“It was supposed to be a dream cruise,” Charlie began. “My parents had always wanted to go to the Caribbean – especially my dad. You remember how he loves everything about pirates, HH? I think he’s watched all the Pirates of the Caribbean films about a hundred times. Then this guy who owns his own yacht offered to take us all on a trip around the Caribbean and he was pretty psyched. Started planning it right away.”
“Who was the guy with the boat?” asked Henry.
“Nathan Trueblood,” Charlie replied. “My dad met him though business and they were mates in no time. He would come here and they’d hang out for hours, looking at charts and talking about seventeenth-century pirates. To be honest, I didn’t like him much. One of those people who ruffle your hair and call you ‘old chap’.”
“So when did you leave on the cruise?” asked Henry.
“Last June,” replied Charlie. “We flew to the US, to Florida where Nathan’s yacht was moored at Key West. Then we headed down towards the Bahamas.”
I wondered when he was going to get to the point of the story, but decided not to say anything and took another bite of my chocolate bar.
“When we got there everything was great. The boat was fantastic. Talk about luxurious! The weather was perfect – the sun shone all day every day and the sky and sea just seemed to get bluer. My dad wanted to stop at as many of the major pirate landmarks as possible, like Port Royal and Nassau. Port Royal was a bit of a disappointment. There was an earthquake there in—”
“1692,” put in Henry. (I wasn’t surprised.) “It destroyed the place and it was no longer a pirate haven. Most of them moved off to Tortuga, further along the US coast.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie quickly, apparently just as keen as me to avoid HH launching into a lecture. “Anyway, Dad got into a bit of an argument with some bloke he met on the docks.
Apparently they disagreed about some local legend,” he added vaguely.
“Any idea what the legend was?” Henry asked.
Charlie shook his head. “Something to do with treasure, I think, but I can’t remember whose.”
“Never mind,” said Henry. “Go on.”
“Well, we left Port Royal on the fifth of July, heading for Nassau in the Bahamas. We’d been at sea for about a day and dusk was falling. We dropped anchor and my parents sat on the deck ‘taking the night air’, as my mum calls it. I was up on the bridge asking Captain Trueblood questions about the engines – that’s what Nathan said we should call him when we were on board – when I glanced out of the window. There was a lot of mist over the water, but I was sure that I saw it!”
“What?” said Henry and I in unison.
“The ship,” said Charlie.
“What ship?” There we were again, a regular duo.
“The ghost ship.”
“Ghost ship?” said Henry, his eyes gleaming. “The one you mentioned in your letter?”
Charlie nodded. “I told Captain Trueblood I’d spotted something – without telling him what, in case he thought I was crazy. But he looked and said he couldn’t see anything. So I went out on deck with a pair of binoculars.”
Charlie stared uneasily at us and shifted on the bed. He chewed his lip, not speaking for several seconds. Then he went on with his story.
“OK. This is going to sound mad but… well, when I looked through the binoculars I couldn’t see anything at all. Just mist floating on the sea. But when I looked without them I could definitely see a ship.”
“What did it look like?” demanded Henry, leaning forward eagerly.
“There were masts and sails and stuff like that – it was like a really old-fashioned ship, the kind they have in pirate films. It was even flying a flag with a skull and crossbones! I thought it must be one of those cheesy replica ships they use for cruises. You know, ‘Be a Pirate and Sail the Seven Seas’ – that kind of thing. Then I noticed the ship seemed to have a greenish glow around it, and it was full of holes, as if it had been hit by loads of cannonballs, although somehow they hadn’t sunk it.”
Charlie stared at us with big round eyes. “The third thing I noticed was that it was headed straight for us… and it was moving far too quickly for an ordinary sailing ship…”
“Stop there for a minute,” Henry said. “Let’s just recap. You say that through the binoculars there was no ship visible, yet when you looked with your naked eyes you could see it and it was glowing and had holes?”
Charlie nodded and I noticed his hands were trembling in his lap. I thought he looked about as scared as I’d ever seen anyone look. I ate the last mouthful of my chocolate as Henry asked: “OK. So what happened next?”
