fight,” agreed Kaltag. “Raging, calling for rum, and singing in his last hours. 'Fifteen Men' was the only song for him, and I never liked it since.”

“Ha!” snorted Steele. “He's dead, and he's no ghost, least not by day. Of that you can be certain. Move along, it's gold we're after, not bones.”

“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” screeched Flint.

We did move on, following the line marked by the bones, but no longer did the pirates spread out or chatter. We stayed in a tight group and spoke almost entirely in whispers. The terror of the dead buccaneer had fallen on all their spirits and mine like a collapsed house. I reached into my pocket to rub Jenna's bandanna, hoping to find some comfort in it, and had to struggle to hide my dismay when I found it was gone. It must have fallen out who-knew-where.

I never would have thought they could, but things got worse still after that.

It must have been the dampening of their spirits that prompted the whole crew to stop as soon as we reached the top of the ascent. The plateau we were now on tilted slightly west, giving us a good view of everything in that direction and much to the east, clear out to open sea. Not a sail nor living soul was to be seen.

Steele took some bearings with his compass and grinned. “Three tall trees about in the right line from skeleton Island,” he said. “Spy-Glass shoulder must be that lower point there.” He inhaled deeply and smacked his lips. “I can almost smell that gold right now, but let's eat first.”

The others lacked his enthusiasm. “I don't want anything,” said Star. “It's Flint, that's what it is.”

As if on cue, a ragged voice like a pitted sword blade cut through the solitude, seeming to echo from everywhere at once.

“Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

Every one of those pirates went down like they'd been shot. Even through their fur I could see the blood drain from their faces like juice squeezed from a grape, and their tails went straight between their legs as if to never come out again. Nikki and Kaltag leaped to their feet, looking so terrified they didn't know which way to run. The two foxes clawed at each other and then clung to one another in stark fright, and Star huddled on the ground, hands over his head and every inch of him shaking, chattering something about having been brought up well before he fell in with bad company. Steele sat in bewilderment, unable to rise.

Come to think of it, I wasn't that brave either. I stared around, expecting at any moment to see a face like that of the skeleton right up in mine. I have a feeling if I had gotten a lock on the song I would have torn off in the other direction, leash or no leash, even if the other way was right off the edge of the plateau.

Thankfully, the song stopped in mid-note, as suddenly as if a hand had been clapped over the singer's mouth.

“It's Flint!” cried the brown fox with the bandage.

Steele shook his head and raised himself on his crutch. “Belay that. It's someone skylarking, someone flesh and blood, and ye may lay to that. Can't name the voice, but it must be one o' them lubbers trying to scare us. Look sharp to your weapons and let's be off.”

We did, although now the pirates were even more wary than before. Each had a gun or sword in each hand, and Star had a knife in his teeth, either to look tougher or stop them from chattering. Kaltag and Nikki kept looking this way and that, and the two foxes stayed in the middle of the group.

“Enough!” Steele bellowed. “It's daylight, you clods! Everyone knows ghost don't walk by-”

“Darby McGraw!” It was the voice again, wailing now rather than singing. “Darby McGraw! Darby McGraw! Fetch the rum, Darby!”

The brown fox's eye bugged so far I thought they'd fly right out of his head. “I remember that!” he cried. “Calling me to fetch the rum!”

“Them was his last woids above board,” rumbled Nikki.

By now I was praying fervently inside. Surely a ghost would be stopped from hurting someone innocent. Someone would stop it – God, a guardian angel, I didn't know. But at that moment, I would have clung to anything that might protect me from this spirit.

“That fixes it!” echoed the red fox. “Let's get out of here!”

Steele whirled around, pointing a pistol at the dissident. “Stow yer gab!” he bellowed. “Nobody on the island knew o' the name Darby 'cept us. He used a different name on the ship.” He panted briskly and added, “Shipmates, I'm here for the gold, and nobody's going to stop me from getting it, living or spirit. I never feared Flint in life, and for seven hundred thousand pound that's ahead of us I'll face him dead! When did a gentleman of fortune ever show his stern to that much over a boozy sailor with a blue mug, and him dead at that?”

