16 Nugget's Beautiful Music

16. NUGGET'S BEAUTIFUL MUSIC Nugget felt surprisingly awake, con- sidering it was two o'clock in the morning. She eagerly lifted the fiddle to her chin. Even though she was a pirate, her parents rarely let her stay up this late, and her fiddle playing was

definitely not encouraged by anyone but Grandpa. She would have a new audience tonight and was very excited. Nugget drew her bow across the strings. SCREEEEEEEEECH! sang her fiddle, searing through the darkness. All the rats in Dull-on-Sea stopped what they were doing and sat up on their haunches, whiskers twitching and noses sniffing the night air. Nugget's dad was with her, clutching tourist guide to Dull-on-Sea, complete with a map and points

of interest. They were on the outskirts of town, and he had scribbled a route that would deliver them to the Pirate Piper's ship, the Black Death. "Follow me!" he cried, and they marched downhill toward the harbor. Nugget couldn't look backward while playing her fiddle, but she could hear the rats. Their paws scratched the pavement as they scurried through the darkness, entranced by her fiddle and squealing in excitement.

They started off quietly, but as Nugget followed her dad through town, the rats became louder and louder, a riotous din that almost drowned out her music. Nugget came to a halt beside the Black Death. She hopped onto a barrel, wearily playing her fiddle to an audience of ten thousand rats. She raised her bow from the strings and stopped.

"MUSIC!" Matilda hollered into her walkie-talkie, watching from her vantage point in the harbor office. Arthur Poppycock was fast asleep beside her and oblivious to the night's events. Matilda's dad, now parked on Seaview Terrace wearing his spy gear and a

headlamp, pressed play on his control box. In an instant, the harbor was filled with Nugget's music, not directly from the strings of her fiddle but from an array of tiny, powerful speakers installed around Captain Horatio Rattus's cabin. The Pirate Piper sat up straight in his bunk, whacking his head on a beam. Fiddle music screeched in his ears. "What's that 'orrible noise?" He cursed, his eyes scouring the cabin for its source. "It sounds like a kraken pullin' the gizzards from a mermaid!" He fell from his bed, hands over his ears,