“That’s the worst part,” said Charlie. “I don’t know!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all I can remember is that the ship got bigger and bigger, and that the nearer it got the weirder and nastier it looked. I tried to shout a warning to Captain Trueblood and my parents, but I couldn’t speak. I thought I could see… people…weird, ghostly people… on deck. Then this kind of… misty tentacle thing reached out for me. It seemed to come from the ghost ship, and I wanted to dodge it. But I was rooted to the spot and it curled round me, all cold and clammy, and I suddenly felt sick. Then I must have passed out or something.”
Charlie stared at us miserably. Neither Henry nor I said anything. My mind was filled with images of the ghostly ship with its mystical crew and tentacles of mist. Henry was staring into the distance. I guessed he was thinking deeply the way only Henry can.
Eventually he looked right at Charlie and said: “What happened when you woke up?”
Charlie opened and closed his mouth a few times, then took a deep breath and carried on.
“I still felt a bit funny – dizzy, I guess – but I staggered back to the cabin. Captain Trueblood was slumped over the wheel, out cold. I could see he was still breathing, so I went to find my parents…” Charlie gulped.
“But they weren’t there. I searched every centimetre of the ship – I couldn’t find any sign of them. It was like they’d never been there.”
Charlie’s eyes brimmed with tears and he blew his nose on a handkerchief. Henry kept quiet for once and waited patiently, fiddling with a loose button on his shirt. I wished I had another chocolate bar hidden away.
Charlie blinked a few times and continued. “I managed to raise Captain Trueblood and he got the rest of the crew moving. We all searched the Spinnaker from end to end. There was no sign of my parents. Not a trace.”
Charlie jumped up and started pacing around the room. Henry was silent but I could tell he was thinking.
“That was almost six months ago,” said Charlie finally. “No one has seen or heard anything from them since. My cousin Jack came to stay while stuff was being sorted out. He says he’s my legal guardian now and I should stop expecting to hear from my parents. Everyone thinks they were washed overboard by some kind of freak wave and that they’re gone forever. No one believes me about the ghost ship. No one! But I don’t believe them!”
I jumped at Charlie’s sudden, loud shout – even Henry flinched.
“I know I saw that weird ship,” Charlie kept on, “and I’m sure it has something to do with their disappearance.”
He stopped and I realised he was looking at my raised eyebrows – I was making it much too obvious that I found all this very hard to believe.
Charlie glared at me and unbuttoned the top of his shirt, baring his left shoulder. “If you don’t believe me, what’s this then?” he demanded.
A large raised red welt cut across his shoulder – the kind of mark you might get if an octopus grabbed you. (I’d seen something like it on TV.)
Henry didn’t look too closely at the welt but patted Charlie on his other shoulder in a business-like kind of way. “I think you’re right, old chap.”
Charlie’s face lit up. “You believe me? I knew if anyone would it would be you, HH. So will you help?”
I’d already realised this was about to become our next adventure. On the face of it, Charlie’s story made no sense at all, unless you believed in ghosts, which I for one did not – not then, anyway. And what about that weird tentacle thing he’d mentioned? Was there some kind of monster on the ghostly ship – assuming the ship existed at all? I was already thinking about how nasty all that could turn out to be, and how dangerous, but I could see that Charlie was desperate, and Henry had that determined look that said he was about to go hunting for something, and that it was probably going to involve pirates, ghostly or not. And quite possibly treasure as well.
Henry stood up and walked over to the photo of the Spinnaker.
“Where’s the yacht now?” he asked.
“I think Mr Trueblood said he was going to dock her in the harbour at Nassau.”
“Then we need to go down there and take a look around,” said Henry.
Charlie jumped up from his bed. “Can I come?” he asked, his eyes alight.
“Well, I guess you’ll have to ask Jack,” Henry said.
Charlie’s face fell. “He’ll never say yes. He thinks I have ‘an overactive imagination’– that I made up what I saw because I was so upset. But I didn’t, I swear!”
“We believe you, don’t we, Dolf?” said Henry.
I nodded. Privately I wasn’t at all sure, but it was clear that Charlie Stevens needed to hear that we believed his story. Six months is a long time to keep faith. Without friends it must have been almost impossible.
Henry stood up and flicked back his floppy hair. “We’ll find your parents, Charlie,” he said seriously.
Charlie managed a small smile. “Thank you. You’re my last hope.”
“Let’s go and talk to Cousin Jack,” Henry said, winking at me. “You stay here, Charlie, and I’ll see if I can persuade him to let you come along.”
