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herself. English swooped forward and caught her a split second before she
would have hit the floor.
In her astonishment, the near miss barely even registered with her.
"Iwalked ," she whispered in disbelief. "I'm going to walk."
When Adriana saw the message from her brother, she felt guilty immediately.
How many times had she sat here in Poseidon's computer lab? Never once had she
e-mailed Payton.
Jealousy, she admitted to herself.He got to go with Uncle Alfie, and I didn't
.
For the past two summers, the Ballantyne kids had been working with their
uncle at the British Museum. This year, Alfred Ballantyne had only been
allowed one assistant on his Syrian archaeological dig. He had chosen Payton.
That was what had brought Adriana to Poseidon in the first place, it was her
consolation prize.
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Hi, Ade.
Sorry I haven't e-mailed sooner. Uncle Alfie has been keeping me pretty busy,
but that's no excuse. Nobody can dig twenty-four hours a day, not even in the
desert, in here there's nothing else to do.
Two shipwrecks! And I'm stuck here, where it takes eleven hours to brush the
sediment off an old jug. I'll bet you're having the time of your life&
She wondered how envious he'd be if he knew that the captain was gone, and
Star might never walk again.
Anyway, here's the thing: Uncle Alfie told me about the problem of the bone
handle. Why an English artifact on a Spanish galleon? Well, I did a little Web
surfing. Guess what? An entire English privateer fleet was caught in the very
same hurricane that sankNuestra Señora . And that's not all.
Check out the Internet address below. Let's see if you come to the same
conclusion I did. Then I'll know I'm not crazy. &
Adriana felt a twinge of annoyance.Why does this have to be all about Payton?
He's half a world away!
But she was also intrigued. She maneuvered her mouse to the link and clicked.
The site was British, maintained by the U.K. government's Ministry of
Overseas Trade and Commerce. It was a record of English shipping in 1665  the
year of the storm that had sunkNuestro Señora .
According to the register, a privateer fleet had indeed sailed from the port
of Liverpool in April of that year. Nine of eleven ships survived the Atlantic
crossing to carry out a successful attack on the Spanish settlement of
Portobelo. The storm struck in September near the infamous Hidden Shoals.
There, the English flagship, a barque called theGriffin , was lost with all
hands.
Adriana leaned back in her chair, frowning. What was Payton getting at? That
the deeper shipwreck might be theGriffin ? And the J.B. handle came from
there?
But it didn't make sense. Star had found that artifact in the wreckage
ofNuestra Señora , up on the reef.
Then it hit her.
The biggest mystery in all this wasn't the handle. It was the question of
what had happened to the galleon's huge treasure. All at once, Adriana had the
answer.
Privateers were sponsored by governments, but they were basically just
pirates. Their mission was to raid, loot, and sink the shipping of their
countries' enemies.
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If theGriffin had met up withNuestra Señora de la Luz on the high seas, it
would have attacked. And if they were successful, the privateers would have
stolen every single coin on board.
What, then, if the hurricane of 1665 had destroyed both vessels? One, a
Spanish galleon with an empty hold, foundered on the reef. And the other, an
English barque, packed to the gunwales with plunder, sank not far away in the
deeper water just off the shoal.
"Way to go, Payton!" she cheered aloud.
It was an amazing theory, abrilliant theory. It explained everything  why
there was no treasure to be found in theNuestro Señora site, and why all
evidence pointed to the existence of that treasure in the second, deeper
wreck.
It was perfect, Adriana reflected, but it was just a theory. There was still
no proof that the other ship really was theGriffin , or that she had ever had
any contact withNuestro Señora . Adriana felt herself deflating as the elation
deserted her. Payton's logic was inspired; it was probably even correct. But
it was incomplete.
She was just about to close her computer's Internet browser when she saw it 
a small detail on the British Web site.
According to the records, theGriffin had been under the command of Captain
James Octavius Blade.
James Blade.
J.B.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They were a strange procession down the hall of the hospital of the Antilles
Oil platform. Star was at the center, taking baby steps, hanging on to the
handles of a walker. Kaz, Adriana, and Dante matched her slow pace, leaning
into the hushed conversation.
"Captain James Blade," whispered Star. "How cool is that? I wonder what he
was like? Maybe some kindly grizzled old sailor, hobbling around on a cane
with a bone handle."
"He was a privateer, Star," Adriana reminded her. "They were as bad as
pirates, sometimes worse. He may have hobbled, but he wasn't kindly."
"Or he was a maniac with a whip," put in Kaz.
"The point is, he was a rich maniac," said Dante. "Or he would have been if [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]