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Starcatchers 01 - Peter and the Starcatchers
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ALSO BY DAVE BARRY
FICTION
Tricky Business
Big Trouble
The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog
NONFICTION
Dave Barry’s Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?
Boogers Are My Beat
Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway: A Vicious and Unprovoked Attack on Our Most Cherished Political Institutions
Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down
Dave Barry Turns 50
Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus
Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs
Dave Barry in Cyberspace
Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys
Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides
Dave Barry Is NOT Making This Up
Dave Barry Does Japan
Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
Dave Barry Talks Back
Dave Barry Turns 40
Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States
Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits
Homes and Other Black Holes
Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex
Dave Barry’s Bad Habits: A 100% Fact-Free Book
Claw Your Way to the Top: How to Become the Head of a Major
Corporation in Roughly a Week
Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead
Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9
Months with Tools You Probably Have Around the Home
The Taming of the Screw
ALSO BY RIDLEY PEARSON
Kingdom Keepers—Disney After Dark
Kingdom Keepers II—Disney at Dawn
Kingdom Keepers III—Disney in Shadow
Steel Trapp—The Challenge
Steel Trapp—The Academy
Killer Weekend
Cut and Run
The Body of David Hayes
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life as Rose Red (writing as Joyce Reardon)
The Art of Deception
Parallel Lies
Middle of Nowhere
The First Victim
The Pied Piper
Beyond Recognition
Chain of Evidence
No Witnesses
The Angel Maker
Hard Fall
Probable Cause
Undercurrents
Hidden Charges
Blood of the Albatross
Never Look Back
WRITING AS WENDELL MCCALL
Dead Aim
Aim for the Heart
Concerto in Dead Flat
ALSO BY DAVE BARRY & RIDLEY PEARSON
Peter and the Shadow of Thieves
Peter and the Sword of Mercy
Peter and the Secret of Rundoon
Escape from the Carnivale
Cave of the Dark Wind
This book is not authorized for sale by Publisher
in the countries of the European Union.
Copyright © 2004 Dave Barry and Page One, Inc.
Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Greg Call
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
For information address Disney Editions, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
Printed in the United States of America
Printing History
Disney Editions/Hyperion Books for Children hardcover edition / September 2004
Disney Editions/Hyperion Paperbacks for Children trade paperback / April 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
ISBN 978-1-4231-4094-8
Visit www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank whoever invented e-mail, because without it
we don’t know how a guy in St. Louis could write a book
with a guy in Miami.
We thank Wendy Lefkon, who read the first few chapters and
decided she wanted to publish the book, even though at the
time she had no idea where it was going, and neither did we.
We thank Ridley’s agent, Al Zuckerman, and Dave’s agent,
Al Hart, because when you have two Als representing you,
you KNOW you’re in good hands.
We thank Judi Smith, Nancy Litzinger, and Louise Marsh,
who keep us sane and organized, or at least organized.
And above all we thank Paige Pearson, for asking her daddy
one night, after her bedtime story, exactly how a flying boy
met a certain pirate.
—Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
To Storey, Rob, and Sophie; Marcelle and Michelle;
and of course, Paige, whose idea this was
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
CHAPTER 1: The Never Land
CHAPTER 2: The Second Trunk
CHAPTER 3: Molly
CHAPTER 4: The Sea Devil
CHAPTER 5: Captain Pembridge
CHAPTER 6: Black Stache in Pursuit
CHAPTER 7: Peter Ventures Aft
CHAPTER 8: Adrift in a Dory
CHAPTER 9: The Rescue
CHAPTER 10: Black Stache Closes In
CHAPTER 11: The Messengers
CHAPTER 12: Angry Words
CHAPTER 13: The Ladies
CHAPTER 14: The Alliance
CHAPTER 15: The Attack
CHAPTER 16: Bad News
CHAPTER 17: The Next Target
CHAPTER 18: The Plan
CHAPTER 19: The Witch’s Broom
CHAPTER 20: Molly’s Story
CHAPTER 21: The Sighting
CHAPTER 22: Blackness on the Horizon
CHAPTER 23: Any Minute Now
CHAPTER 24: Overboard
CHAPTER 25: A Fly in a Spiderweb
CHAPTER 26: Into the Sea
CHAPTER 27: The Return
CHAPTER 28: Molly’s Turn
CHAPTER 29: Abandon Ship
CHAPTER 30: A Helping Hand
CHAPTER 31: The Lagoon
CHAPTER 32: The Wreck of the Never Land
CHAPTER 33: Land Ho!
