Eduardo Leones wasn’t the bravest pirate on Capitán Aliento de Perro’s crew.

But he was definitely the smartest.

Because he was the only one not on the sinking ship.

Cannons boomed. Masts snapped. The sky was on fire.

And Eduardo was safe in a bobbing rowboat well below the fray.

“Yarr,” cried Aliento de Perro, leaning over the railing and working a line to lower a heavy iron chest. “Row upriver, ye scurvy knave. Find a good hiding place for me booty. Then hurry back to tell me where it be, or you’ll end up like your cowardly father!”

“Sí, sí, Capitán,” the clever Eduardo shouted back—even though he planned to obey only the first half of that order.

Because the treasure wasn’t the captain’s.

Aliento de Perro had stolen it from Eduardo’s father!

El Perro Apestoso (the Stinky Dog), the ship that the blustering pirate Aliento de Perro (“Dog Breath”) now commanded, had been seized in an ugly mutiny from Eduardo’s father, the brave buccaneer Angel Vengador Leones. After forcing the ship’s captain to walk the plank, Aliento de Perro had kept young Eduardo alive only so he could torment the boy.

Now the ship that had plundered and pillaged up and down the east coast of the American colonies was sinking under the relentless attack of a British man-o’-war that had chased it upriver. As a precaution, Dog Breath (who never brushed his teeth) had ordered his cabin boy to haul the ship’s treasure to a less treacherous location.

Eduardo grinned as he lashed the heavy chest to the deck of his small vessel.

And then he started rowing. Hard.

North.

The listing pirate ship turned about to block the man-o’-war’s pursuit with a broadside of cannon blasts. The British ship roared back with mast-shattering, wood-splintering, sail-searing shots of its own.

The Stinky Dog might not be afloat when young Eduardo found a secure spot to hide his captain’s treasure.

Which was fine by Eduardo.

He had cleverly tricked Aliento de Perro into thinking he was too terrified to ever plot revenge. But he would avenge his father’s death.

All that treasure would become his.

And his children’s.

And his children’s children’s.

And his children’s children’s children’s.

And his children’s children’s children’s children’s.

If only they would prove bold and clever enough to find it.