The Mystery of the Ghostly Galeon

mace?” Di asked.
    “It’s a long stick with a spiked iron ball on the end of it,” Brian told her.
    Di shuddered.
    “ ‘Faint heart ne’er did a rich man make,’ Mart continued, “ ‘but gold is there for you to take. If you can find the pirate’s lair, then you have won a treasure rare.’ ” He looked at the circle of faces around him. “Now all we have to do is find the cave. Right, Clarence?”
    “You’re always right, Mart,” the gruff voice answered. “In fact, with your omniscient and magnificent intellect, how could you ever be anything else?”
    “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Mart,” Trixie snapped, suddenly nervous. “Oh, I wish we’d never come down here at all. I’ve got a feeling something terrible’s about to happen.”
    Honey squeezed her arm. “Hey, Trix, if you really want to go back up, I’ll go with you.”
    “Me, too,” Di said quickly. “I wish I’d never asked what a mace was. I know I wanted to see the beach, but”—she looked over her shoulder— “I’d rather see it in daylight.”
    “You’d never see your way back up the cliff without us,” Brian said. “If you want to, though, we’ll leave you here while we explore.”
    “No,” Trixie said. “I think that we should all stick together, no matter what.”
    As they moved away from the jetty, the fog closed in around them once more. Soon a pile of jagged rocks loomed beside them.
    “I found Clarence right here,” Mart announced, pointing to one of them. “It’s a wonder he didn’t crack up.” He gave the dummy a friendly thump on the leg. “Plastic,” he explained. “It’s a good thing, too—for his sake.”
    Brian took the flashlight from Mart’s hand. He played the beam of light over the rocks and then toward the base of the tall cliffs behind them.
    “I was right!” he cried suddenly. “I thought I saw an opening. Look, there it is! It’s Captain Trask’s secret cave!”
    “ ‘Faint heart ne’er did a rich man’—or woman—‘make,’ ” Mart yelled. “So come on, you guys! This way to the treasure.”

    The cave was dark and cold as the Bob-Whites stepped inside it. It had a dank, musty smell. It reminded Trixie of the dumbwaiter shaft.
    She shivered as Mart, holding the flashlight once more, moved forward eagerly. “Get a move on, everyone!” he ordered. “Follow me!”
    Brian, Jim, and Dan needed no second bidding. After a moment’s hesitation, Honey and Di joined them.
    Trixie stumbled forward, the last one to enter the cave. She was surprised at her own reluctance. At any other time, she would have scrambled ahead of everyone else.
    She couldn’t help remembering, however, another cave, in which she and the Bob-Whites had been searching for ghost fish. She also remembered what had happened there.
    She shivered again and crept forward, wishing the others would wait for her.
    Inside, it was pitch-black. She could feel the soft sand beneath her feet. It deadened all sound of her progress.
    Her groping fingers reached for the wall, but instantly she snatched her hand away as it encountered something horridly slippery. Was it a jellyfish? Trixie thought it unlikely. The cave itself appeared to be too dry for any of the river’s creatures to reach it. Besides, a jellyfish lived only in salt water. Or did it? Try as she might, she couldn’t remember.
    “There’s something about this place I don’t like,” she muttered to herself.
    A man’s deep chuckle answered her.
    “Brian?” Di’s voice called from somewhere ahead of her. “Was that you laughing?”
    “It wasn’t any of us,” Jim’s voice called.
    Trixie hurried toward the sound of their voices and soon reached her friends. “It was Mart,” she announced. “He’s making that dummy talk again.”
    “But I didn’t say anything, honest!” Mart protested, stopping dead in his tracks. “Neither did Clarence.”
    Trixie heard Honey take a deep, quivering breath. “But if it wasn’t one of us—then who was it?”
    In a penetrating whisper, someone said, “Beware the ghosts who guard the place—”
    At that moment, the flashlight’s comforting beam flickered and died, and suffocating blackness enveloped them all.

Treasure Island ● 15

    IF THE BOB-WHITES had been able to see where they were going, they would have immediately turned and run back the way they had come— but it was too late!
    Trixie, glancing over her shoulder, could see nothing of the cave’s entrance. They had come too