Free Minerva's Voyage by Lynne Kositsky Page A

breeze. We would need to be careful though. Here, quite possibly, was the key to our fortune, returned to us like a ball retrieved by a dog for his master. Now it was only necessary to solve the puzzle. How hard could that be? The first emblem, the one that stupid Scratcher had jettisoned overboard, had already yielded at least some of its secrets.
    We lugged the chest into the edge of the spinney. Now I had more leisure, I looked closely at the emblem of the cipher wheel, something I’d never been able to do aboard the Valentine . Beneath the emblem was its verse:
    If thou art not by birth or fortune blest
With means to live or answer thy desire
With cheerful heart, this cipher doth its best
To bring to pass the thing thou dost require
Pay heed to what these emblems really say
So thou live happy till thy dying day.
    I read it out quietly so as not to arouse the suspicion of any who happened to be passing by. I had to clamp my mouth shut to stop myself laughing aloud, but I grinned at Fence. “Look at what it says: this cipher doth its best to bring to pass the thing thou dost require …”
    â€œI wonder what that can be.”
    â€œWhy treasure, treasure of course. There must be treasure hid somewhere. If only this were the place … the Isle of Devils.”
    â€œPerchance it is. But lead us not into temptation,” Fence said, although he was grinning right back at me.
    Dragging the chest further into the spinney and digging up earth with our hands so we could bury it, at least for the moment, we came upon fresh water, gushings of it. I drank till my belly was full to bursting and tight as a drum; when I moved, I could hear liquid rolling around inside me. Fence had hiccups from drinking too fast. We knew now that we wouldn’t die. Not of thirst, anyway, though possibly from drinking too much. We filled a couple of bottles that had washed up on the beach when we’d finished. This was to show that we had done the job Scratcher had sent us to do.
    Then we moved to a drier spot to bury our booty.
    Suddenly there were hoots and hollers, as well as clapping, from further up the shore. Admiral Winters seemed about to speak to the voyagers. Fence and I rushed across, slipping on the wet sand and spilling gobs of water from the bottles, as Winters waited for everyone to gather.
    â€œThe pilot tells me we lie in the height of thirty-two-and-a-half degrees of northerly latitude, some two hundred and thirty leagues from Virginia.” He paused. “There isn’t a sign of the other ships of the fleet and I hope to God they survived. Offer your prayers for the poor souls aboard. But we have surmounted the storm, as you know, and are, according to my calculations and the pilot’s, safe in the arms of the Bermudas.”
    â€œBaruadas?” asked Boors, bleating twice and blinking.
    â€œNo, Sir Thomas. The Bermudas.”
    â€œThe Isle of Devils,” the Boatswain said with a low whistle.
    Ho Ho.

C HAPTER 16

L OST IN A D REAM
    We were in the spinney, the trees hung with spider webs big enough to catch birds; huge spiders crouched at their centres. I had been afraid of them at first, but was no longer, as they didn’t seem to bite. We were examining the emblems, which we had dried and put back in the chest. We had buried it the second time, well away from the water, with a pattern of stones and twigs over the dirt to show us, but no one else, where it was hid. I put the cipher key inside it too.
    For a while we’d been unable to visit, except once quickly, to repack the dried emblems in the chest. Like others, we were busy with the everyday chores of staying alive. We had helped build huts, thatching roofs with wild palm leaves from those strange trees around the shoreline. They looked like feather dusters. The trees of the woods in the forest, more familiar to all, had fashioned the walls of our cabins.
    My hands were calloused and sore, and my head ached from the