes. It was twenty feet tall and had claws as long as its fingers, with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth each as big as my arm. It was dressed like a sailor, and it had one massive leg beneath the middle of its body, which it used to travel in massive leaps and bounds. It was coming toward me with fire in its eyes. My immediate reaction was to try to get inside, but the door had shut behind me and wouldn't open. I tried to run down the street, but the sailor kept getting closer, closer, its claws stretching out toward me. I have thanked God a hundred times over that I woke at that moment, or I might not have woken at all.

One day, a guest of ours took sick and my mother called for Doctor Boris Livesey, an old Russian goose with a firm demeanor which he attributed to years of tough work. Doctor Livesey came late one afternoon to see his patient, and stayed afterwards to eat dinner at the inn. With him were two young polar bears, Muk and Luk, whom he referred to as his interns. I think this was more a term