Smells Like Pirates Page 10

  The man stopped scratching Dog and stood. “Whit sorts of things are ye afraid of?” he asked.

  “All sorts of things. Germs, bullies, feather pillows, random objects falling on my head, forgetting to take my vitamins—”

  “Why do you live up here if you don’t work for the Map of the Month Club?” Lorelei interrupted. She made a new path on the dusty floor as she walked along the bookcase.

  “Ah dinna like people,” the man grumbled. “Ah’m a hermit.”

  “Really?” Hercules asked. “Then you might have anthrophobia. Many hermits do. That’s fear of people. I don’t have anthrophobia, but I am afraid of my brothers and sister. They’re sports-playing meatheads. I’m also afraid of poisonous snakes. That’s called ophidiophobia. I’m afraid of the yellow bits of popcorn that get stuck in your throat, but I don’t know what that’s called. The one thing I’m not afraid of is skydiving.”

  “Hello? Can we get back to the map?” Lorelei asked irritably. She walked up to Homer and whispered, “There are a million books over there. I don’t know where to begin. We need his help.”

  Homer smiled nicely at the man. “Could you please help us read our map? It’s definitely a star chart, but I don’t know how to read it.”

  “I can pay you,” Lorelei said. “I’ve got lots of money.”

  “Ah dinna care aboot money, lassie. Ah told ye, ah dinna like people.”

  Dog, as if on cue, licked the man’s hand. Then he turned his sad eyes up and whined. It was an expression that only the coldhearted could ignore. The man’s beard and mustache rustled. “Ah’ll make an exception, but only because ye have yon wee hound.” From the sweetened tone in the man’s voice, Homer assumed that a smile was hiding under all that hair. “Come away wi’ ye. O’er here to ma table.”

  The odd little man climbed onto one of the stools, pushed aside a protractor and a ruler, then sat on the blackboard table. Lorelei, Homer, and Hercules each grabbed a stool and gathered around, while Dog stretched out on the floor beneath the table. Lorelei took the map from the inside pocket of her jumpsuit, unfolded it, then set it on the table in front of the man.

  He whistled. “Whit happened to yon map? Looks like it’s been eaten by Nessie herself.”

  “Who?” Homer asked.

  “Nessie, lad. The Loch Ness Monster.”

  It was eaten by a monster, Homer wanted to say, an image of the mutant tortoise filling his mind. But a comment like that would surely lead the conversation offtrack and annoy Lorelei. Best keep to the issue at hand.

  “I know these are stars,” Homer said, pointing to one of the black dots. “But I don’t know much about the constellations. Can you figure it out?”

  The man stared at the map. He turned it one way and said, “Hmmmm.” Then he turned it the other way and said, “Mmmmm.” Then he turned it again and again until, with a satisfied grunt, he announced, “Ye’ve got yersel a Draco.”

  “Draco?” both Homer and Lorelei asked.

  “That’s Latin for ‘dragon,’ ” Hercules said.

  The man grabbed a piece of blue chalk and began to draw on the map. “Hey, wait a minute,” Lorelei said, reaching out to stop him, but Homer held her back.

  “It’s okay,” Homer told her. “It’s just chalk. We can wipe it off if we need to.”

  They watched as the man expertly connected some of the dots. When he’d finished, a dragon lay across the map, the tip of its tail at one end, its head at the other. “It’s one of the oldest constellations,” the man said. “The Egyptians identified it way back when the pyramids were made, but the Greeks were the ones tae name it Draco the dragon, because of yon myth.”

  Lorelei sat up straight. “What myth?”

  “The one aboot Hercules and the dragon with one hundred heads.”

  “Oh, I know that myth,” Lorelei said. “Hercules’s eleventh labor was to steal golden apples from the dragon, but he couldn’t do it alone. So he asked Atlas for help.” She glanced at Homer. “By the way, Atlas was the guy who held up the world. That’s why the atlas is named after him.”

  By the way? Of course Homer knew that fact. Anyone who knew anything about maps knew that atlases were named after Atlas. He rolled his eyes. She was such a know-it-all.

  Lorelei continued. “So Hercules, being superstrong, held up the world while Atlas went to get the apples. That’s how Hercules completed his eleventh labor.”

