The Danger Gang and the Isle of Feral Beasts! Read online

  Also by Stephen Bramucci

  The Danger Gang and the Pirates of Borneo!

  For Julien River and Henry Alan—

  two boys destined for lives of adventure

  Contents

  1 A Warm Welcome Back!

  2 Dressed for Adventure!

  3 Danger on All Sides!

  4 Mistaken Identity!

  5 Miss-Taken Mistaken Identity!

  6 Out to Sea!

  7 Jeeves’s Gambit!

  8 Archenemy on the Air waves!

  9 Capstone Island!

  10 The Serpent of the Mist!

  11 Terrible Yellow Eyes!

  12 Blackout!

  13 Hardheaded!

  14 The Edge of Danger!

  15 The Brothers Grin!

  16 No Place Like Hode!

  17 Strange Brew!

  18 Poetry to the Rescue!

  19 A Clean Escape!

  20 Out Foxed!

  21 The Scientist!

  22 Flight Plan!

  23 Dry Landing!

  24 Neesy’s Rare Treasures!

  25 The Brasher Doubloon!

  26 A Titanic Hunch!

  27 Return to Capstone Island!

  28 The Worst of the Best of the Worst!

  29 The Tip of the Iceberg!

  30 Room Full of Ruffians!

  31 Sinking Feeling!

  32 Stories by the Fire!

  33 Fog Rolls In!

  34 Sea and Enemies!

  35 A Party for the Ages!

  36 The Scorpion’s Sting!

  37 In the Brig with Brigand!

  38 Escape Plan Brewing!

  39 Coffee . . . Ground!

  40 Capes and Escapes!

  41 Lost in the Shuffle!

  42 Going Overboard!

  43 Fighting Fire with Fireworks!

  44 The Gang in Danger!

  45 No Place Like Hode!

  46 The Edge of Disaster!

  47 Sato’s Siege!

  Epilogue - The Second Movie Premiere!

  Acknowledgments

  Hello again,

  You probably know all about me after reading and re-reading my first thrilling adventure, The Danger Gang and the Pirates of Borneo! That brilliant escapade ended with your dashing narrator, Ronald Zupan, rescuing his beloved parents from the clutches of a foul-smelling cutthroat named Zeetan Z.

  It’s a tale as old as time: boy flies to Borneo, crash-lands airplane, befriends crazed hermit and his band of fruit-throwing orangutans, escapes tongueless giant, swims through underground tunnels filled with devilish traps, and returns victorious at the helm of a pirate ship.

  Of course, I can’t forget the important roles that my loyal butler, Jeeves, and dear friend Julianne Sato played in this quest.

  FACT: It’s literally impossible to forget, because they remind me all the time. Also, Julianne is watching over my shoulder as I write this.

  If you’ll recall, the last collection of our daring deeds featured notes from Jeeves at the end of each chapter. Sadly, instead of magnifying my dashing exploits, he mostly rambled on about the sport of cricket.

  This time around, Julianne Sato—partner in grand schemes, fencing expert, and eleven-year-old girl still watching over my shoulder—will be adding her thoughts. But instead of chiming in at the end of each chapter, she’ll take up her pen only when she feels the need to highlight my dazzling bravery.

  Nope. I’ll actually cut in whenever Ronald misses something. Like forgetting to mention that it was me who figured out that Zeetan Z and his pirates lived in caves, or Jeeves who knocked out Gunting, the tongueless giant.

  I’ll probably also interrupt every time Ronald says things like “highlight my dazzling bravery” because that just sounds ridiculous.

  More like ridiculously accurate! Now, let us plunge into the hair-raising action of my second magnificent tour de force: The Danger Gang and the Isle of Feral Beasts!

  On a sticky Friday afternoon, near the end of summer, Julianne, Jeeves, and I were alone in the Zupan Manor. My very beloved but very busy parents, Helen and Francisco, were off at their secret research station trying to locate the hideout of the FIB—a local branch of a massive criminal organization called the Liars’ Club.

