Max leaned out of the submarine hatch and gasped in awe. The cave looked like a pirate’s treasure chest. Its limestone walls were as white as pearl, and rays of sunlight as bright as gold doubloons played on the emerald water. Flashes of topaz sky were visible through holes high up in the cave roof. Fish glinted like gemstones and were gone. At the far end, a pebble beach sparkled like diamonds.
Then he saw it.
In a corner of the cave, marooned high up on the treacherous rocks by a long-ago tide, was the wreck of a Spanish galleon.
A bell rang in Max’s brain. He turned to Lucky. “Is that … is that … the … Espada?”
Lucky nodded.
“The Espada?” Lola was confused. “That was Antonio de Landa’s yacht.”
“This is the original Espada,” Max explained. “The one that sailed from Spain with the conquistadors. It sank off Puerto Muerto and was never seen again—until Uncle Ted and Lucky found it in a cave. This cave!”
“So, you’ve been here before?” Lola asked Lucky. “You know the way out?”
“I sure do.”
“We’re safe?” Lola breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Lucky. “We should hide down here for a while and give whoever was aboard that coast guard vessel time to lose interest.”
“I still can’t believe they fired on us,” said Lola.
“Maybe they were trying to stop me leaving San Xavier,” suggested Max.
“The real coast guard would never open fire without warning,” said Lucky.
“So, who was it?” asked Lola.
“Who knows?” replied Lucky. “Maybe pirates. I’d report it, but with one passenger who’s on the lam, one whose house has been destroyed by mythical Maya monsters, and one who’s a talking howler monkey, I think I’d just as soon lie low. Will you help me tie up, Lord 6-Dog?” The monkey king looked horrified. “Me? Tie up? I have no nautical skills. I left those to my navy and trading fleets.”
“It was your monkey skills I was interested in.”
When Lucky had explained his plan, Lord 6-Dog took the rope and climbed onto the roof. Then he took a flying leap and landed on a flat shelf of limestone. For extra strength, he looped the rope around his tail before pulling in the sub.
“If Mother could see me now,” he bragged. “I am king of the fiery pool.”
While Lucky tied the rope securely around a jutting rock, Max and Lola went down to the galley for food. “I found some bananas for you after all your hard work,” said Lola to Lord 6-Dog as they set out the picnic on the rock.
Lord 6-Dog didn’t seem to hear. He was staring at the galleon. “That wreck is my doing,” he whispered. “I cursed that ship.” He stood with his head high in his striped pajamas, like a Maya king in his battle finery, reliving that fateful moment. “It was in the eleventh bak’tun. I had been called back by my people to the city you know as Puerto Muerto. They begged me to avenge the deeds of Diego de Landa, most hated of the Spanish invaders and”—he nodded to Lola—“ancestor of that fool, Antonio.”
“The eleventh bak’tun? During the Spanish conquest?” asked Lola. “So you’d been dead for five hundred years by then?”
Lord 6-Dog waved his monkey hand to dismiss such boring details, then regained his heroic stance. “I stood on the dockside in Puerto Muerto and watched that very ship”—he pointed to the Espada—“being loaded with the riches of my people. Many of the chests were branded with the crest of Diego de Landa. I was consumed with rage. These invaders had already burned our books and destroyed our families. I vowed they would not have the little that was left. So I appeared to the Spanish sea captain and decreed that his accursed cargo would never leave Maya waters.”
Lord 6-Dog hadn’t really thought that one through, reflected Max. It hadn’t been much help to his people to send all their stuff to the bottom of the ocean. But he saw the sadness on the monkey king’s face and decided not to point this out. Instead, he tried to look on the bright side. “And then it sat safely in this cave until my uncle came along and recovered all the treasure.”
“He bought this sub with the proceeds,” added Lucky.
Lord 6-Dog looked like he might explode. “The cargo was not his to sell.”
“Fair’s fair,” Max blurted out. “If Uncle Ted and Lucky hadn’t found this cave, the treasure would have stayed down here forever.”
Lord 6-Dog curled his hairy fingers into fists. “Why must history always repeat itself? If only the cycle could be broken. Once, I cursed that ship to avenge my people. Now I find it broken on the rocks and the heritage of my people has been plundered again.”
“It was my heritage, too,” said Lola softly. “And my father who plundered it.”
“Thou art descended from the Jaguar Kings. We are kin, thou and I. Thou art Maya.”
Lola stuck up her chin. “Half-Maya. I’m also half-Murphy, which means a quarter Spanish and a quarter Irish.”
Lord 6-Dog glared at her. “Then perchance it is time to take sides.”
Lola glared back at him. “I have taken sides. I’m with the good guys.”
There was a moment of tense silence, then Lucky jumped up. “I need to stretch my legs.” He offered his arm to Lola. “Want to walk?”
Max watched them picking their way over the rocks. “Why did you get so angry at Lola?” he asked Lord 6-Dog.
“I fear she is ashamed of her birthright.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I look at this galleon through her eyes and all I see is the story of our people, wrecked on the rocks of history.”
“But that’s not your fault.”
“I wish I could believe that, young lord.”
Max tried to think of a subject to distract Lord 6-Dog. “Will you tell me about your dream? The one that changed your mind about coming with us?”
Lord 6-Dog looked even sadder. “It was from my father, Punak Ha. He told me that my destiny lies across this ocean.”
“Well, that sounds hopeful,” said Max.
“He said that this will be my final journey.”