  “Why is that star drawn bigger than the others?” Homer asked, pointing to a star near the end of the dragon’s tail.

  “Yon’s the North Star,” the man said.

  “Polaris,” Homer said.

  “Nae. It’s a star called Thuban.” The man scratched his beard. “It used tae be the North Star, but it isn’t anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lorelei asked, leaning her elbows on the table. “Stars don’t change.”

  “But we do, lassie. The earth moves. It wobbles on its axis. And it takes twenty-six thousand years tae make one full wobble. That’s why every twenty-six thousand years, the North Pole points to a different star. When Draco was discovered, the North Star wasna Polaris. It was Thuban.”

  “I never knew that,” Homer admitted. He’d spent most of his map-reading days focused on the surface of the earth, not fixed up at the heavens. Star charting was new territory to him.

  As the conversation proceeded, Hercules took notes in his notebook. He was very serious about his record-keeping duties.

  “I don’t understand,” Lorelei said. “Where does this map take us? I mean, how does celestial navigation work?”

  “Celestial navigation is the art and science of using celestial bodies tae determine the observer’s position on Earth,” the man said. Then he tapped a finger on Rumpold’s map. “Draco is a constellation in the far northern sky. Yer mapmaker went tae the far north tae draw yon map.”

  “Well, I guess that’s a start,” Lorelei said. “But where, exactly, in the far north?” The man pointed to the date scrawled in the map’s bottom corner. “I still don’t understand,” Lorelei said.

  Homer thought he knew the answer to this. “I think the date is important because the view of the sky is always changing, but the earth’s surface pretty much stays the same. So, if you stood on a mountain and looked down, the coastline would look the same whether you stood there on a Saturday or a Monday, or whether you stood there in January or in October.” He glanced at the man, who nodded for Homer to continue. “But, if you stood on that same mountain and looked up, the sky would be totally different one day to the next. So that’s why the date matters.”

  “Aye!” the man said with a smack of his knee. “Ye’ve got it, lad.”

  “So if we have the date and we have the image of the sky, then we can figure out exactly where the mapmaker was standing when he drew the map.”

  “Aye!” He smacked his knee again. Then he scrambled off the table and headed for his cot. “Well, ah read it for ye. Now away wi’ ye. Ma brain is hurtin. Too many people. Too much bletherin.” After climbing onto the cot, he lay on his back and closed his eyes.

  Homer, Lorelei, and Hercules shared a confused look. “Wait,” Lorelei called. “How do we figure it out?”

  “Computation,” the man said, his eyes still closed.

  “Huh?” Lorelei asked.

  “Math,” Hercules told her. “He means we have to use math.”

  “Math?” Lorelei groaned. “I hate math.”

  “I’m not fond of it, either,” Hercules said. “I can translate mathematical terminology for you, but when it comes to manipulating numbers, I’m pathetic.”

  They both looked at Homer expectantly. They were probably waiting for him to say, “Oh I love math. No problem. I’m some kind of math genius.” He grimaced, remembering the bright red C- on his last math test. Sure, he could have studied more, but given the choice between studying a map on the mysterious crop circles of the American Midwest or studying fractions, well, he’d made the obvious choice. “I’m not
so good at math, either,” he admitted.

  They still desperately needed the man’s help. Experts on celestial navigation didn’t grow on trees. Team L.O.S.T. and FOUND would probably have to travel to a different city just to find another one. And there was no time to do that. Homer was expected back on the farm in just five days. It was now or never. And that’s why he crawled under the table to wake Dog. “Hey,” he whispered in Dog’s ear. “We need you. Go over there, wag your tail, and give him your sad face again.”

  Dog was sound asleep. His belly rose and fell steadily. His back leg twitched as he chased something in dreamland.

  “Dog?” Homer gently shook him. Dog opened one eye. “Ur?”

  “Come on,” Homer whispered, dragging him toward the cot. “Be charming.”

  Dog’s ears, which were extra-long even for a basset hound, swept the dusty floor like furry mops. He opened his other eye just as he came to a stop at the foot of the man’s cot. Clearly assuming that a new napping spot had been chosen for him, Dog closed his eyes and began to snore. The freight train–like sound caught the man’s attention, and he sat up. “Aw, the poor wee thing. He’s fair worn out.” The man grabbed a pillow, jumped off the cot, and tucked the pillow under Dog’s head.