  Only weeks earlier, the FIB had ransacked our home while my parents were captives of the Liars’ Club’s leader, the infamous pirate Zeetan Z. The second we were back from Borneo, they began searching day and night for the FIB’s hideout, hoping to recover artifacts stolen from our home. Their entire collection had been plundered—even the Brasher Doubloon, a rare coin worth millions. “The villains are toying with us,” my father said, “like a black widow toys with its prey.”

  “They must be near here,” my mother added, tapping her chin, “. . . or so we hear.”

  Ronald’s dad has a lot of sayings that involve dangerous insects. His mom likes to use words that sound the same but mean different things.

  It’s sort of strange . . . ​but you get used to it.

  Naturally, I was eager to help my parents track down our stolen treasures, but on this balmy night, Julianne had asked me to go with her to the movies.

  FACT: A master adventurer never turns down the chance to help a friend.

  Still, I can’t say I was excited about the evening. The film was called Buccaneers of the South Seas and starred Jack Bricklayer, the hack actor who needed the Danger Gang to recover his replica pirate ship during our first adventure.

  The name isn’t Jack Bricklayer. It’s Josh Brigand, which Ronald totally knows, even though he pretends he doesn’t. Also, Josh is a fantastic actor with big blue eyes. “Piercing” blue is how I think people describe them. But Ronald is right about one thing: he definitely wasn’t excited about going to the world premiere of Josh’s movie.

  He was complaining nonstop.

  “Seriously,” I complained, stopping for a moment as Jeeves helped with my cufflinks, “why should I go to a party for this bumbling showman? He should be throwing a party for us.”

  Jeeves tugged on my sleeves and spoke in a low voice. “Ronald, you know that Julianne is excited about this. Josh wrote her idea for using trained orangutans right into the final scene of his movie.”

  “So why aren’t you going?” I asked.

  “Well . . . ,” Jeeves said, brushing the lapels of my jacket and slicking down my hair with his fingers, “I’m just not the movie-going sort. Never have been. Instead, I’ll be attending the ballet, across the street.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll pick you up the moment the film lets out, then we’ll have an ice cream.”

  I would have argued more, but I’ve learned never to bicker when frozen dessert is on the line. Instead, I switched the subject to something that had been on my mind for weeks.

  “Friends,” I announced, “I’ve been thinking a lot about our next adventure.”

  Julianne was across the hall, getting ready in my mother’s bathroom.

  “And?” she called.

  “We’ll need our next daring escapade to be bigger, better, and more dazzling than our first.”

  Jeeves squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh dear.”

  “I thought we were trying to find my parents’ ship?” Julianne asked.

  Back in Borneo, I’d promised to help Julianne track down a long-lost music box aboard a sunken ship. It had wrecked when she was a baby, leaving her an orphan. As far as we knew, the ship was somewhere near Alejandro Selkirk Island, off the coast of Chile.

  “We are going to find your parents’ ship,” I said. “That’s stage one. But as long as we’re south of the equator, I was thinking we could drop by the Peruvian
Amazon. I’ve heard tales that the fabled city of El Dorado is hidden in that dense jungle.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Jeeves said.

  “As serious as a bathtub full of vipers!” I answered.

  Jeeves’s eyes fluttered closed and he drew three slow, long breaths—a pet habit of his when I’ve proposed a spectacular idea.

  “El Dorado,” Julianne repeated from across the hall. “AKA: the Lost City of Gold.”

  “It won’t be lost much longer!” I boomed.

  I heard the bathroom door open and the sound of footsteps. I tried to face Julianne, but Jeeves was straightening my bow tie with one hand while holding my shoulders tight with the other.

  “So, you want to recover my parents’ sunken ship,” she said, “then find the Lost City of Gold?”

  As my adventure partner drew closer, I sniffed lemongrass soap—her telltale scent.

  “Assuming that we get double-crossed by our jungle guide and have our underwater breathing hoses cut by scalawags, we should be able to avoid the second-adventure slump.”

  “The what?” Julianne asked.

  I squirmed to get away from Jeeves, but he had me in an iron grip. Finally, I gave up and used my free hand to grab my adventure journal from my pocket, and pass it over my head to Julianne.

