Treasure Fever! (15 page)

‘I think we should ask him to help us find the treasure,' I said.

‘Are you kidding?' said Jack. ‘He's a teacher. He's on
their
side. He won't let us keep it.'

‘In case you hadn't noticed, Mr Brainfright
isn't like the other teachers,' I said. ‘Even when he tries to be, he can't do it for long. And don't forget, despite all our effort, we don't even have the treasure. And there's no guarantee we'll ever get it, either. Mr Brainfright has been on an archaeological dig. He discovered a whole tomb! He's our best chance.'

‘You're right, Henry,' said Jenny. ‘And Skull Island's not going to be ours forever. Sooner or later Fred will realise we've given him a fake map, and then he'll be back.'

‘And mad,' said Newton with a shiver. ‘Maybe even madder than King Aha!'s mummy!'

‘I agree with Henry,' said Gretel. ‘All in favour of asking Mr Brainfright to help us find the treasure, raise your hand.'

Everybody raised their hand except Jack.

‘Sorry, Jack,' said Gretel. ‘You're outvoted.'

Jack shrugged. ‘Don't say I didn't warn you,' he said.

Gretel, Jenny, Newton, Jack and I went back into the classroom.

Mr Brainfright was sitting at his desk, staring into space.

‘Are you okay, Mr Brainfright?' I said.

‘Yes, I'm fine,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘I'm just listening.'

‘Listening to what?' said Jenny.

‘To everything!'

We listened.

‘I can't hear anything,' said Jenny.

‘Listen more carefully,' said Mr Brainfright.

‘I can hear a car,' said Gretel.

‘And a bird,' said Newton.

‘Wind,' said Jack.

‘A dog barking,' I said.

‘Very good,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘There's always something new. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?'

‘We need your help,' I said, ‘with something very old.'

‘Only too happy to help,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘What's the problem?'

‘Can you keep a secret?' I said.

‘Of course,' said Mr Brainfright.

‘Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?'

‘Well, I'm happy to cross my heart,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘Not so keen on the dying . . . or the needle, for that matter.'

‘All right,' I said, ‘we'll let you off that. It's about treasure. Buried treasure.'

‘Ah,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘Very interesting. Where is this buried treasure?'

‘That's the trouble,' I said. ‘We don't know exactly. But we do know it's buried in the school grounds.'

‘Any idea where?' asked Mr Brainfright.

‘Somewhere on that hill,' I said, pointing out the window.

‘I see,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘Well that narrows it down to quite a manageable search. But tell me, how did you find out about this treasure?'

I told Mr Brainfright the whole story. I told him everything that Principal Greenbeard had told me and about our efforts to locate the treasure. I even showed him the key.

At the end of my tale, Mr Brainfright's eyes were shining. ‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘Leave it to me. If there's treasure there, we'll find it . . . or my name isn't Thaddeus Harold Brainfright!'

The next morning Mr Brainfright was not wearing his purple jacket.

Or his orange shirt.

Or his purple tie.

He was wearing a khaki shirt and shorts, a pith helmet and a pair of dusty brown boots.

At the front of the classroom was a large pile of spades, picks and shovels. Next to these there were a few bundles of thin wooden stakes and some balls of twine.

‘Uh-oh,' said Fiona. ‘Looks like Mr Brainfright has got treasure fever too.'

‘Good morning, 5C,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘I hope you've all had a good breakfast because we have a big morning ahead of us. How many of you have been on an archaeological dig before?'

We all shook our heads.

‘Does digging for buried treasure count?' said David.

‘It could,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘But often what archaeologists are looking for is not what we think of as “treasure”, but very ordinary everyday objects that allow us to build up a picture of how people lived in the past. In this sense, a piece of what you might at first think of as junk, such as a piece of chipped pottery, could be regarded as a great treasure.'

‘I'd rather find treasure than dumb old bits of chipped pottery,' said Clive.

‘The point is, though,' said Mr Brainfright, ‘that you never know what you're going to find. That's what makes it so exciting. Now, I know you've all been looking for buried treasure this week so I thought it might be an ideal opportunity to teach you some of the tricks of the trade. What do you think?'

The class nodded enthusiastically.

Not that anybody wanted to find bits of chipped pottery.

We all had one thing on our minds.

Buried treasure.

Proper buried treasure.

The only person not nodding enthusiastically was Jack. ‘I knew we shouldn't have told a teacher!' he said. ‘Now we'll have to share the treasure with the rest of the class.'

‘Well, they were all looking for it anyway,' said Gretel.

‘Yeah, but not in the right spot,' said Jack. ‘They were never going to find it.'

‘Neither were we,' I said. ‘Sharing
something
will be better than not having anything to share at all.'

