The Time Pirate Read Online Free PDF

it?”
    â€œIt’s a secret.”
    â€œIs this a trick? You know I love secrets more than anything in the whole wide world.”
    â€œI know you do. And you’re going to love this one best of all. Aside from that golden orb hidden in the gun vault at Gunner’s inn, it’s possibly the world’s best secret of all time.”
    â€œOkay. But to get out of our picnic today, you have to promise to do two things. One: Promise I don’t have to carry anything heavy to the picnic, like when I helped you clean out your boat shed. Two: You have to tell me something about the secret that doesn’t give it away but makes me feel better about not sailing out to Storm Island. Today. Like you promised.”
    â€œYou don’t have to carry anything heavier than a picnic basket.”
    â€œThat’s one.”
    â€œAnd the secret is about—well, the secret is about flying.”
    â€œFlying.”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œLike a bird.”
    â€œMore or less.”
    â€œLike Peter Pan and Tinker Bell and Wendy and Michael?”
    â€œSort of.”
    â€œDo I get to fly? Or just you?”
    â€œWe both fly.”
    â€œI already love this secret.”
    â€œI thought you might.”
    â€œBut we still get to sail to Storm Island for a picnic.”
    â€œNext Saturday, rain or shine.”
    â€œPromise delay granted. Where are we going?”
    â€œThose spooky woods, the ones we called the Black Forest when we were kids. Up by Lord Hawke’s airstrip.”
    â€œYou mean the Green Forest, don’t you?”
    â€œNo, I mean the Black Forest.”
    â€œBut it isn’t black, Nicky. It’s green! Just like every other forest on this island.”
    â€œWell. I know. But Black Forest sounds better. So just go along with me on this, all right? Besides, it’s black enough when you go deep inside it, as I plan to do.”
    â€œI got lost in that place for a whole day the summer I was four! It was very, very scary. Why, if Jipper hadn’t found me, I would have just died of starvation or something worse.”
    â€œExactly. The Black Forest is not a place for the faint of heart.”
    â€œNicky, it is a very spooky wood. I still have nightmares about being lost in there sometimes. Do we have to go through there?”
    â€œI’m afraid so. What I’m looking for is, I believe, somewhere inside that dark wood. But, look, I’ll be with you this time. And Jip, of course. Nothing spooks that dog.”
    â€œYou won’t leave me somewhere and run off, will you?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    Kate looked her brother hard in the eye, measuring his sincerity.
    â€œFlying, huh?” she said, sliding toward the end of his bed.
    â€œFlying.”
    â€œAnd I get to fly, too?”
    â€œLet me put it this way. If I get to fly, you will definitely get to fly, too.”
    Her sparkling blue eyes lit up and her wide smile returned. “Be downstairs in five minutes, Nick McIver, or I’m leaving without you!” she cried. Leaping off his completely disheveled bed, she ran from his room at the top of the lighthouse, banging Nick’s door closed behind her and dancing down the curving staircase the led to the kitchen.
    There was only one thing better than picnics, and that was secrets. And, as she’d learned earlier that summer, when they’d discovered the golden orb inside an old sea chest, there was no shortage of secrets on this little island.

    And so they set out that morning on their new adventure. It would not be a long hike. Greybeard Island was the tiniest of the Channel Islands. Jersey and Guernsey, those were the big ones. Ministries and museums and fancy mansions with gardens and stables fit for a king. And although Nick’s home islands were decidedly British, they all lay much closer to the coast of France than that of England.
    Greybeard, though small, was a pretty enough place, Nick supposed, as