“They’re not alive!” Uma said. “It’s not magic! It’s just a trick! Keep moving!”
“There must be some machine up there, embedded in the cavern’s ceiling,” she said. The black strings were nearly invisible in the dark cave.
Harry nodded. He was going over the fallen skeleton, inspecting the ropes, some of which were still connected to the machine. A severed hand leaped upward from the beach, dangling in his face, sword still in its grasp. Harry slashed at the cord and the arm fell limply to the sand, but the whole thing was unnerving.
By now, the rest of the pirates were all slashing at the ropes. But they could only cut so many, so the dead continued their dance. Pieces of broken arms and legs kept jerking about in the air.
“I never thought they were alive,” said Harry, as he pushed against a skeleton, sending it swinging away. But it swung right back, hitting him so hard it knocked him to the ground.
“Maybe they don’t need to be alive to take you down,” Uma joked.
Even if these were mechanical skeletons, their blades were real enough that they could still do damage.
“Be careful,” she cautioned her crew. “Cut the ropes, watch out for the swords, and someone fetch me that torch. We need light!”
One of the crewmen retrieved the still-flaming torch that Uma had dropped near the water’s edge. He held it high above them all, revealing at last an elaborate web of strings and cables, all of them disappearing upward toward the cavern’s ceiling.
In spite of their increased illumination, Harry got his hook wrapped up in a skeleton hand. He twisted to and fro before finally getting so caught in the cables he fell to the sand. Gil was doing a little better, having wrestled one of the skeletons to the ground and stomped all over its bones. He slashed the ropes when he was finished. The rest of the crew howled their battle cries, as they took down the cables.
Uma growled, annoyed that it was taking them so long to escape. It was a booby trap. Which meant there were others.
“Keep cutting strings!” she ordered. “And try to do it with a bit more organization.”
Taking her advice, the pirates went about cutting the ropes in a more coordinated manner, moving down the line, slashing just above the heads so the skeletons would fall limply to the beach in a single cut. One after another they dropped to the sand, a great pile of bones and cords forming at their feet.
As the last skeleton fell to the ground at last, a low thrum echoed in the darkness.
“What was that?” she cried, as an arrow struck the stone next to her. An inch to the right and it would have split her head in two.
The soft whistle of bowstrings reverberated in the darkness. All the pirates had hit the sand after seeing the first arrow, flattening themselves as best they could as the barrage sailed over their heads.
“When we cut that last skeleton it must have triggered some new part of the mechanism,” said Harry.
“I guessed as much,” said Uma. The real question was, what was coming next? It was clear the sorcerer had no intention of letting anyone take what was in that treasure chest. Some of the pirates had already stood, but Uma heard a distant clicking—and a winding sound.
“Duck!” said Uma, and the pirates slammed once more onto the sand, covering themselves with their hands, or whatever else they could use for shields, from a new assault of arrows.
“The machine rewound itself,” said Uma. “It paused after the first volley, just to trick anyone who was clever enough to avoid the first, before it sent out another attack.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Gil. “I can’t stay here with my face pressed in the muck.” Indeed the boy’s knees were sunk in the water, and his face was dabbed with mud. Most of the pirates weren’t in much better shape. All of them were wet. And only half had made it fully out of the water before they’d had to drop.
“Listen,” said Uma.
“To what?” asked Harry.
“To the silence. The machine stopped.” She motioned for everyone to stand. One by one they lifted themselves from the muck, their feet making terrible slurping sounds. They were wet and dirty but alive.
Uma took a deep breath. The machine had stopped, but she doubted they were out of danger yet. “Come on!” she said, leading them toward a narrow finger of light in the distance, indicating a way out of the cave.
She took a step toward it, and felt something tense and release beneath her foot as the earth shifted. From a distance, she heard an ominous rumbling.
“I think I triggered something,” said Uma. “The machine’s going again.”
Dust sifted downward from the ceiling, followed by a low thunder that nearly shook her to her knees. Rocks fell from the cavern ceiling, and they could hear stones breaking all around them.
“The cavern’s collapsing!” Uma cried, but by then they’d all figured it out. This must be the final trap, the one that would seal them in the cave with the treasure chest forever.
The sorcerer had obviously been serious about the safety of these formerly magical objects. Even without magic at his disposal, he had successfully created obstacles that would deter even the hardiest and greediest goblin.
But Uma was no goblin, and she was determined to leave the Isle of the Doomed with the only inheritance she would ever receive from her mother’s past.
“Run!” she called.
“Already there!” said Harry, at her side, Gil puffing not far behind.
Uma waved her cutlass in the air. “Follow me!” she said, leading the crew toward the light. All around them, stones pelted their heads. The air was already filled with dust, but a light shone faintly in the distance so they ran toward it. The very earth beneath their feet was collapsing as they went, and the walls were falling behind them.
Uma was the first to make it to the cave’s mouth, but she stayed there, waiting for each member of her crew to pass. The captain was always the last to leave, after all, the one who went down with her ship. She would not budge until the last pirate was out. Luckily the pirates were a frightened bunch, so they ran like children, tumbling over one another to get out of the cave as quickly as possible. Uma stepped out of the cavern just as the last stone broke, and the ceiling collapsed entirely, forever trapping whatever was left in there.
“We made it,” he muttered, stating the obvious, as she stumbled out onto the sand, her hair caked with dust and tiny stones. Harry brushed a rock off her shoulder.
In a panic, she looked around. All she saw were pirates, shaking the mud from their hair and brushing it from their clothes. “Where is it? The treasure chest?” she demanded. In all the confusion—in their sheer desire to get out of there—had they left the one thing they had come to find?
Harry tapped her on the shoulder.
What did he want? He didn’t have it either!