JAMES AWOKE WITH A START.
What was that sound?
Dawn was just breaking on Mollusk Island, the sun shooting pink rays into a brightening sky. Thomas lay next to James, sleeping soundly.
“Wake up,” said James, shaking him.
“What,” said Thomas, turning away, irritated.
“Listen!” said James.
Thomas, hearing the urgency in James’s voice, sat up, fully awake now.
“Is it the boars?” he said, his face filling with fear.
“No,” said James. “Listen.”
They remained silent for fifteen seconds, twenty…
Then it came again, a faint cry carried on the wind.
“That sounds like…Tubby Ted!” said Thomas.
“Let’s go,” said James.
In the desperate scramble to escape the wild boars, Tubby Ted and Prentiss had never made it to the boys’ underground hideout. After waiting hours for their friends to appear, James and Thomas had set out to search for them. They’d gone over the familiar island paths, but with no luck. Then they searched farther from their hideout, venturing deeper into the jungle, higher up the mountainside. Still nothing.
Finally they were forced to consider the awful possibility that the missing boys were not lost but had been caught by the boars—or the pirates. If the pirates had them, James knew he had to ask the Mollusks for help. He had planned to do so this morning.
But then he’d awakened to Tubby Ted’s cry for help.
Now James was sprinting through the jungle toward the sound, leaping over logs, holes, vines, rocks. Thomas, shorter-legged but quick, followed as closely as he could.
The next cry they heard was clearer, and closer.
“HELP!”
No question: Tubby Ted.
“SOMEONE HELP ME!!”
James opened his mouth to answer, but caught himself. It wasn’t like Tubby Ted to be up this early. What if this was a trap set by the pirates? If so, he and Prentiss were walking—no, running—right into it. James raised his hand and stopped Thomas, the two of them huffing to catch their breath.
“Why are we stopping?”
“Because,” James answered, “that’s Tubby Ted’s voice, and that, over there, is the sunrise. Have you ever known Tubby Ted to be awake at sunrise?”
Thomas shook his head.
“It could be a trap.”
“Good point.”
Tubby Ted cried out yet again. They were quite close now.
“What do we do?” Thomas whispered.
James thought about turning back, going to the Mollusks for help. But what if, when they returned, Tubby Ted was gone?
Another cry. James made up his mind.
“Watch where you walk,” he said, taking a tentative step off the trail, into the thick jungle. “There could be a pit or a snare.”
With their eyes on the ground, the two boys moved cautiously ahead, pushing through the dense vegetation toward the sound of the cries, which now seemed to be coming from only a few feet away; though in the tangled mass of vines and leaves the boys could see only inches ahead.
James and Thomas pushed toward the sound and stumbled into a clearing. Lifting their heads, they found themselves face-to-face with Tubby Ted.
Except that Ted’s face was upside down.
He was hanging from a rope tied to his ankles. His face was ablaze with bright red insect bites. Tears streamed from his eyes, but because he was inverted, they flowed down his forehead.
“Ted!” said James. “Are you—”
“I’m sorry,” said Tubby Ted. “I wouldn’t have done it. But they’ve got Prentiss.”
“Done what?” James asked.
“Who has Prentiss?” said Thomas.
At that moment, a heavy rope net fell around them both, its weight knocking them to the jungle floor. It stank of old fish and sea muck. As they struggled to escape it, four men emerged from the jungle and quickly closed up the net.
James understood his mistake too late: he’d been so intent on where he was stepping that he’d paid no attention to the trap waiting in the treetops. Two pirates hoisted the net, turning it and the boys upside down. With the world inverted, James watched as the rope tied to Tubby Ted’s ankles went slack. Tubby Ted cried out, and from James’s perspective, fell upward and hit a ceiling of dirt as a whoof of air escaped from his lungs. Then Ted was replaced in James’s view by the bearded face of a pirate, pressed close, his breath reeking even more than the net.
“You two fishies will make a fine catch for old Captain Hook,” he said.
The other three pirates roared with laughter.
“I’m sorry,” said Tubby Ted.
Two pirates strode triumphantly into the fort, carrying between them the net holding James and Thomas, still upside down and very uncomfortable after the long, jouncing trek over the mountain. Behind them, prodded by the other two pirates in the hunting party, trudged the exhausted Tubby Ted.
Hook stood in the center of the compound, waiting, a snarl of happiness on his face.
“So my plan worked,” he said.
“Like a charm,” said one of the net-carriers. “We hung the fat one up like you said. Cried like a baby, he did. Brought these two running right into the trap.”
“I am a genius,” observed Hook. There was no response. Hook glared at Smee.
“Aye, Cap’n,” said Smee. “A genius.”
The pirates untied the net and upended it, dumping James and Thomas into the dirt. Hook moved so that he stood directly over James, the tips of his scuffed boots just touching the boy.
“Welcome back,” Hook said softly.
James looked into Hook’s piercing stare, then turned his head away.
“Thought you’d escaped me, did you?” said Hook. “Well, let’s see if your flying friend can rescue you now, boy. This time you won’t be out in the open, or near the spring. You’ll be in a cage, boy, with your three little friends. How d’you like that?” Hook spat a brown glob that splatted into the dirt an inch from James’s head, then said, “Put the little bilge rats into the cage.”
Rough hands shoved James, Thomas, and Tubby Ted across the compound to a box of lashed bamboo, about six feet square and four feet high. James saw hands clutching two of the bamboo poles from the inside: Prentiss. The pirates untied an elaborate series of knots, opened the top of the cage, and heaved the boys inside—two pirates being required for Tubby Ted. The boys crouched silently as the pirates carefully retied the top. Then, when the pirates had left, James spoke.
“Prentiss, are you all right?”
Prentiss’ face, like Ted’s, was covered with insect bites, some of them now oozing scabs.
“Yes,” said Prentiss, though his lip was quivering. “I’m all right, except the bugs—”
“The bugs at night are big enough to wear shoes,” said Tubby Ted. “The bites sting at first but itch something awful a few hours later.”
“But the bats are the worst,” Prentiss said. “Fruit bats the size of cats, with faces like little monkeys. They come out around dusk and dive and dart through the night sky like…like, I don’t know what.”
“Like bats,” Tubby Ted said.
“Yes,” agreed Prentiss.
“But that’s not the worst,” Tubby Ted said. “It’s the slugs I can’t stand. Long, slimy, yellow slugs that come out when you’re asleep. They must like the salt on your skin or something, because I had—” Tubby Ted made a face.
“Sixty-seven,” Prentiss said. “Ted had sixty-seven of ’em on him yesterday morning. Could barely see his face for all the slugs.”
“And the food they give us is awful,” said Tubby Ted.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” James said in a whisper.
“How?” said Prentiss. “They have this cage”—he pushed at a bamboo pole—“tied tight with knots that we can’t reach.”
“And there’s guards all day and night,” said Ted.
“And,” said Prentiss, “they told us that if we try to escape, they’ll kill us.”
“Right,” said James, peering between poles at the pirates. “But if we don’t escape, Hook will use us as bait to catch Peter.” He looked at the other boys. “And once he has Peter, he’ll kill us all anyway.”