Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8 They were in the wrong place. Again. Nellie had parked at the Government Records Centre in Kingston. Within a few minutes, Dan and Amy learned from a clerk that they would have to backtrack to Spanish Town and go to the Jamaica Archives there. Fortunately, Spanish Town wasn't too far from Kingston. The main square in Spanish Town was very impressive— beautiful old colonial buildings and lots of tall palm trees. The Jamaica Archives was a more modern two–story, tan–brick building just behind the square. In the research room, Amy filled out the request form for the file she wanted to look at: the transcript for the trials of Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. She gave the form to the man at the request desk. He was a tall, well–built young man with a

name tag that read LESTER. Lester stared at Nellie for a few moments; he seemed fascinated by her nose ring. She was busy untangling the cord to her earbuds and didn't seem to notice. Then he glanced down at the form. "Oh, that file again," he said. "You Americans, you have a thing about pirates." Amy caught her breath. "Has someone else been in here asking for this file lately?" "Maybe not lately," he said. "Let's see— the record says it was last year sometime." Amy frowned. That would have been before Grace's death— before this frenzied hunt for Clues started. Still, it could have been a Cahill…. "Oh, and you know those Pirates of the Caribbean films?" Lester said. "They sent a researcher here and he looked up all our pirate stuff." "Did they use anything they found?" Dan asked eagerly. "Yah, they did, young man," he said with a smile. Amy thought it was a very nice smile, one

that filled his whole face. Not just his mouth, but his cheeks and eyes, too. "Calico Jack Rackham was hanged, and then his body was squeezed into a little iron cage. They hung the cage at the entrance to Kingston Harbour with his rotting corpse as a warning to other pirates." "Ewwww," Amy said. "Cool!" Dan said. Lester laughed. "In the movie, they changed it a little— they had pirates' corpses hanging from gallows instead of in a cage. But that's where they got the idea." He got up and went into the stacks. A few minutes later, he returned with a file folder. Meanwhile, Nellie had wandered off toward an easy chair by the window. Lester stared at her again. "I'll need a driver's license or passport to hold until you return the file," he said. Dan went to Nellie and got her driver's license. Lester glanced at Nellie, then at the photo on the license, then back at Nellie again. Apparently satisfied, he put the license into a little numbered

cubbyhole behind him and handed Amy the file. In the chair by the window, Nellie was already dozing off. Amy and Dan sat down at a table nearby, split up the papers in the file, and began skimming through them. Or rather, Amy began skimming. Dan was still stuck on the rotten corpse. "Do you think there were maggots?" he asked. "Probably. I mean, it's tropical here. He was probably crawling with them." Amy hardly heard him. "Dan, listen to this," she said. "There's this witness testifying against Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who said that they wore 'Men's Jackets and long Trouzers, and Handkerchiefs tied about their heads.' And that 'the Reason of knowing and believing them to be Women then was, by the largeness of their Breasts.'" "Um, that would do it," Dan said with a snicker. "But what happened to them? Were they in jail for the rest of their lives?" "Mary Read died in prison," Amy said, "only a few months later. But nobody knows for sure

what happened to Anne. Some people think that her father— he was a big shot in South Carolina— managed to spirit her out of prison, and she lived under another name for the rest of her life." Dan gave a little snort. "That sounds very Cahillesque," he said. "It's all pretty interesting," Amy said slowly, "but there's really nothing here that points to a clue." She nodded toward the papers she had given him. "What have you got there?" "I don't know," he said. "It's a really long list. I started trying to read it, but it's just all this stuff." Amy took the pages from him. Her heart skipped a beat. "Dan, do you realize what this is? It's the manifest of Rackham's ship!" "Cool!" Dan said. Then, "What's a manifest?" Amy was too excited even to roll her eyes at him. "It's like an inventory list of everything on board the ship when it was taken. Every ship had to have one by law." "Even pirate ships? You'd think they'd be a little looser about rules like that." "Actually, pirates were even stricter about it

than some legitimate ships. The loot got divided up at the end of a trip, and of course every pirate wanted his fair share. So they kept really close track. When the quartermaster was making out the manifest, there had to be witnesses and everything. It was part of the pirates' code, and they were really proud of it." The number and variety of things listed on the William's manifest were astounding. The ship had been carrying all the equipment needed to make a life at sea. There was food: dried fish and salted meat; ship's biscuits, dried beans, salt, rum, and wine, as well as live chickens and turtles for slaughtering along the way. There were wooden trenchers for plates and leather pouches for cups. There were tools and weapons: axes, chisels, mallets, shovels; nets and fishing tackle; knives, cutlasses, pistols and muskets; powder, shot, cannons and cannonballs; leather vests for protection and metal cuirasses for even more protection. There were hammocks, ropes, canvas, chains; navigating instruments, maps, parchment paper, lanterns, needles, buckets, rags, jugs, surgical supplies and medicines. There were