"Martin, Ann M - Baby-sitters Club - Super Special 01 - Baby-sitters on Board!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

"I read a pamphlet/' I told him. "Come on, you guys. Let's get going."
Since Treasure Cay was small, Mom and Dad had said that us triplets could be on our own, just like on the ship, as long as we behaved ourselves. The only thing was, Nicky and David Michael begged to come with us again. This time we didn't mind so much. They made up pirate stories that were almost as good as ours. But we had to do some fast talking to get permission. We got it, though, and so the five of us set off to explore.
"I don't see jungles anywhere," said David Michael, looking very disappointed. "Just hotels and swimming pools. Where are we going to look for buried treasure?"
"Where?" I replied. "Everywhere! Think, you guys. Were these hotels here hundreds of years ago?"
"Of course not," said Jordan. "So what?"
"So years and years ago, this island was probably just as wild as those uninhabited islands. A pirate could have buried his treasure here as well as anywhere else."
"Yeah," said Nicky slowly. "I bet lots of them did."
"Sure," I replied. "That's probably how the cay got its name."
"But everything must have been dug up when they built the hotels," said Adam.
"Not necessarily. Look at all this beach." I pointed up and down the sandy coast of the island. "They didn't dig here. And even if they did, that doesn't mean we can't be explorers."
"Adventurers!" added Nicky.
"Discoverers!" cried David Michael.
"Come on," said Adam. "Let's see what we can find."
Most of the people from the Ocean Princess had drifted away to try snorkeling or sailing or fishing, or to watch the shipbuilders I'd heard about. But my brothers and David Michael and I were happy on the beach. We peeled off our shorts and shirts and stood under a palm tree in our swimming trunks.
"This beach sure looks different from the one at Sea City," said Adam.
"Yeah, no waves," I replied with satisfaction. "Shallow water."
I hate swimming where the water is deep, especially when you can't see the bottom. But here, not only was the water shallow a long
way out, but it was a sparkling clear aqua blue. You could stand in it and see your toenails and every grain of sand around your feet.
"Look!" cried Nicky. He'd waded out as far as his ankles. "Coral! I found coral!"
"Look at this shell!" said David Michael, joining him.
"Throw it back. It's pink," said Nicky, looking disgusted.
David Michael dropped the shell.
We waded through the water, following the coastline, until we came to a tide pool.
"Cool!" exclaimed Jordan. "Look at all those little animals."
We watched crabs scuttle along the bottom. They sent up puffs of sand. And a school of tiny silvery fish darted back and forth near the surface of the pool.
Then we walked to dry sand.
"Let's dig," I said suddenly.
"Huh?" asked the others.
"Let's just start digging. Right here. Right now. Maybe we'll find something. Look at that cliff of sand over there. Wouldn't that be a great place to hide a treasure chest?"
We all began searching. We turned over rocks, we combed through masses of shells,
we dug deep holes in the sand, and we clawed at the cliff I'd seen.
Adam found a comb. Jordan found a pair of sunglasses with one lens missing. Nicky found a lobster daw. David Michael found another pink shell. (Nicky made him throw it back.)
But I was the one who found the treasure map.
It was under a rock, far back on the beach, in a spot where the sand would always be dry (unless it rained).
"Hey! Hey! . . . Hey!" I cried. I could hardly speak.
"What is it?" called Jordan, running over to me.
"If s Ч it's a treasure map!" I exclaimed. I held out the small yellowed piece of paper. "Look! There's a diagram and some funny words. They must be in another language. I wonder what language pirates spoke."
None of us knew. We tried to make sense out of the arrows and X's and lines that had been drawn on the piece of paper, but since we couldn't read the words, we couldn't figure out directions or where the ocean was or anything.
"Let's show it to that fisherman," I said, pointing down the beach to a man at the water's edge. "He looks like a native. Maybe he knows some stories about Treasure Cay."
But when we showed the map to the man, he just laughed gently and shook his head. Then he got a bite on his line, so we left him alone to reel in his fish.
Later, we saw Dawn Schafer walking down the beach with some boy we didn't know. We showed the map to her, but she barely looked at it. She acted like she was in a daze.
"It's a treasure map, Dawn," I told her urgently.
But all she said was, "Mmm."
Disgusted, we let her and the boy walk on. It was almost five-thirty, and we were supposed to be back at the Ocean Princess by then, so I folded the treasure map and put it in my pocket. We headed for the ship.
"You know," I said to my brothers and David Michael on the way, "this map could be for anywhere. We don't really know. We could use it to look for treasure in lots of places. It doesn't have to be a map for treasure on Treasure Cay."
"Right!" cried Jordan. "We'll look every-
where. On the ship, at Disney World. Who knows?"
"Yeah," said Nicky, and his eyes lit up. "You know, there's a stowaway on the ship. Va-nessa and I saw him. Maybe he has something to do with the map and the treasure!"
We all began talking at once. We had big plans.
Dawn.