  “Yes, he’s very tired,” Homer said. “He’s tired because it’s been a long trip. We came all the way from the country just to find a celestial-navigation expert.”

  “The country, ye say? Yon’s a long way for a basset tae travel.” The man patted Dog’s paw. Dog farted. “Aw, the poor beastie. A’ that travel has upset his disposition.”

  “He’s a mess,” Homer said. “He even had to go through a revolving door.”

  “A revolving door?” The man’s bushy eyebrows flew to the top of his head as he stared up at Homer. “Bassets hate revolving doors. Everyone knows that.”

  “But he went through one because he wanted an answer to the map, same as us,” Homer said. Of course, this was a huge stretch of the truth, but it was the only tactic Homer could think of. The man wasn’t fond of people, but his love of basset hounds might persuade him to offer more assistance. “Just think how disappointed Dog’ll be if we have to go all the way back to the country without the answer to our question. We don’t have any celestial navigators back home. We might have to go on another long trip to find one. We might have to go through more revolving doors.”

  The man threw his hands up in the air. “Nae, dinna be doing that. Let the beastie rest.” He stomped back over to the table, climbed the stool, and sat on the blackboard surface. “Whit kind of person makes a basset hound walk through a revolving door?” he mumbled as he grabbed a ruler, a calculator, a protractor, a compass, and a bunch of other things. “Whit is the world coming to?”

  “Good work,” Lorelei said, nudging Homer’s arm as he returned to the stool. He smiled and rested his arms on the table, watching as the man began to take measurements of Rumpold’s map. Anticipation shot down Homer’s spine. One day, a long time ago, Rumpold Smeller the Pirate had stared up at the sky. Draco the dragon had greeted him. Wherever Rumpold had stood at that moment in time was where he’d buried his treasure.

  Together, Homer, Lorelei, and Hercules took a long breath, their lungs filling with possibility.

  The answer was just a few calculations away.

  The red-haired man’s hands whipped here and there as he measured, wrote, erased, then measured and wrote some more. Chalk dust choked the air. When he’d covered one spot of the table with letters and numbers, he moved to another spot. Soon he was running back and forth between scribblings, muttering all the while. “Got tae determine the celestial sphere.” Mutter, mutter. “Radius AC for the plumb line.” Mutter, mutter. “Determine the zenith, then A equals the mathematical horizon of the observer.” Mutter, mutter. “PN corresponds tae the celestial north pole.” And he kept up the mumblings as he scribbled, until the entire table was covered with equations. “Add in the Greenwich hour angle.” Mutter, mutter.

  Homer understood that last bit. “The Royal Observatory is in Greenwich, England,” he told Lorelei and Hercules. “It’s the official prime meridian of the world. That means that for the lines of longitude that run from one pole to the other pole, Greenwich is considered to be zero degrees.” It was a basic fact that every modern mapmaker knew.

  “I know that,” Lorelei said, crossing her eyes. “My head feels like it’s going to explode. How much longer?” she called out to the man, who now stood at the far end of the table.

  “Patience, lassie.”

  An hour passed. Then another and another and another. Homer looked at his Quality Solar-Powered Subatomic Watch. The dials whirled and spun. It was 9:00 p.m. in Seattle and 8:00 a.m. in St. Petersburg, while midnight had come to The City. Homer’s legs had gone numb thanks to sitting on that stool, but he thought it would be rude to stretch out on the floor and nap while the man was working so diligently. Lorelei didn’t seem to care. She’d fallen asleep a few hours back, her head resting on her arms. Hercules was also asleep at the table.

  Homer’s stomach growled again and again. So did Dog’s. He thought about asking the man if there was anything to eat. Maybe the building had a vending machine? He was about to say something when the man started knocking a piece of chalk against his forehead, deep in thought. Best to wait. Rumpold’s treasure was far more important than the ache in Homer’s stomach—and what a treasure it would be.

