“Hey, Rusty, are you sure? I mean, how do you know that this is Prisoner’s Folly? What if we’re just in an old dungeon somewhere?”
“Because I tried leaving my cell,” said Rusty. “And look what it did to me.”
Down the hall, Andy saw a meaty arm poke out from the farthest cell. But an arm was all that he saw. Where Rusty’s left hand used to be was nothing but a stump covered with bloody rags.
Andy felt sick. “What did that to you?”
“So far as I can tell, it was a Dingonek,” said Rusty. “It’s a legendary creature that can only be summoned using the talisman of Magu Wandu. It’s part crocodile, part scorpion, and a hundred percent vicious. The minute you set foot on those flagstones, a door opens at the end of the hall and the beast is released. It came swimming at me down that trench quicker than lightning. Nothing I could do to stop it.”
Andy paled. He’d almost charged right out of his cell without thinking!
“Will you be okay?” Abigail called.
“Just a scratch,” Rusty replied bravely. But Andy could tell by the sound of his voice that he was in a lot of pain.
Think, Andy, think. This can’t be the end. There’s got to be a way out of here….
Andy gazed around his cell, inspecting everything closely. He moved over to the rocks on the wall and began to meticulously scan them for any anomalies. He’d read about prisoners sometimes leaving messages for other prisoners who might be put in the same cell. Perhaps one of the pirates who used to be imprisoned there had done the same.
The first wall he looked at yielded nothing. But while on his hands and knees in the far corner of the cell, he saw something worth noting.
The mortar around this stone looks like it’s crumbled away. It was exactly the kind of thing that he was looking for!
Andy held his breath as he tried to work the small stone free, desperately hoping that his instincts were leading him down the right track. After all, pirates were good at hiding treasure, weren’t they? Couldn’t one of them have hidden a message behind the stone?
His fingertips grew scraped and bloodied as he worked, but hope kept him at it. Finally, after several minutes, there was a small pop and the stone came free.
Andy probed the spot where the stone had been. At first he didn’t think anything was there. Then his fingers brushed something in the farthest recesses of the hole. He strained to grab it.
Andy’s pulse quickened when he saw what he’d found. It was a tiny piece of leather wrapped with a bit of thread.
“I found something,” he called out.
“What?” came Abigail’s reply.
“I think it might be a message from one of the former prisoners,” Andy said. He fumbled with the thread and, after breaking it with his teeth, unrolled the tiny piece of leather. There were words written there in brown ink!
Old blood, more like. Andy knew about all kinds of different inks because of his fascination with fountain pens. This wasn’t like any ink he’d ever seen. Besides, a prisoner wouldn’t have access to much. Whoever had been there before him had probably had to make do with what was at hand.
Andy read the message written there first to himself. Then, unable to contain his excitement, he read it aloud to the others. Some of the message was faded, but Andy felt that there was enough there to figure out the note.
“Beware ye the devil in the deep,” Andy read. “For she’ll surely take yer life.
She cannae be harmed by mortal strength,
but obeys the shipwright’s fife.
Barnacle Billy took it below;
he’s in the Rog Guffaw.
So if ye dare to take a swim,
beware the creature’s maw.”
“What’s it mean?” Betty called out.
“I really don’t know,” Andy confessed.
“It’s got to be code for something,” said Abigail.
Andy racked his brain, trying to figure out the meaning behind the rhyme. He was good with riddles and secret codes, but this one was different from most. It seemed like this one was less about figuring out a puzzle and more like understanding the language that the writer was using.
Okay, let me try taking it line by line, he thought. He gazed at the scrap of leather, going over the words carefully.
Beware ye the devil in the deep. Well, that one was easy enough. In this case, the writer of the poem was definitely referring to the monster in the water.
For she’ll surely take yer life. Again, pretty obvious. Rusty’s injury was testimony to what the terrible creature could do if she caught you. Andy grimaced as he thought about the possibility of his friend bleeding to death.
Poor Rusty. He needs to see a doctor!
Andy tried to put his anxiety out of his mind and concentrate instead on the task at hand. He breathed deeply to steady himself and read on.
She cannae be harmed by mortal strength,
but obeys the shipwright’s fife.
What was a shipwright’s fife? Andy stared at the phrase, trying to figure it out.
Abigail interrupted his thoughts. “I’ve got an idea!” she called.
“What?” Andy called back.
“I was thinking about the words. Shipwright. That’s a carpenter who builds boats. But why would a carpenter be playing a fife? Isn’t a fife a small flute? It doesn’t make sense unless it has to do with being on a ship. Is there a special instrument associated with being on a boat?”
Andy tried to think about all the books he’d read about sailing, like the Horatio Hornblower novels and Treasure Island. Was there anything mentioned there?
Ok, let’s think about this. Is there another name for a shipwright? What are the positions on a ship? There’s the captain, of course. He has a first mate. The person who steers is the helmsman. And the ship’s carpenter is a…
“A boatswain!” Andy exclaimed. Then the other part of the phrase made sense. The boatswain had his own special