‘Henry's right, Jack,' said Jenny. ‘Let's not be greedy. Besides, if this treasure is half as valuable as we think it is, there's going to be more than enough to go around.'

Jack shrugged. ‘Whatever,' he said.

‘Now, we're going to do this systematically,' said Mr Brainfright. He went to the window and pointed at Skull Island. ‘We'll begin by pegging out that hill into twenty-five equal squares. You'll have a square each, approximately three paces long on each side. I want each of you to take four wooden stakes, some twine and a pick or a shovel. Let's go!'

Jenny, Gretel, Jack, Newton and I rushed for the equipment so we could be first to claim the area where we'd already been digging.

I figured that if anybody deserved to find that treasure it was us.

We each measured out our squares and tied twine around the four stakes to mark them clearly.

‘What do we do now?' said David from another square.

‘Clear the ground,' said Mr Brainfright. ‘After you've examined the surface you may start to dig. But do it carefully. The trick is not to destroy what we are looking for.'

‘What if we find a mummy?' Newton asked nervously.

‘Well, in that case you
should
destroy it,' said Mr Brainfright grimly. ‘Destroy it before it destroys you.'

Newton began to tremble. ‘I don't want to do this anymore,' he said.

‘He's joking, Newton,' I said.

‘No, I'm not,' said Mr Brainfright.

‘He is, really,' I whispered to Newton.

Newton looked uncertain. He swung his pick half-heartedly.

Everybody else was busy digging. Well, when I say digging, I mean attacking their square of earth with every ounce of energy they had.

It wasn't so much an orderly archaeological dig as complete and utter mayhem.

The air was thick with picks, spades and flying dirt.

‘Be careful, now,' called Mr Brainfright above the din. ‘Don't forget to be careful!'

But his words were lost in the treasure-digging frenzy.

Clive was smashing his patch of dirt apart with a pick.

Gretel was digging with so much determination and strength that an earthmoving machine would have had trouble keeping up with her.

Fiona was on her hands and knees throwing dirt over her shoulder with a small trowel. The dirt was showering all over David, but he was too intent on digging his own hole to notice, or even care.

Gina and Penny were the only ones not digging. They were too busy trotting around on their imaginary horses, using the twine as jumps.

One thing was for sure, though.

If there was buried treasure here, 5C was going to find it.

Whether the treasure would survive the excavation—well, that was another question. But we
would
find it.

I could see students from other classrooms looking enviously out their windows at us.

All the students at Northwest Southeast Central had been spending every minute outside of class time searching for the treasure, but we were the only ones lucky enough to be able to search
during
class time.

This fact was not lost on Mrs Cross, who soon appeared and began marching up the hill towards us.

‘What on earth is going on here?' she yelled.

‘An archaeological dig!' said Mr Brainfright.

‘An archaeological dig?' said Mrs Cross. ‘But archaeology is not in the fifth-grade syllabus!'

‘It is now,' said Mr Brainfright.

Mrs Cross shook her head. ‘You shouldn't be destroying the school grounds like this,' she said. ‘It's not right.'

‘We're not digging up the school grounds,'
said Mr Brainfright. ‘We're conducting an archaeological dig.'

‘I don't care what you call it!' said Mrs Cross. ‘It's destructive and unnecessary as far as I'm concerned. And I'm not the only one. All the digging of the last few days has upset poor Mr Spade so much that he's had to take stress leave. I should have known you were behind it all.'

‘We'll fill it back in again when we've finished,' said Mr Brainfright.

‘You're finished now, Brainfright,' said Mrs Cross. ‘I'll give you and your class fifteen minutes to fill in your holes, pack up your rubbish, and leave this hill EXACTLY as it was! Otherwise I will be notifying Principal Greenbeard of this deviation from the program . . . and you know what that means!'

Mrs Cross turned and stomped back down the hill.

Mr Brainfright shrugged. He had the same sort of sad look on his face that he'd had after Principal Greenbeard had bawled him out in the corridor the day before.

‘I'm afraid we're going to have to finish our dig there, everybody,' he said quietly. ‘Could you please begin to fill in your—'

‘I've found something, sir!' said Gretel.

Gretel's square was right next to mine. I looked into the hole she'd dug; it was twice as deep as mine. At the bottom I could just make out the shape of a box.

Mr Brainfright came across. ‘What have you found, Gretel?' he asked.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I was digging and my spade made a clunking sound. I think there's something there.'

Mr Brainfright was down on his stomach, scraping dirt away with his hands. ‘I think you're right,' he said excitedly. ‘But given Mrs Cross's ultimatum, it's going to take us too long to dig it out by hand. I have the exact tool we need in my car. I'll be right back!'