Gordon Korman: The Danger

“None at all, sad to say,” the barber told him. “Separated from the fleet and leagues off course. ’Twill be a miracle if any of us see home again. Now shake a leg. The captain’s cabin needs tidying after the storm.”

James Blade’s quarters were in a frightful state. He was not a neat man to begin with, hurling objects in his terrible temper, and letting dropped items lie where they fell. The storm had added to this disarray. Possessions and bedclothes were strewn about the deck space, and a crystal decanter of brandy had shattered. Books had toppled from the shelving and lay open, the paper soaking up the brown liquid.

Samuel rescued the books first, out of a feeling that they were more precious than anything else in the room. Although he could not understand the strange symbols on their pages, he suspected that the volumes revealed a world less harsh than this one. A world where life held more than suffering, violence, and greed.

Lying in the twisted bed linens was the captain’s snake whip, its baleful emerald eye glowing from its setting in the carved whalebone handle. Samuel drew back. This was the object he hated more than any other — almost as much as he hated Captain Blade himself. The image of Evans the sail maker, Samuel’s only friend, brought tears to the cabin boy’s eyes. The poor old man had tasted this whip many times. Those floggings had brought on the terrible circumstances in which Blade had pushed Evans to his death.

He was about to make up the captain’s berth when the cry came:

“Sail ho!”

A ship! The fleet!

By the time Samuel reached the companionway, seamen were flocking to the port gunwale, and an excited babble rose from the deck. Samuel joined the rush, careful to avoid stepping on the rats that any shipboard stampede was sure to stir up.

Captain Blade strode to the rail. “Well, come on, man! Is she one of ours?”

“She’s square-rigged, sir! I’m looking for a marking.”

With a practiced flick of the wrist, Blade snapped open his brass spyglass and put it to his eye.

“A galleon, by God! She’s a Spaniard!”

York pushed his way forward. “One of the treasure fleet?”

“Aye!” roared the captain. “Storm-damaged and helpless. Take up your swords, lads! This night we’ll be counting our plunder!”

Star sat up in bed and swung her legs over the side, her features set in an expression of grim determination.

I will not be crippled by this. I had a disability before, and it didn’t stop me. This isn’t going to beat me, either.

But her legs buckled instantly, and no force of will could straighten them. A flailing arm tried to catch the nightstand, but succeeded only in upending the duffel bag that sat there. The pain that came when her shoulder made contact with the hard floor was nothing compared with the anguish in her heart.

I didn’t expect to tap-dance today, but shouldn’t there be some sign of improvement? Some ray of hope that I’m getting better? Something?

Enraged, she picked up the first thing her hand closed on — the bone handle. With a cry, she hurled it with all her might across the room. With a crack, it struck the steel door frame and bounced off.

All at once, her anger turned inward. Sure, that makes sense. Smash a three-hundred-year-old artifact. That’ll help you walk.

Now the only piece from the shipwrecks that Cutter didn’t know about was lying on the floor like a dropped pencil. She had to hide it away before anybody saw it.

Using her arms, which were swimmer-strong, she began to pull herself across the tiles. Panting, she reached for the hilt. It was just out of her grasp.

“Room 224,” came a familiar voice from outside in the reception area.

Oh, no, Marina Kappas!

In a desperate bid, Star stretched her body to full extension, snatched up the carved whalebone, and wriggled back toward the bed. There were footsteps in the hall as she stashed the handle back in the duffel, zipped it shut, and shoved it under the nightstand.

Two legs appeared in the doorway. “Star, what are you doing on the floor?” the striking Californian asked in alarm.

“The Australian crawl,” Star replied sarcastically. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to walk, and it isn’t happening.”

And then a soft voice spoke her name.

For the first time, she looked up. “Dad,” she barely whispered.

So much had happened in the past weeks, but their exotic location had given it a dreamlike fairy-tale quality. Now, to see her father — someone from home, from her real life — brought it all crashing down on her.

It was heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time.

Mr. Ling scooped his daughter off the floor and lifted her gently back to her bed. There he held her and let her cry.

Zipped safely away in the duffel bag, the whalebone handle rested on a pile of wadded-up T-shirts. What Star had been in too much of a hurry to notice was that the collision with the door frame had chipped a piece of coral from the hilt. The stone set in its center now glowed a deep fiery green.

The crane was so large that, when its winch was in operation, the roar was like an airport runway during takeoff. Poseidon Oceanographic Institute had nothing like it. This titanic piece of equipment, along with Antilles IV , the enormous ship that supported it, was on loan from Antilles Oil Company. It was normally used to salvage lost drill parts and underwater piping. But today the quarry was Deep Scout , the research submersible that had been disabled and abandoned by the late Captain Vanover and the four interns.

Three hundred feet below, oil company divers fastened grappling hooks and lift bags to the crippled sub’s hull. And then the powerful cables began to haul Deep Scout from its watery prison. The lift bags inflated as the vehicle rose and the air inside expanded.

Minutes later, Deep Scout broke the surface, its clear bubble gleaming in the sun. Dripping, it was winched onto the expansive work bed of the Antilles IV , where dozens of crew members awaited it.

Far astern, a second, smaller crane was in operation. It was raising the diving bell, which housed the salvage divers. It also acted as a decompression chamber, saving the deep-sea workers the need to make decompression stops in the water.

Inside the bell, the men played cards, read magazines, and snoozed the time away. But one pair of eyes was glued to the porthole, following the progress of the work on Deep Scout .

English watched intently as the crew shoveled an endless supply of wet mud out of the sub’s belly. Oui , this was in agreement with what the four teenagers had told him. Two fiberglass plates had separated, causing Deep Scout to scoop up huge quantities of sand and mud from the ocean floor. The extra weight had made the vehicle too heavy to return to the surface.

English and his fellow divers were used to decomps that lasted up to two weeks, but today their stay was short. After two and a half hours, the bell was opened, and the deep-water crew emerged. By this time, the sub’s titanium husk was suspended above the salvage deck. A single technician stood below, examining the vehicle and making notes on a clipboard.

English went to join him, peering up at the short, snub-nosed hull. He spotted the loose plates almost at once.

He pointed. “Here — this was the problem, yes?”

The man nodded. “The temperature gauge is behind there.” He frowned. “I can’t imagine how the plates came apart. It’s never happened before, and this boat’s fifteen years old.”