“B-b-but Steele,” Star stammered, “You shouldn't cross a spirit, especially one like Flint's.”

“Spirit, huh,” snorted Steele. “Lemme ask you something. You ever heard of a spirit that cast a shadow?”

The pirates all looked at each other.

“No.”

“Never.”

“Don't see how it could.”

Steele grinned. “Well, neither have I, but I heard that voice echoing. So if a spirit doesn't cast a shadow, then how do you suppose one could echo?”

It seemed pretty weak to me, but those pirates were a superstitious bunch, and they bought it wholesale.

“Dat makes sensh,” said Nikki. “Yous pretty smart dere, Steele. And y knows, dere's somethin' else. Dat voice sure sounded like Flint, but dere was somethin' off about it. It was more like, uh...”

“By the powers, Ben Gunn!” laughed Steele, clapping Nikki on the back.

“Yeah, yeah, that was it!” echoed Kaltag. “That voice was precisely, exactly, absolutely...”

“It had to be-” Kaltag didn't even let Star finish, just knocked him out again.

“But Benn Gunn's no more alive than Flint,” Darby reasoned. “I saw him jump over myself, and there's not a chance on earth he coulda swam here, nor anywhere else 'cept Davy Jone's Locker.”

“Deh, who cares?” asked Nikki. “He was chicken hearted anyways. Nobody minded him dead or alive.”

“No, no they didn't,” agreed Steele.

I held my tongue, wondering what they would say if they knew who had spiked their crew mates while they slept. It was extraordinary how their faces brightened and their spirits seemed to revive. Soon they were chattering at length with intervals of listening. Then, hearing no more from the trees, they shouldered their tools and headed out.

We soon reached the first of the tall trees Steele had spotted, and by the bearing it proved to be the wrong one. So did the second. The third was the biggest tree I had ever seen; a giant pine towering two hundred feet over a clump of underwood, with a trunk as big as a cottage and a shadow like a mountain's. It was big enough to be noticeable from the sea east or west.

My captors were oblivious to its size, though. All that occupied their minds was that somewhere in its spreading shadow lay seven hundred thousand pounds of gold, along with some precious gems most likely. Their eyes seemed to burn and their steps sprang like a gazelle's. Avery fiber of their souls seemed bound up in the treasure, the lifetime of extravagance before them.

Steele was the worst of them all. He cursed at the flies buzzing around him and jerked on the line so hard I thought he was going to break my neck. I knew now that once he found the treasure, he would slit every honest throat on the island, starting with mine. Just like Captain Flint, that scoundrel who had on this very plateau murdered his six accomplices.

We reached a clearing, and the whole crew broke into a run. But after about ten paces they slowed in disbelief and came to a stop at the edge of a pit littered with broken, rotted boards and lined in places with moss.

It was as clear as anything. The treasure was gone.

The pirates stood there, staring as dumbly as if they had been struck. For Steele, it seemed to pass instantly. His very soul had been bound on this treasure, but now he pulled up short and changed his plan before the others had enough time to realize the disappointment.

“Balto,” he whispered, slipping me a double-barreled pistol, “Take that, and be ready for trouble.”

There was no time for anything else to be said. The buccaneers, full of oaths and curses, began leaping into the pit to dig with their fingers, tossing aside the boards in their haste for some trace of the gold.

George found a piece and held it up with a string of words my mother would have cracked his skull for. The coin passed from hand to hand as Steele edged himself and me northwards, to what seemed a more defensible position. “Two guineas!” the fox shouted up at Steele. “There's your seven hundred thou, you wooden-headed fool!” He turned to his crew mates. “He knew, he must have known, all along!”

“Still angling for captain, are you?” grumbled Steele. “You're persistent. I hate persistent.”

But now the crew seemed entirely in George's favor. They all climbed out of the pit and