out of the pit and drew their weapons, though I saw with some hope that they did so on the far side of it from us.

“Now, mates, let's...” but as the fox raised his arm, apparently planning to lead a charge, crack! crack! crack! Three shots rang out from the woods. George Merry fell headlong into the pit, and Star went down clutching his leg. At the same moment, shouts began to sound all around us. The other three pirates took off running as fast as their feet would go, more shots firing as trees splintered and dirt exploded around them.

“After them, lads!” cried a welcome voice. I could mistake that deep voice for no one else: the Squire!

“Forwaaarrrd!” cried the doctor in his grating Russian accent. He, the captain, and two other sailors charged after the pirates, who quickly disappeared into the trees. My own shipmates returned to us, and Steele at once set about trying to butter them up.

“Ah, gents,” he said. “Looks like you showed up just in the nick for Hawkins and me. Don't think I could have held the pirates off with this here pist-” he stopped suddenly and looked down. Every weapon, right down to the pistol he'd had in his hand, had been stripped off without his notice, and lo and behold! in the bedlam of gunshots that had gone on before, the rope between us had been cut clean through.

“You wouldn't be looking for these, would you, Captain Silver?” asked a taunting voice behind him.

He and I spun around to see a grinning sea-dog behind us twirling the pistol on his right index finger and clutching all the other weapons with his left arm.

“Ben Gunn!” we both cried.

“Aye, it's me alright. I take it you two missed me, though it's been a sight longer since you've seen or thought of old Ben, hasn't it?” He caught the pistol by the grip and glared at Steele.

The buccaneer laughed sourly. “To think of you,” he chuckled. “I never knew ye had it in ye. You would have made a good pirate, shiver me timbers.”

“Aye, that I would,” Ben agreed. “But a better sailor. I'm with Captain Orde, now.”

Steele jerked as the squire seized his coat from behind. “And you, Long John Steele, are under arrest.”

The pirate chieftain stiffened briefly, then sagged. “Aye, suppose I am,” he confessed. “I did my bit, now I've got to pay.”

I almost felt sorry for him.

“Right,” declared the squire. “Now, let's be off for a bit of a victory celebration, shall we?”

“Wait,” I asked, “Where are the others? Jenna, Muk, Luk, and the captain?”

“The captain is vell,” Doctor Boris reported, “But I had to insist he remain somevhere safe until the fighting vas over. His arm must not be moved. And the others I sent around the coast to take care of the pirates' boats. Ve should go to meet them now.”

As we set off through the woods for the rendezvous point, the doctor fell to the rear with me and I felt him slip something into my dangling paw. I looked at it. Jenna's bandanna!

“Ben found it vhile he vas following you,” he whispered. With a wink, he added, “I do not think it vould go vell if Miss Jenna knew you lost it.

“Ben was following me?” I asked. And so the whole story was explained to me, rather jumbled at first. And that half-crazed sailor Ben was the hero of it from start to finish.

To begin with, Ben had never been a willing member of Flint's crew. He had been captured, and given the choice to either serve with Flint or die. He had agreed, a choice he often regretted, and after some years (during which Flint had buried his hoard on the island) he had jumped ship and would have drowned if not for some dolphins that swam him to foreign shores. Peniless, he signed on for work on a merchant vessel bound for his home country. But while passing the island, he told them Flint's treasure was buried there. They found nothing, and after six days they marooned him with a spade, a pickaxe, a musket and some shot, and told him he could hunt for the treasure the rest of his life. It was he who had found the skeleton, then the gold, and then on many laborious trips he had carted it back to his cave.

