Cape Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

7

The instant that Pele vanished, Mabel jumped up onto Captain Cook's table. He began to speak: "These storms—great heavens, who are you?"

"Wooo!" Mabel moaned. "Listen, Captain Cook! Woooo! You must return to Hawaii!"

"Return—to the Sandwich Islands?" he asked, clearly confused.

"Whatever! Your mission there is not finished!"

"Mission? Mission? My mission is to discover the Northwest Pasage!"

Dipper began, "Mabel—"

Mabel overrode him: "MAYBE you think so, but you must go back, go back, and, uh, map all of the Sandwich Islands! Yes, you must! And, um, persuade the natives to give up their stealy-stealy ways!"

"Their—I'm afraid I don't—what are you, anyway, and how did you suddenly appear like that?"

"I am the Ghost of Voyages Yet to Be! I've been sent to tell you that only you can prevent theft among the natives! And forest fires, but that's just being careful in the wilderness. No, you must be an example! You have a stone from Hawaii! Go to the king of the islands and return it to him! That will make the natives stop stealing everything from British ships! Remember! Woooo! Wooo! Uh, Pele, little help here?"

The whole cabin flashed with brilliant orange light—and when it faded, time had stopped again. Cook leaned back in his chair, frozen, his mouth open in either astonishment or anger. Or perhaps acute indigestion, it was hard to tell. "Yes!" Mabel said, punching the air. "That's what I'm talkin' about! Let's fix this up and I'll get out of here and then Pele can start everything up again!"

Ford mumbled, "Uh, fix what up—?"

"First, this!" Mabel said. She grabbed the chunk of solidified lava and stuffed it inside Cook's vest. "Now to make sure—" she tore a blank page from the book in front of Cook.

"Hey!" Dipper said. "That's probably the ship's log!"

"It's a book, dum-dum!" Mabel said. "Sheesh, Dip, I think you need glasses! A log! You've been wandering in the woods too long . . . where's a ballpoint?"

"Uh, they write with feathers," Dipper said.

"Ew! Seems messy!"

"Here, here," Dipper said, taking a somewhat toothmarked pen from his inner pocket and handing it to her.

"Great!" She scrawled something on the torn-out sheet, folded it, and wrote on the outside: This is for Captain Cook's eyes only! TOP SECRET!

"You dotted the I's with little hearts," Dipper pointed out.

"That's OK. This'll creep him out! I told him to remember his mission and to hand the rock back to the king of Hawaii. When this note shows up out of nowhere, it should make him do what it says. This time stop probably won't last very long, so Mabel's out! Peace!" She blew them a kiss and ran through the doorway.

"What . . . was that?" Ford asked.

"I think she got it from Phineas and Ferb," Dipper said.

"Friends of hers?"

Dipper shrugged. "Who knows?"

"Perhaps before things begin to move again, we had better take our leave as well."

They made their way back to the deck, Ford swung himself over the side and slipped down the rope to where the Stan O' War II idled, and Dipper followed. Mabel was waiting for them. "Grunkle Stan's all seized up like Cook," she said. "When will Pele start time—oh, I guess she has."

Because suddenly the wind roared and pelted them with sleet, the boat rocked alarmingly, and the sails cracked overhead.

Ford yelled, "Get us out of here, Stanley!"

For a change, Stan didn't argue but throttled up—and in two seconds they were away from the ship, away from the storm, and nearly skimming over the dark, calm water.

"Well," Stan said from the helm, "that happened."

The ocean began to revolve, taking the boat with it in a huge circle. Dipper grabbed the rail. "Guys? I think the whirlpool's starting up again!"

"Wonderful!" Stan snarled.

"Crash positions, everybody!" Mabel yelled.

It was—almost—a repetition of their getting caught in the pool and spiraling down, except they moved in the opposite direction, clockwise instead of counter-clockwise. And after what felt like minutes of spinning, suddenly they were under a normal sky, in early daylight, and Ford, pinned against the gunwale again, gasped and said, "I think . . . it worked."

"Yeah. Kind of anticlimactic," Stanley said. "But at least we're back and in one peace an' healthy. Uh-oh!"

Then everyone but Mabel leaned over the rail and heaved.

Their second breakfast promised to stay down. Ford said, "The instruments show that the anomaly has dissipated I presume that Mabel's suggestion to Cook resolved the situation."

"But how about us? Are we back in our own time and dimension and all that?" Stan asked.