  “Straight from Francisco Zupan,” I said. “The page is marked!”

  “I’ll tell you what . . .” Julianne said, reading down the list. “I’m thinking we should discover a rare species of Jurassic butterfly too. And there must be volcanoes down there, you know, for the explosion at the end.”

  “Sato, that’s perfect!” I said.

  “But . . .” She trailed off. “You remember that school starts in a week?”

  My shoulders drooped and I felt my insides start to churn. “I thought we agreed not to say the ‘s’ word.”

  My whole life, Helen and Francisco Zupan had left my education in the hands of professional tightrope walkers, tiger-wranglers, and, of course, Jeeves. But after losing our fortune when the FIB robbed our house, they’d decided to enroll me in the Bay City Public School System.

  “It’s not so bad,” Julianne said. “We can carpool together. We might even be in the same homeroom.”

  “I’m used to instruction from experts of the ancient adventurous arts,” I said, while Jeeves fussed with my bow tie. “Besides, Jeeves will be lonely if I’m not here to—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me!” the good butler interjected. Our eyes met and he hesitated. “Erm . . . ​That’s just to say, I’ll be great. I mean ‘good.’ That is . . . ​I’ll manage . . . ​ somehow.”

  He finally released me, and I turned to face Julianne. She was wearing a yellow chiffon dress and bright blue slip-ons. Her black hair was braided and pinned up on her head, and she wore a pink hibiscus behind her left ear.

  “You look every bit the movie star yourself, Julianne,” Jeeves said.

  He nudged me with all the grace of a drunken giraffe, and I added a dazzling compliment of my own.

  “Yes . . . you . . . look like a bird—a bird of paradise or toucan. Not a vulture, because their heads are red and smooth from jamming their necks inside the body cavities of dead wildebeest. More like a—”

  “You should stop now,” Jeeves whispered over my shoulder.

  “Indeed,” I said, trying to loosen my collar. “So . . . ​ we’re off!”

  Julianne glanced at my alarm clock. “We’d better hurry. It’ll take us at least an hour to get to downtown Bay City in Jeeves’s motorbike.”

  “Fear not,” I told her. “We aren’t taking that clanking pile of scrap iron.”

  “We’re not?” Jeeves and Julianne asked at once.

  “Friends,” I said, “we’re flying to the premiere in the Zupan family seaplane. It’s waiting around the block at the duck pond.”

  Jeeves’s face went pale. “Ronald, I’ll remind you that not long ago you flew us to Borneo, crash-landed, and our plane blew to pieces in a fiery explosion.”

  Before I could argue this point, I spotted a flicker of movement by Jeeves’s feet. I glanced down to discover my pet king cobra twining through the carpet.

  “Jeeves, look out!” Julianne said.

  It was too late. Jeeves groaned and rolled his eyes as the ferocious serpent shot forward and clamped its jaws right on the butler’s kneecap.

  “Ronald, could you please get this blasted snake off me,” Jeeves said, trying to pry the jaws of my beloved cobra, Carter, from his leg.

  I unwound the snake and let him coil himself around my shoulder instead. “I’m sorry, Jeeves. But if Carter hadn’t latched on to you at this exact moment, we might have forgotten to bring him.”

  The butler shook his head violently. “You are not bringing your pet cobra to the film premiere.”

  I looked to Julianne for help. She shrugged. “Maybe it’s not the best idea. Even a defanged snake like Carter could scare people.”

  “Ha!” I scoffed. “How could a king cobra in a crowded movie theater possibly create problems?”

  Jeeves adjusted his cummerbund. “Do you hear what you’re saying? I feel like you don’t always listen to the words that come out of your mouth.”

  “Sorry, Ronald,” Julianne said. “I think it’s a bad idea.”

  FACT: The hardest part of having three people in the Danger Gang is getting outnumbered.

  I consoled my pet by letting him bite my wrist.

  “Oh my,” Jeeves said, with a glance at his watch. “I’m afraid—”

  “That the only way to make the premiere on time now is to fly in the seaplane!” I cheered, “Carter, you sly serpent, you’ve made this night better already!”

