Free Pyro Watson and the Hidden Treasure by Nette Hilton

wondered if it would make a differenceif he wore a cap. It might muffle any ideas that were drifting around so they wouldn’t be so easy to read. It’d make them like a code.

    San Simeon held the blackboard aloft. ‘This ‘ere is a code,’ he said. ‘It’s what we’re going to use so the pirates can’t work out what we’re thinking!’
    Derrick the Cook snorted. ‘Course they couldn’t do that anyway. Whatever are ye thinkin’, Cap’n? Ha! Ha! Ha!’
    San Simeon was thinking there was a traitor in his crew. He was thinking up a plan to trick that traitor into the open.
    â€˜Now, watch carefully,’ he cried as he picked up two of Sweet Calamity’s pocket handkerchiefs. ‘When I hold my hands like this …’ he stuck his chest out, held his head high, and straightened his arms out so they formed right angles, ‘this signal means HELP.’ And then quickly, without moving his chest or his legs or his middle or anything except his outstretched arms, he swung them straight up so they looked like toothpicks. ‘And this means GO RIGHT.’
    Nobody moved.
    They simply looked and then one or two glanced sideways. A smile twitched at the edges of Cracker the Wheel’s mouth and he fought hard to stop it stretching any wider.
    â€˜Wif respect,’ Derrick the Cook finally spoke up, ‘I don’t fink so, Cap’n.’
    â€˜Pardon?’ San Simeon dropped his arms and held his hankies in front of him. ‘I’m sure it does.’ He consulted a book that he had opened on the sand. ‘Why? What d’you think it means?’
    A couple of the crew sniggered and then, when Simeon glared about to see who was being disrespectful, they quickly sucked in their cheeks and stood tall.
    â€˜Well, I’m not all that smart, Cap’n, but if I saw one of me lads standing on the wharf wif his lace hankies stuck out there like that I’d reckon he was asking for trouble?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ another voice chimed up. ‘You wouldn’t like it if someone flapped a hanky out at you, would you? You’d be saying, “what’re you flapping that hanky at me for?” And stuff like that. And then there’d probably be a fight or somefing.’
    â€˜He could be drying ‘em?’
    Everyone turned to face Smit the Cabin Boy’s Father.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜His hankies. He might have washed ‘em cos they got all snotty and wanted to dry them real quick.’
    The crew considered this and a few who could easily recall trying to blow a nose into a snotty hanky nodded wisely.
    â€˜No.’ San Simeon looked heavenward as if he hoped a passing angel might be able to help him out. ‘It’s a proper code! It is! It’s in this book.’
    It wasn’t an airborne angel who stopped. It was Sweet Calamity. ‘Now boys …’ she said as she shook out some fresh new lace-edged hankies. ‘If I stand like this …’ She held her hankies out to the side. She didn’t stick her chest out and her hands, so delicate and fine, were held more precisely than Simeon’s, but the signal was the same. ‘… If you see me doing this, it is a signal for “help me”. Do you think you could remember that?’
    The crew nodded.
    â€˜And this …’ Her arms were held up high with her sweet wrists just touching each other. ‘… If you see this, gosh, what do you think it means?’
    Heads were scratched and toes twitched but it was a toughie. And the Cap’n hadn’t said he was going to test them so nobody really knew.
    â€˜Oh dear.’ Calamity let her hankies touch at a little wet tear that leaked from her eye. ‘If it meant that I was in great danger, you would have failed me.’
    They stood horrified. To think that they were all here and ready and strong, and poor little Calam could have been in danger and