The Mummy's Curse Read Online Free

Stad suggested.
    â€œOkay, well, the stick figures don’t form letters, but they do stand for letters.…”
    â€œThey’re semaphores!” announced a boy named Connor after Ms. Stad called on him. “They’re supposed to be holding flags, but if you look at the position of their arms, you can figure out what each letter is. The first one is
b
—”
    â€œDon’t tell!” Ms. Stad said. “Let the rest of the students try to decode the letters by themselves. Everyone, use your semaphore decoder card to find the answer.”
    The students pulled out their decoder cards from their desks. As part of their language unit, Ms. Stadelhofer had made decoder cards for the students for each new code they were learning. The kids thumbed through their packs until they found the one with semaphores. Moments later, most of the students had translated the stick figure message.
    Ms. Stad called on Spencer, Connor’s twin brother, who gave the answer.
    â€œBut I still don’t know what it’s supposed to mean,” Spencer said, frowning.
    â€œThere’s more to it,” Cody said to the class. “You’re supposed to look at the title of the picture, too.”
    The students continued to study Cody’s picture, but no one said anything more.
    â€œHow about another hint?” Ms. Stad said.
    â€œOkay, um … remember what Ms. Stad taught us during handwriting: Don’t forget to dot your
i
’s and cross your
t
’s.”
    After a few minutes, one hand went up.
    â€œMariaElena?” Ms. Stad said. “Do you know the answer?”
    She nodded, grinning. “The title is actually written in
hidden
Morse code.”
    â€œNuh-uh,” said Matt the Brat, raising his hand. “There’s no dots or dashes.”
    M.E. stood up and moved to the front of the room. She pointed to the first word,
artistic
, then said, “Do you see any dots or dashes in that word?”
    â€œOoh!” said several class members, as they realized what she meant.
    Connor raised his hand. “The
t
’s and
i
’s are supposed to be dashes and dots! The code hidden in the word
artistic
is actually
t i t i
—dash, dot, dash, dot. That’s the letter
c
in Morse code!”
    â€œVery good, Connor!” Ms. Stad wrote the dots, dashes, and letters on the board above the picture as the students called them out.
    t i t i -.-. t t t - - - t i i - . . i .
    Using their Morse code decoder cards, the students quickly deciphered the hidden message.
    Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page and this page , this page .
    â€œNice work, Cody!” Ms. Stad said. “You hid the message well, yet it was still right in front of our eyes. I love the way you used pictures and words to hide two different messages. That’s a perfect example of steganography.”
    Cody felt her face flush hot. She was glad her teacher liked her work, but she was embarrassedto receive such praise in front of everyone. She returned to her seat and sat down, hoping the other students would stop looking at her.
    â€œAll right, class,” Ms. Stad said, drawing attention away from Cody. “There’s one last picture. Does anyone know what the concealed message is here?” She pointed to the image.

    The students grew silent as they gazed at the picture of a triangle with an eye in the middle. To Cody, the drawing sort of looked Egyptian, reminding her of the pendant Ms. Cassatt wore around her neck, but she had no idea what it was supposed to mean.It didn’t appear to have any letters or symbols, other than an eye and a triangle. Was there really a message hidden in the picture? She worked on translating the Egyptian hieroglyphs underneath, but the letters formed nonsensical words.
    For the first time in a long while, Cody was completely stumped.

M s. Stad waited a few more seconds to see if anyone could decipher the last picture.