Free Mayflower Treasure Hunt by Ron Roy

CHAPTER 1
    Josh peered inside the deep, dark oven. “Wow!” he said, backing away. “It smells like bacon in there!”
    A tall man standing next to Josh laughed. “Aye, son, we roasted a pig for the tourists this past Sunday.” The man wore baggy pants, a navy blue shirt with a white ruffled collar, and boots. He had dark curly hair and a thick beard.
    Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose were inside the cook room on board the
Mayflower II
, in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This ship was a replica of the original
Mayflower
, which brought Englishpassengers to Massachusetts in 1620.
    The kids’ families had decided to have this year’s Thanksgiving meal here, in the town where the first
Mayflower
passengers had landed. Dink’s mother had driven the three kids to the historic town. Everyone else would arrive tomorrow, the day before Thanksgiving.
    Dink’s mother was spending the day with an old college friend who lived a few miles away. So the kids were on their own until she got back at five o’clock.
    Ruth Rose had bought a guidebook. Inside were pictures and information about the
Mayflower
and other sites in Plymouth. She turned to a page that showed an inside view of the
Mayflower.
“Is this where the
Mayflower
passengers did all the cooking?” she asked.
    “Aye, most of the meals were prepared here in the galley by the boat’scook, lassie,” the man said. “But a few of the women brought their own small iron stoves. They lit them on deck to cook stew or soup or porridge for their children.”
    A few other tourists were exploring the boat. Workers, dressed the way the Pilgrims had dressed, were stationed around the decks to explain things to the visitors. In fact, the workers were all actors pretending they had just arrived aboard the real
Mayflower.
They could even speak the way the original passengers spoke.
    Dink looked around the small, dark galley, or kitchen. He was amazed that food for over a hundred people was cooked in this tiny, cramped space! Of course there was no refrigerator or stove. Just this dark oven made of bricks, a small worktable, and a couple of crude benches.
    It was a mild week in late November. Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose wore sweatshirts and jeans. Ruth Rose’s outfit was all blue. She liked to wear clothes that matched. Even her headband matched her sneakers!
    “Where did the passengers sleep?” Dink asked.
    The man pointed down a narrow set of stairs. “’Tween decks, down those stairs,” the man said. “Careful as you go!”
    The kids walked down the stairs, holding on to a rope that had been attached to one wall. A woman in a long purple dress stood at the bottom. She wore a tight white hat that covered her hair. She smiled at the kids.
    “Yes, this is where we slept and lived for nearly ten weeks—and crowded it was!” she said.
    The room was narrow and dark.

    There were a few small openings high on the walls for light and fresh air. A mattress lay in one corner, and a couple of wood sleeping platforms had been attached to one of the walls. The kids checked out a row of hammocks that were strung up along one side of the space.
    “Didn’t everyone get a mattress?” asked Josh.
    The woman shook her head. “No. A few of us had mattresses stuffed with straw,” she said. “Some slept right on the wood floor. I slept in a hammock.”
    “It
must
have been crowded,” Ruth Rose said. “I read that there were over a hundred passengers!”
    “Yes, and about thirty crew,” the woman said. “’Tween decks here ’twas crowded and smelly. The rats would come around looking for food. We’d feel them at night walking over our beds.
    Many of us got sick, and one passenger died.”
    Dink noticed clay pots under some of the hammocks. He knew from his reading that these were called chamber pots. There were no bathrooms on the
Mayflower.
    “Did you bring furniture and stuff with you?” Dink asked. He was trying to imagine what it would be like to live in this dark room for more than two