Ford nodded. "I listened to radio traffic and checked the weather station and the time signal. Evidently we came back only a moment or two after the whirlpool took us down to the undersea cavern. Or bubble, or whatever it was."

Dipper sighed. "We should feel kinda guilty."

"Why?" Mabel asked. "I saved our butts! Hooray for the Voyage Ghost! Yayyy . . . "

Dipper looked at her. "Don't you know what happened when Cook went back to Hawaii?"

"Um—he got a fantastic tan?"

"Weren't you listening earlier?" Dipper asked. "Remember about the king of the islands and the stolen boat and—my gosh, Mabel, Captain Cook gets killed when he goes back to Hawaii!"

"Pele said he still had to be punished," Ford said kindly.

"Wait, wait," Stan said, frowning. "You ran into the soccer player down there?"

"I—don't follow you," Ford told him.

"Yeah, you were always a nerd. Look, Poindexter, Pelé was a great international soccer star back in the day. Brazilian. They called him Rei Pelé there, 'King Pelé,' but his real name is Edson . . . something or other, I forget—"

"This was a different Pele," Dipper told him quickly. "A woman, who's like the Hawaiian volcano goddess."

Mabel looked troubled. "I sent the captain back so they could kill him? Oh, man! Way to bring me down, Captain Buzzkill!"

"I'm Dr. Funtimes!" Dipper objected.

"Mabel," Ford said, "if it's any comfort, I think perhaps Captain Cook's time simply came on that return to Hawaii. It was fated to happen. You needn't blame yourself too much."

Mabel sighed philosophically. "Yeah, I guess by now he'd be dead anyway. Or stuck in that time bubble forever. You know, growing up is rotten! I mean every little thing you do has consequences!"

"Are we done with Pele?" Dipper asked.

"I hope so," Ford said.

"Well, we can get closer to home an' do a little deep-sea fishin' anyhow," Stan said.

"That'll be fun," Mabel decided, though Dipper noticed she spoke without her usual overflowing enthusiasm.

But she felt better as the day went on. And that was almost the end of it. However, not quite. After they'd come within sight of Vancouver Island again, though it lay faint on the distant eastern horizon, and after a day of offshore fishing, Dipper managed to get enough of a cell-phone signal to surf the web a little. He told Mabel what he learned from doing so.

Captain Cook did indeed return to the Hawaiian Islands, and he died at the hands of a native guarding King Kalaniʻōpuʻu, just as history said.

William Bligh went on to become Captain of the HMS Bounty—and the victim of a mutiny when he was too harsh with the crew. He survived, became the Governor of Australia—and then was kicked out of office in another mutiny. "I'm glad," Mabel said. "He was a grumpy-grump!"

John Martin survived the voyage, as did most of Cook's crew, but Dipper couldn't find any more information about him.

Then on the last morning before they returned to port, Mabel woke up and yelled, "What the hey!"

She came out of her bunk still in her sleep shirt. "Dipper, did you do this?" She gestured at the necklace of colorful flowers she wore.

"We all woke up with them on," Dipper said. "Except Grunkle Ford."

"I was standing my watch," Ford said, "when something tickled my neck. I realized that this lei had just appeared."

"Yeah, we all got lei'd," Stan said. "What? How come Ford's coughing and you guys are snickering? What did I say?"

"I've seen this on TV," Mabel said, holding out the beautiful floral necklace. "It's a traditional Hawaiian greeting, isn't it? Giving necklaces of flowers?"

"It's a way of saying aloha," Ford told her.

"Yeah, Pumpkin, that's a Hawaiian hello," Stan explained.

"And also a farewell," Dipper added.

"Huh. Maybe Pele was saying goodbye to us," Mabel said softly. "Anyhow, it's pretty, and it smells nice. You know what? I'm gonna save these, so everybody let me pack them when we get back in. I'll dry the flowers and keep them."

"Scrapbookportunity?" Dipper asked.

"Nah, Brobro. I'm gonna be like Captain Cook. One day—one day I'm gonna return these to Pele. Even if I have to go all the way to Hawaii to do it!"

"Sounds like a plan," Stan said with a grin. "Hope you make it, kiddo."

"You know what?" she asked, her voice upbeat again. "We could just turn the boat around and go there right now!"

But, for various reasons, including a desire not to die of thirst or hunger at sea, they decided not to. The leis went into Mabel's overnight bag, and the plans to go to Hawaii she tucked away in her dreams.

And then they headed back to port, where Dipper would discover a marvelous present for Wendy—ah, but that's all another story.

The End