CHAPTER 34: Reunited
CHAPTER 35: Into the Jungle
CHAPTER 36: Getting Close
CHAPTER 37: Heavy Like a Trunk
CHAPTER 38: The Transformation
CHAPTER 39: Escape
CHAPTER 40: Captured
CHAPTER 41: “We’ll Think of Something”
CHAPTER 42: “It’s Here”
CHAPTER 43: Visitors
CHAPTER 44: Parting Ways
CHAPTER 45: The Watchers
CHAPTER 46: Something in There
CHAPTER 47: A Magic Island
CHAPTER 48: The Law
CHAPTER 49: Into the Cave
CHAPTER 50: Eyes in the Dark
CHAPTER 51: “Bird!”
CHAPTER 52: Mister Grin
CHAPTER 53: The Power
CHAPTER 54: Slank’s Plan
CHAPTER 55: A Close Call
CHAPTER 56: Capsized
CHAPTER 57: An Old Friend
CHAPTER 58: Crossroads
CHAPTER 59: Ammm’s Message
CHAPTER 60: Too Quick for a Cloud;
Too Big for a Bird
CHAPTER 61: Crenshaw Returns
CHAPTER 62: Peter’s Decision
CHAPTER 63: Gone Again
CHAPTER 64: “He Surely Will”
CHAPTER 65: He’s Gone Ahead
CHAPTER 66: The Dream
CHAPTER 67: As If He Knows Something
CHAPTER 68: The Bargain
CHAPTER 69: Reprieve
CHAPTER 70: Almost There
CHAPTER 71: A Good Thing
CHAPTER 72: Change of Plans
CHAPTER 73: “Just Watch”
CHAPTER 74: The Golden Box
CHAPTER 75: Forever
CHAPTER 76: Peter’s Plea
CHAPTER 77: Attack
CHAPTER 78: All the Time in the World
CHAPTER 79: The Last Moment
CHAPTER 1
THE NEVER LAND
THE TIRED OLD CARRIAGE, pulled by two tired old horses, rumbled onto the wharf, its creaky wheels bumpety-bumping on the uneven planks, waking Peter from his restless slumber. The carriage interior, hot and stuffy, smelled of five smallish boys and one largish man, none of whom was keen on bathing.
Peter was the leader of the boys, because he was the oldest. Or maybe he wasn’t. Peter had no idea how old he really was, so he gave himself whatever age suited him, and it suited him to always be one year older than the oldest of his mates. If Peter was nine, and a new boy came to St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys who said he was ten, why, then, Peter would declare himself to be eleven. Also, he could spit the farthest. That made him the undisputed leader.
As leader, he made it his business to keep his eye on things in general. And he was not happy with the way things were shaping up today. The boys had been told only that they were going away on a ship. As much as Peter didn’t like where he’d been living for the past seven years, the longer this carriage ride lasted, the scarier “away” sounded in his mind.
They’d set out from St. Norbert’s in the dark, but now Peter could see grayish daylight through the small, round coach window on his side. He looked out, squinting, and saw a dark shape looming by the wharf. It looked to Peter like a monster, with tall spines coming out of its back. Peter did not like the idea of walking into the belly of that monster.
“Is that it?” he asked. “The ship we’re going on?”
He ducked then, avoiding the hamlike right fist of Edward Grempkin. He was always keenly aware of where this fist was; he’d been dodging it for seven years now. Grempkin, second in command at St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys, was a man of numerous rules—many of them invented right on the spot, all of them enforced by means of a swift cuff to the ear. He paid little attention to whose ear his fist actually landed on; all the boys were rule-breakers, as far as Grempkin was concerned.
This time the fist clipped an ear belonging to a boy named Thomas, who had been slumped, half asleep, in the carriage next to the ducking Peter.
“OW!” said Thomas.
“Do not end a sentence with a preposition,” said Mr. Grempkin. He was also the grammar teacher at St. Norbert’s.
“But I didn’t … OW!” said Thomas, upon being cuffed a second time by Grempkin, who had a strict rule against back talk.