“Oh. We’re not going to sink, are we?”
“He said that Tzelek awaits me at journey’s end.”
“For your final battle? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“He said I will not beat Tzelek if I fight him.”
“Oh.”
They sat in miserable silence.
“Let’s explore the Espada,” suggested Max. “Maybe we’ll find some Spanish gold.”
“I doubt thine uncle has left us any pickings.”
“You never know.”
Max fetched some flashlights from the sub, then he and Lord 6-Dog climbed over the slippery rocks to where the galleon sat in stately decay. Bits of ship—splintered beams, broken spars, rotted canvas, and rusty nails—lay everywhere. An upended cannon, covered in barnacles and plugged with seaweed, pointed uselessly at the cave roof. But the vessel itself was still more or less intact, as if it had sailed straight out of a history book and into this cave. Only the nylon rope ladder that hung over the side gave any clue that they were not the first to discover it.
Max and Lord 6-Dog climbed up the ladder and onto the deck.
The ship had come to rest at a crazy angle and Max had to walk slowly, with his arms held out like a tightrope walker, to keep his balance.
“Hold on to my tail to steady thyself,” Lord 6-Dog instructed him as they walked over the buckled and broken boards.
In the center of the deck was an open hatch. Max shone his flashlight into the darkness and saw a steep staircase that disappeared into oily black water. Disturbed by the beam of light, something slithered into the water with a splash, leaving ripples on the surface.
“That must be the hold where they found the treasure,” said Max.
Lord 6-Dog peered down. “Naught down there now but rats.”
“Aren’t rats supposed to desert a sinking ship?”
“Rats can survive anywhere. Ask Tzelek.”
Changing the subject quickly, Max said, “Let’s find the captain’s quarters. You go first.”
Using Lord 6-Dog’s tail as a rope, Max inched his way to the stern of the boat and pulled himself up to the quarterdeck, where the Spanish sea captain had once stood.
Max gripped the broken spokes of the ship’s wheel and imagined setting sail for home, full of hope, and treasure, and tales of adventure. Then he imagined the terror of sinking right there in the bay, still within sight of the teeming jungle.
“Do you remember when we went to Spain?” he asked Lord 6-Dog, who was sniffing at the green mossy mold on the woodwork to see if it was edible.
“Of course I do, young lord. A dry and barren place where the cheese stinks like dung beetles. No wonder those barbarian conquistadors sailed far and wide.”
“I don’t think it was the cheese—” began Max, when a noise behind him made him jump. He spun around with the flashlight to see a skull tumble to the floor in the cabin behind them. A small crab climbed guiltily out of an eye socket and scuttled away.
“It is the Spanish sea captain,” said Lord 6-Dog, sounding slightly shaken. “I last saw him on the dock at Puerto Muerto. I cursed him and he laughed at me.”
The open doorway of the cabin was draped in cobwebs like lace curtains. Spiders of all sizes ran for their lives into cracks in the door frame as Max cleared the cobwebs away with the handle of his flashlight. There, inside the cabin, sat the headless skeleton of the long-dead captain.
“He’s not laughing now,” said Max.
The skeleton was posed in a carved wooden chair, elbows on the armrests, hands in his lap. The chair had been nailed to the cabin floor to prevent it rolling on the high seas. Dried seaweed draped the chair back like a cape, and sea snails left silver trails on the captain’s yellowed bones.
“So,” said Lord 6-Dog to the moldering rib cage, “we meet again, thou lily-livered coward.”
“He went down with the ship,” Max pointed out. “That was brave.”
Lord 6-Dog looked with scorn at the skeleton. “Not brave,” he said. “Greedy.”
“Greedy?”
“It seems there was one piece of treasure he would not relinquish even in death.”
Max looked around the cabin. It was completely empty, apart from bits of rotting debris. “I don’t see anything.”
“Look harder. Thine uncle missed the most precious thing of all.”
“He did?” Max looked around again. He didn’t see so much as a rusty spoon.
“There.” Lord 6-Dog pointed at the hands of the skeleton, resting calmly in his lap.
“His bones?” Max was confused.
“Not his bones. The bone that he holds in his hands.”
Now that Max looked more closely, he saw that in among the dusty, cobwebby tangle of yellow finger bones was a larger bone from a leg or an arm. It was browner than the rest and looked much older.
Lord 6-Dog fell to his knees and chanted in Mayan.
“Are you talking to that bone?” Max asked him incredulously.
“I am addressing its owner, Yax Tuun Ah Muuch. Jade Frog to thee. He was the founder of my dynasty.”
“And he owned that bone?”
“It was in his leg.”
“Gross. How do you know it’s his?”
After reciting what sounded like a Maya prayer, Lord 6-Dog delicately picked up the leg-bone and blew off the dust. He held it out reverently, and Max saw that it was covered in faint inscriptions. “It is unmistakable. It was carved after his death.”
“But why would a Spanish sea captain be holding a Maya king’s leg-bone? I mean, of all the things he could have grabbed when he was going down with the ship. Do leg-bones float?”
“This leg-bone is special. Perhaps he hoped it would give him immortality.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“It is the scepter of the Jaguar Kings. It was handed down from king to king through the generations. I had thought it was lost forever. With this, I can beat Tzelek.”
“But what about your dream? I thought your father said—”
“Maybe sometimes, young lord, dreams are just dreams!”
“So what does it do, this scepter?”
Lord 6-Dog’s eyes glittered with triumph. “It changes everything!”