The Ship of Lost Souls 1 Read Free

aware of that blasted merchant’s whereabouts.
Jem must be terrified,
she thought. He was, after all, only a child, unused to the dangers of . . .
    Scarlet paused for a moment, then snapped her fingers and laughed out loud. A child in need of help. Right here on the islands. She couldn’t have planned it better herself! It was exactly what her crew needed.
    But now she was wasting precious seconds. She scanned the scene below her until she found the pirates and their prey and watched until she was fairly certain she knew which ship was theirs. Then she drew a breath and ran straight to the edge of the rooftop. She leaped across the gap to the next building, which she knew had a rain gutter, for she’d shimmied up and down it before during port raids. She put two fingers to her lips and let out one shrill blast, then another. The signal. Her crew would meet her at the ship, hopefully right away. There was no time to lose.

CHAPTER TWO
    Jem Fitzgerald couldn’t decide whether to stay calm or give in to the fear that swelled in his stomach. Sitting curled up on the floor of the cabin, chin resting on his knees, he watched the man pace before him and pondered his options. Master Davis from the King’s Cross School for Boys would say, “Fear means you aren’t being logical—a failing for any eleven-year-old boy.” Master Davis had all the answers.
    No fear then, Jem decided. He breathed in slowly, and the salty air that had seeped through the walls of the ship teased his nostrils.
    Beside him, Uncle Finn grunted, “Quit staring, Jem,” and shifted his egg-shaped body on the ship’s creaking floorboards. “Or you’ll be caught like that when they kill us both. Frozen for eternity with eyes like a giant flounder.” He huffed and repositioned his weight like a restless hen.
    The man before them stopped pacing and raised a furry eyebrow at Jem and his uncle. His fingers, yellow and thick as pipes, edged toward the cutlass that hung on his hip and hovered there a moment. Jem’s eyes zeroed in on the man’s middle finger—sliced off at the knuckle—then he forced himself to look at something else so he wouldn’t be caught staring. Uncle Finn probably had a point. Jem had always been taught that it wasn’t polite to stare, and he imagined this applied even to crusty-looking kidnappers. He dragged his gaze to the wall of the cabin, where a rat had evidently been at work, chewing a ragged hole in the baseboards. The man spat a neat gob near Jem’s feet and continued pacing.
    With a sigh, Uncle Finn closed his eyes and tapped his bald head against the wall behind him. Thin trails of sweat dripped down his cheeks and neck, pooling on the collar of his shirt. He hadn’t stopped sweating since the moment they’d been pounced on in a Port Aberhard alley. Jem wanted to ask his uncle a hundred questions about this ship they’d been forced onto, the men who’d brought them here, and how best to untie the knots in the rope that bound their hands and ankles, but Uncle Finn had been losing patience with all his questions lately. So Jem followed his uncle’s lead and closed his eyes to keep himself from staring.
    He cracked one eye open a moment later, just to see if the scene before him had disappeared. It hadn’t. Black boots crossed the floorboards with a firm, measured knock, pirouetted on one heel, then returned to the other side of the cabin. Jem opened both eyes and gazed up at the man’s broad face, his angular teeth, and the wooden toothpick clamped between them. He wore a faded, gray shirt and a red head scarf that looked painfully tight. Jem’s temples pulsed just looking at it.
Could this man be the real thing?
he wondered. He did a quick inventory. Tall black boots, check. Awful teeth, check. Severed knuckle—that got extra points. But could he really be a genuine, authentic—
    â€œWhat’re ye