Island of Thieves by Josh Lacey Page B

rum!”
    â€œDo you want to go and lie down?”
    â€œNo, thanks, I’m good.”
    Miguel and the other thug were glaring at us. They probably thought we were crazy.
What’s wrong with these gringos?
they were saying to themselves.
What are they so cheerful about? Don’t they realize Otto is going to cut them up into a hundred pieces and feed them to the piranhas?
    I said, “Have you found it?”
    â€œI certainly have.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œI certainly am.” He picked up a sheet of crinkly parchment and waved it in the air. “Feast your eyes on this, Tommy-boy!”

16
    I hurried to his side of the table. He put down the paper and stood back like a proud craftsman waiting for his work to be inspected. This is what I read:
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small rocke which lookes likke a fishes head. If anyone comes after us, you must go to the angel. Look to her fifteen feete. Her mouth is black. She has no teethe but she has a deep hart and ther you will find it. When all was done and we were returned to the pinnace, once more our Captayne swore us to be secret. He sayde these monies shall lie here till we return. This gold and this silver, it is the property of her Glorious Magestie the Queene of England and none shall have it but her and her men.
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    Below this, the entries continued as normal, describing winds and tides and dates and directions, just the ordinary stuff of the voyage, no different from a hundred other pages in the manuscript.
    Uncle Harvey opened the blue folder, pulled out the original piece of paper, and placed it beside the one that he had just found. Together we hunched over the two sheets and read them from beginning to end.
    â€œThe dates match,” said Uncle Harvey. “You see?”
    He ran his finger along the numerals written on each page.
    â€œThis page goes
11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th.
This one goes
17th, 18th, 19th, 20th.
The sentences match too.”
    He read from the bottom of one page to the top of the next:
    â€œ
We placed them at the Northern tip of the Islande in a line with the small rocke which lookes likke a fishes head.
It must be right, mustn’t it?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œThe only thing is, what on earth does this mean?” Uncle Harvey pointed at some sentences on the second page. “
If anyone comes after us, you must go to the angel. Look to her fifteen feete. Her mouth is black. She has no teethe but she has a deep hart and ther you will find it.
It doesn’t make any sense.”
    â€œMaybe it makes more sense when you’re actually on the island.”
    â€œIt’s just so frustrating! Why doesn’t he give more information?”
    â€œHe can’t,” I said. “He’s being deliberately obscure in case this falls into the wrong hands.”
    â€œYes, I understand that, Tom. I’m not an idiot. But he could be a bit clearer about where the island actually is.”
    â€œMaybe he did before.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œLook what it says here.” I read from the first of the two pages. “
One of them we had visited before, some days earlier, and it was named by our Captayne the Islande of Theeves for the nature of the natives.
If we can find the page where he describes their first visit to the island, then we should be able to find a bit more about its actual location.”
    â€œLet’s just hope those two old farmers didn’t chuck it out.”
    â€œOr wipe their butt with it.”
    â€œWhat?”
    I explained where I had found some of the pages.
    â€œThat’s just not funny,” said Uncle Harvey.
    At which point we both burst out laughing. The thought of that old codger sitting on the pot, realizing he’d run out of paper and reaching for the missing page of a treasure map—you either had to laugh or cry, and we laughed.
    We were still giggling when the door opened and Otto marched into the library.