  I ran off to set the cobra on my father’s famous atlas, next to the radiator, then led my friends down the block to the local duck pond. We found the Zupan family seaplane tied up to the dock, with its chrome propeller glinting in the afternoon sun.

  “Climb aboard,” I said, “as Ronald Zupan once again proves that he can handle any aeronautic craft with the dexterous touch of a silver-tailed—”

  The point is, Jeeves eventually agreed to let Ronald fly, since it was only a short trip at low altitude. We used the pond as a runway and I have to admit: everything went pretty smoothly.

  Fifteen minutes later, we splashed down in Bay City Harbor, tied the plane to the wharf, and headed up the street toward the movie theater.

  I was so excited I was practically skipping!

  When we arrived at the theater, we saw a red carpet lined with a crowd of photographers, autograph hounds, and rabid fans.

  “I’ll be across the road at Ridgemont Hall,” Jeeves said. “See you after.”

  He disappeared into the surging crowd and I swung to face Julianne. “Sato, the masses await.”

  I offered her my arm and she took it with a smile. Side by side we glided into the glow of floodlights and flashbulbs.

  “Those are the kids who brought Brigand’s ship back from Borneo!” someone yelled.

  “You two,” a photographer cried, “turn here!”

  Julianne and I spun around, both smiling wide. All eyes were on us. It was too bad my parents couldn’t be there to see it.

  “What are your thoughts on Buccaneers of the South Seas?” a reporter called.

  “Well,” I said, striking another bold pose, “clearly there would be no movie if the Danger Gang hadn’t—”

  Halfway through my sentence, the whole crowd turned away to watch a stretch limousine glide up to the curb. Light from the popping flashbulbs bounced off its tinted windows.

  “It’s him!” someone yelled.

  The door swung open and a man with a stubbly chin and aviator sunglasses exited the car. The crowd went wild—failing to realize that Sato and I were the real adventurers and the man they were gawking over was nothing more than a handsome, charming, internationally beloved actor.

  “Josh, who designed your tuxedo?” one reporter yelled.

  “Where’s
Isabella Montoya?” another called. “A little bird told me she didn’t like the final movie!”

  Julianne cupped her hands around her mouth. “Josh, we’re down here!”

  Brigand looked in our direction and his face lit up. “Julianne! Ronald!”

  He strode toward us—scribbling autographs, hardly looking at what he was signing—then scooped Julianne up in a hug.

  “Ronald,” he said, clasping my hand and raising it high for the cameras, “so happy to see you! Why haven’t you been coming for tea and cake at my estate with Julianne and Old Sato?”

  Before I could answer, he was dragged off for more questions. I scowled at Julianne. “You and your grandfather go to tea and cake with Jimmy Blockhead?”

  She leaned close. “It’s Josh. Brigand. And yes, every Friday. He’s been inviting you, too.”

  I frowned. “Then why is this the first I’ve heard of it?”

  “Because you always say his name wrong,” she said, “and you don’t like him.”

  She had a solid point, but that didn’t make it sting any less.

  “I like cake, though!” I snapped.

  Moments later, Brigand returned and whisked us inside. The noise of the crowd faded as we stepped through the glass doors. In the lobby, a concession girl carrying a tray loaded with candy, soda, and striped popcorn boxes rushed toward us.

  “Popcorn? Cola? Peppermint Patties?” she asked.

  “Thanks,” Julianne said reaching for one of each.

  The concession girl turned to me. I narrowed my eyes and gazed straight into the windows of her soul.

  “Let me ask you a question. Who do you think is more impressive: an actor who pretends to be an adventurer, or a boy who defeats a wretched pirate while sword fighting on a pile of bat dung?”

  Her only response was a confused stare.

  “Let me phrase it another way,” I said. “Imagine you were going to ask someone for an autograph—”

  Julianne elbowed me in the ribs—a technique for getting my attention that she relies on a little too often.

  “Ronald,” she said, dragging me away, “you’re acting particularly weird tonight.”