sailed together before. Except for this lad here and the other one who came aboard at the port, they’re nearly all already on a nickname basis.”

“Several members recommended friends to join the crew,” countered the squire, clearly displeased at the criticism. “Is that your complaint?”

“Only the first.” Captain Orde cleared his throat. “You hired me under sealed orders to sail wherever you asked without question. I still don’t know where this ship is heading. But all the rest of the crew seems to know perfectly well. I don’t consider that very reasonable, do you?”

Muk and Luk stared at each other, then looked at me. I looked at the doctor and the squire. They looked at each other. “No,” admitted the squire.

“Vhere do they say ve are headed?” asked Boris.

“For treasure,” answered the captain.

The effect was instantaneous. “How could they know that?” cried Muk, voicing all our thoughts.

I looked at the squire, and I wasn’t alone. The Saint Bernard backed away. “I… I might have said a word or two…” he admitted.

“Perfect,” I muttered.

“Alright,” scowled Doctor Boris. “Captain, this is true. Ve are searching for treasure, the treasure of Captain Flint.”

Togo put a hand over his face. “This is not a blessed thing.”

“Indeed.” Orde’s expression was grim. “But now the damage is done, so we’d best take steps to minimize the risk.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Squire Trelawney.

“Well, to begin with, I assume you have a map.”

I nodded and took the oilcloth package out of my boot, where I had tucked it for safekeeping. “Here.”

“Very well,” said the captain, taking it from my paw. He tapped it in one paw like a constable with a club. “We shall keep it safely locked away here in the cabin. I’ll lock it away after you’ve left so no one risks dropping any clues.” Here he gave a serious look at the squire, who shifted uncomfortably.

“We’d better do something about the weapons too,” added Togo.

“Quite correct,” agreed Orde. He strode to a door by the cabinets and rapped on it. “I’ve inspected the ship, and there’s a private hold, probably a hiding place in case of pirate attacks, which can only be accessed from here. If you’ll have my advice on this, remove the weapons and munitions from the main hold and put them in there where we can control them. Perhaps we can’t stop them from starting a mutiny, but we can be prepared to stop them with less trouble if they do.”

“You expect them to rebel?” asked the squire.

“No, but I want to prepare for it. If I expected them to mutiny, I would resign my commission and ask that you find another captain,” Orde replied.

We exchanged a look. “We’d better do as you say, I suppose,” said the squire.

Togo nodded. “We’d better have those we can trust to do it,” he advised. “Might I suggest we keep the task to ourselves?”

Captain Orde nodded his approval. “Excellent suggestion.” He sized up each of us in turn. “You two, I suppose, haven’t done a great deal of heavy labor in your lives,” he noted, pointing to the squire and the doctor. “But I expect between the two of you, you ought to be able to do your bit. Balto, have you much experience?”

“I’ve carried trunks and bags before at my mother’s inn,” I replied.

“Good. You should be quite helpful. And that other lad who signed on at the docks…”

“James,” supplied Mr. Togo.

“Yes, James. It’s deucedly hard to tell how strong he is what with those baggy clothes he wears, but we ought to be able to trust him at the very least. And eight of us ought to be able to move the guns and ammunition from the hold in about half an hour.”

Orde’s plan took a little longer than he predicted. The crates of guns and swords were heavy, and as he had anticipated neither the squire nor the doctor were very helpful. He and Mr. Togo, however, put in more than their share of the work, laboring as if they were part of the crew.

As for me, I found it difficult to maneuver the heavy load. I was helped by James, although he apparently wasn’t that strong either.  He was one of the oddest dogs I’d ever met. To start off with, the captain had been putting it mildly when he said his clothes were baggy. They would have probably been big on a grown man, much less on someone who was slightly smaller than even me. And he always wore a red cloth tied around his head and covering his ears, along with a patch over his right eye. His left eye was surrounded by black fur as if to match the one covered up. As for his odor, I didn’t know what to make of that. It vaguely reminded me of the time Mother had come out of the kitchen after supervising some chimney sweeps – a strange mix dog fur and soot. There was something just slightly off about the dog fur, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was almost as if he had two completely different scents.

I tried to make conversation with him as we struggled to haul some small kegs of gunpowder up the stairs. “So,” I grunted, “Ever done this kind of thing before?” I was working hard to keep my balance with two of the barrels, each about the size of two buckets, under my arms.

He shook his head, wobbling as he carried one against his chest with both arms. “No,” he admitted, almost toppling as the ship lurched. “Have you?”

“I have,” I told him just as the ship shifted again and knocked me flat on my face. “Just not on a ship,” I added ruefully as I struggled to my feet. “But there's always a first time.”

The good news was, moving the weapons proved to be little trouble. The bad news was, everything else was a lot of trouble. I used to think work at the inn was tough, but it was nothing compared to being a cabin boy. When I was below decks, I worked in the kitchen scouring pots and pans or serving food to rowdy sailors. Up on deck, Orde had me scrub the deck until it was “clean enough to eat off of,” or work with the sailors when the sails had to be adjusted. This was not what I had in mind when I dreamed of adventure on the high seas.

But it wasn't all bad. Orde was firm, but not unfair. While some of the other sailors seemed derisive of me for my age and breeding, he didn't look down on me for either. I noticed he didn't work me (or James, I see now) as hard as the others on board, although I was kept busy enough to feel soreness in my muscles at the end of each day, and an increasing hardness in them at the beginning. Being a sailor was turning me into a dog stronger than most my age. In the kitchen, Silver was as hard a boss as Orde. But he kept a huge barrel, so big I could have happily used it for a kennel, full of apples, and he let everyone eat from it as often as they wanted.

Then one day, while I was scrubbing the deck, something happened that would change the whole voyage, and my whole life. I was on my hands and knees with a coarse brush, trying to make the deck “clean enough to eat off of,” when I became aware of the captain's boots right in front of me.

“Balto,” he greeted.

I stood up and pushed my hands against my back. “Yes, Captain?”

He eyed the deck I’d been scrubbing. “You’ve done enough here. Why don’t you go relieve James of his watch? He’s been on double-shifts since Nikki got scurvy.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.” I ran to put the mop and bucket away, then hurried to the rigging. I had always wanted to climb up into the crow’s nest. Lookout seemed like the best job on the ship. Well, maybe next to being captain. I could see James watching the sea through a telescope, his expansive shirt billowing in the wind like an extra sail on the mast. He was looking out to sea in my direction, but it seemed I was literally beneath his notice.

Grinning to myself, I decided to have a little fun with this mystery sailor. I jumped from the rigging to the crossbar of the mast and crawled along it until I reached some rigging on the other side. I grabbed onto that and resumed climbing, coming up to the nest behind James. He was still staring off into the distance, oblivious to my arrival. Reaching out a paw, I grabbed his bandanna and yanked it free from his head. “Avast!” I yelled in my best pirate voice. “We’re taking the ship!”

My pirate voice was pretty bad, I have to admit, but James gasped and spun around as if Flint himself were attacking. I probably looked just as surprised when I saw what was under that cloth.

To be continued.

Don't you just hate that?

Balto, Aniu, Steele, Kaltag, Boris, Muk, Luk, Doc (as Squire Trelawney) © Universal Studios

Captain Orde © Kelev