Knowing this, he had met up with the honest crew on their way away from the fort the day after I disappeared. He told them the map was useless, and so when some of the pirates chased them against their treaty, the squire dropped the map. Steele had taken the bait and called his crew off, giving them a chance to escape. Once they were settled in, Ben had left them safe in his cave with stocks of fruit he had dried and meat he had salted himself, and doubled back to spy on the pirates. His discovery that I had been captured put a hole in their plans to let the pirates find the pit and then kill each other with their squabbles, so the following day, they had set out into two teams. Jenna, Muk, and Luk had been sent around by the coast with ropes and a pickaxe to steal back the pirates' boats if they could and sink them if they couldn't. Ben had brought the rest to the pit to wait in ambush, and then sneaked up on the pirates and me to keep track of our progress. Sure enough, it was he who had harassed them with the ghostly voice, playing their superstitions like a musician.

“So if we hadn't caught the Hawkins pup, you would have just let them run me through, eh?” asked Steele almost cheerfully.

“Without a pang,” agreed the squire.

I gave Steele a doubtful look. His calm attitude was just a little too relaxed, and something told me he had already devised some kind of backup scheme.

It didn't take us long to reach where Jenna and the others were. Several boats sat on shore, torn or broken by the polar bears' strength or stoved in with a pickaxe that must have been Jenna's. The saboteurs sat out on the water a ways, bobbing on one boat while two others trawled out behind them on lines. As soon as they saw us, they let out a cry of excitement and began rowing toward us. They fairly lunged out of the boat as they hit the sand, and before I could so much as cry “Help,” Muk and Luk were subjecting me to the classic polar bear welcome, complete with bone-cracking hugs and embarrassing licks all over the face. After the doctor had chased them off of me and they promptly turned on him, Jenna came up and gave me a somewhat shy (and much to my relief, far more gentle) hug. “Balto, what were you thinking?” she asked.

The stupidity I'd been feeling since I stood at the top of the Aurora's mast came over me all over again. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I wanted to go find Ben, and then I thought if I stole the ship from the pirates we could all have a better chance to escape. I shouldn't have done it, I know.”

“Stow the apologies,” Ben cut in. “You did a marvelous job getting that schooner back, and none's the worse for the wear 'cept the pirates, 'specially this one here,” he added, gesturing to Steele with a musket. Now, let's make back for the cave, eh?”

We all piled into the boats. Steele, hands bound and with the squire and another sailor to keep an eye on him, went in one. Muk and Luk rode with the other sailor in the second boat, and Ben rode with Jenna and me in the last, saying that after so many years with bristly old sailors or no sailors at all, he wanted some younger sailing companions for a change of pace. The doctor chose to follow us via the water, saying that after an ordeal like that ambush, he needed a nice cool swim.

It was smooth sailing the entire way to North Point, where we beached the boats at high tide as I had the ship. Ben led us aon a short, easy walk through the woods to a place where another level of the plateau came up like a lean-to, forming a rock wall about twenty feet in height. In the rock wall was a jagged opening with smoke drifting out at the top.

I had been prepared by Ben's story, or so I thought. But nothing in the world could have prepared me for the spectacle within. The cave had rugged walls about twenty feet apart going thirty feet back, and the ceiling was roughly fifteen feet. Chests and crates sat around stacked as high as my head, along with bags so old that many had rotted and split, spilling gold and silver coins and mingled gems into piles big enough for a dog to lie on. A crackling fire burned in the middle of the cave, casting dancing orange light upon the heaps of treasure and the granite walls. And there on a bed of heather by the flames lay none other than Captain Orde.

“Captain!” I barked with delight.

He looked up and smiled, propping himself on his good arm. “Master Hawkins!” he called out, his crisp tone and formal British a sound for sore ears. “How good to see you again! None the worse for the wear, I take it?”

“None, sir,” I replied, rapidly approaching. “It takes more than being kidnapped by pirates to finish me off.”

He laughed. “Perhaps you should have told us that before you went gallavanting off like some fool hero.”

I hung my head at this. “I'm very sorry,” I said truthfully.

I felt an elbow in my ribs and heard the squire at my side. “He just called you a hero,” he said in what passed for a whisper with his deep voice.

“Quite so,” the captain replied. “A reckless hero, but then the two often go together. As it is, no harm done. You've