For a moment, the carriage was silent, except for the bumpety-bump. Then Peter tried again.
“Sir,” he said, “is that our ship?” He kept an eye on the fist, in case ship turned out to be a preposition.
Peter was thinking about trying to run away, but he didn’t know if that was possible—to run away from “away.” In any event, he didn’t see much opportunity for escape; there were sailors and dockhands everywhere. Carts and carriages. Near the back of the ship, fancily dressed people boarded via a ramp with a rope handrail. Toward the bow, some pigs and a cow were being led up a steep plank, followed by commoners dressed more like Peter and his friends.
Grempkin glanced out the round window and grinned, but not in a pleasant way. There wasn’t a pleasant bone in his body.
“Yes, that’s your ship,” he said. “The Never Land.”
“What’s Never Land?” said a boy named Prentiss, who was fairly new to the orphanage and thus did not see the fist until it hit his ear.
”OW!” he said.
“Don’t you be asking stupid questions!” said Grempkin, who defined “stupid questions” as questions he could not answer. “All you need to know is this ship will be your home for the next five weeks.”
“Five weeks, sir?” asked Peter.
“If you’re lucky,” said Grempkin leaning out of the carriage now to study the sky. “If a storm doesn’t blow you halfway to hell.” He smiled again. “Or worse.”
“Worse than hell, sir?” inquired James.
“He means if the ship sinks,” said Tubby Ted, who had a gift for looking on the dark side, “and we wind up in the sea, swimming for our lives.”
“But I can’t swim,” said James. “None of us can swim.”
“I can swim,” Tubby Ted declared proudly.
“You can float,” corrected Peter. Even Grempkin cracked a smile at that, yellow tooth stumps showing through chapped lips.
Peter looked down the wharf and saw a much nicer-looking and bigger ship, painted a shiny black. Its crew wore uniforms, unlike that of the Never Land. It, too, was being loaded and seemed ready to set sail. If it came down to choosing between the two ships …
“It don’t matter,” said Grempkin, brightly, his mood improving. “Swim, sink, float—the sharks will take care of all you boys before you get a chance to drown.”
“Sharks?” said James.
“Big fish with lots of teeth,” said Tubby Ted. “They eat people.”
“What if there’s no people in the sea?” said Thomas. “What do the sharks eat then?”
“Whales,” said Tubby Ted. “But they like people better, and there’s plenty of people in the sea. Ships is always going down. I heard about one … OW!”
“That’s enough of your jabber,” said Grempkin, who had a rule against too much jabber.
The carriage pulled to a stop beside the ship. As Grempkin and the boys climbed out, a thick, bald man in a grimy officer’s uniform thumped down the gangplank and approached the carriage.
“You Grempkin?” he said.
“I am,” said Grempkin. “And you are … ?”
“Slank. William Slank. First officer, second in command of the Never Land.” The man made a face as if he’d just bitten into a rancid prune. It occurred to Peter that Slank didn’t like being second in anything. “These are the orphans, then?”
“They are,” said Grempkin. “And you’re welcome to them.”
“I don’t care for boys,” observed Slank.
“Then you’ll definitely not care for these,” said Grempkin.
“We’ve had boys on board before,” said Slank. “They was always stirring up the rats.”
The boys glanced at one another. Rats?
“The thing to do,” said Grempkin, “is keep them disciplined.” To illustrate, he shot his fist sideways, not looking where it was going. It struck Prentiss, who, being fairly new, had not yet learned that it was unwise to stand immediately to Grempkin’s right.
“OW!” said Prentiss.
“Sir,” said James, to Slank, “there’s rats on the ship?”
“Don’t you be playing with the rats!” said Slank, cuffing James on the ear. “They make a tasty treat when the food runs out.”
“The food runs out?” asked Tubby Ted, suddenly reluctant to take another step. “When?”
Slank slapped him across the ear and said, “After we eat you.”
Grempkin nodded approvingly, confident now that he was leaving the boys in good hands.
Peter scanned the area for a place to run and hide. He saw a supply store offering pulleys and hemp rope, some taverns—the Salty Dog, the Mermaid’s Song. Mermaids? Peter wondered. But everywhere he looked, there were sailors and dockworkers, rough men with rough hands. He wouldn’t get ten paces before one of them would collar him, if Slank didn’t collar him first.
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