  Because Homer had read The Biography of Rumpold Smeller at least a dozen times, he felt he knew as much about the pirate as anyone did. Rumpold had been born to a duke a long time ago in the old country of Estonia. Those were the days when the world was only half explored and the blank areas on maps were filled with drawings of sea serpents and monsters. Adventure awaited anyone brave enough to set sail.

  And set sail was exactly what Rumpold did. With money he “borrowed” from his father, he bought a three-masted schooner and a crew and headed for ports unknown. And soon after, his reputation for thievery and villainy was the topic of gossip all over the world. The tales of his unpleasant temper were recorded in a few songs, one of which Homer began to hum.

  Rumpold Smeller’s a dastardly feller.

  His teeth be yeller, his breath be foul.

  If you steal his booty, he’ll kick your patootie,

  Slit your throat with his sword and make you howl.

  Homer stopped humming. The little man was staring at him. How stupid he was to hum that song. What if the man began to suspect the connection between the song and the map? “It’s just a song,” Homer said. “I… I don’t even know what it’s about.”

  “Ah dinnae care nothin’ aboot songs,” the man said grumpily. He stepped over Lorelei’s sleeping head and cleared a new spot on the table for his calculations.

  Time passed. Homer’s eyelids drooped. He closed them for a moment. Sleep crept closer and closer. His eyelids pressed heavier and heavier. He imagined his goose-down pillow from back home and the quilt his grandmother had made. Sleep wrapped its arms around him and…

  “Got it!” the man announced.

  “Huh?” Homer sat up, his eyes popping open. “What?”

  “What’s going on?” Lorelei asked, jolting awake. Her hair was matted to her forehead.

  Hercules rubbed his eyes. “Did something happen?”

  “Ah’ve got it,” the man said from the center of the table. “Ah’ve got the coordinates. Ah’ve got the spot where yer mapmaker was standing.” He drew a circle around two sets of letters and numbers.

  Homer took a long, deep breath to make certain he was actually awake. “He’s got it,” he whispered with amazement. Trying to get a better view, Homer climbed up onto the table and leaned over the circled coordinates, but as he did so, his membership coin and its chain slipped out from his shirt.

  The man pointed at the dangling coin and bellowed, “Ye’r a member of L.O.S.T.! Ye came here tae spy on me!” He gripped the ends of his braids. “Ah shoulda known. Ye said ah left the
door open, but ah never leave the door open. Ye got in here with yer coin.”

  Homer quickly tucked the coin back into his shirt. “We aren’t spying on you,” he said. “I promise we aren’t.” Lorelei and Hercules added their assurances that no one was spying.

  “Mockingbird,” the man hissed. “He sent ye here. Well ye can tell Mockingbird that ah’m nae interested in goin to one of his meetins. Ah dinna like meetins. Too many people at meetins. And ye can tell Mockingbird that ah have no more Celtic coins. No more, ye hear me?” The man jumped off the table and stomped over to his cot.

  Suddenly it dawned on Homer—he knew who this man was. He grabbed Hercules by the arm, pulling him to the corner so they could talk without Lorelei overhearing. “Do you think he’s Angus MacDoodle?”

  Hercules, still groggy, yawned and rubbed his eyes again. “Angus who?”

  “Angus MacDoodle. You know. The L.O.S.T. member who never goes to the meetings.”

  One of Hercules’s duties as records keeper was to take attendance at the meetings. “Oh, that guy,” he said with a nod. “His Lordship was always trying to get him to come and vote on agenda items. I tried to send him a notice about Lord Mockingbird’s funeral, but no one knew where to send it. He’s been in hiding for a long time. But I didn’t know he was a celestial navigator.”

  “I didn’t know that, either,” Homer said. “He’s famous for finding those Celtic coins in his backyard.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Lorelei asked, sliding between them.

  While Homer didn’t want Lorelei to find out any more secret facts about L.O.S.T., it would be impossible to keep this one from her because Angus was giving it away all by himself.

  “Ah had me a perfectly lovely life in the Highlands,” the man grumbled, “minding ma own business. No one tae talk to but the birds and no sounds but the breeze in the heather.” Angus grabbed a plaid suitcase from under his bed and began stuffing clothes into it. “Ah had ma wee cottage on the bluff. No city lights or pollution tae block the stars. But then ah found those blasted coins, and everything changed.”