One whole month had passed and not a single thing was found on Oak Isle. While banging my head on a rock repeatedly sounded like a good idea, instead I quietly started to look for flights home. Dad didn’t know what I was doing—I didn’t want to upset him any more by adding my departure to his Treasure Pit stress—and it felt like I was betraying the whole group. We went out to work several days a week, concentrating on the weekend so the twins could come as well. But, the six of us weren’t enough to solve the mystery it seemed. Something always went wrong, whether it was the pumps stopped working, hoses burst, or the pit just flooded faster than we could empty it.
Then there was always the nagging feeling that this wasn’t what Mom had meant when she said I should spend more time with Dad. Was she somewhere thinking I was a fool as well? Was she rolling her eyes at me for agreeing to help? Were there hauntings in my future when she would appear to me and condemn me for taking her advice too far? Suddenly, I imagined her ghost appearing to me in bed, waving a finger in my face as she condemned my soul for searching for treasure. Rolling my eyes, I grimaced, not comfortable thinking of her as a ghost somewhere, lost in space. But what else could she have meant? Surely, she didn’t want us to just have coffee together and then part after thirty minutes, set for the next few years.
No, most of all, what was bothering me was hearing all of the crazy ideas about what was under the ground. Templars, pirates, and even the Revolutionary War had been mentioned in passing. How did grown men, all of which having had at least graduated high school, actually believe that these outlandish things had happened? And then there were the myths surrounding the island. Apparently, there were ancient Indian spirits who watched over it in animal form and would sabotage workers if they got too close to figuring it out. I was also informed that the Devil’s dog lived here, with its fiery red eyes and deathly bite. Mark swore up and down that he saw the ghosts of two pirates row up to the shore and carry a trunk into the woods. A person in town told me that no one was going to find anything until all of the oak trees had been pulled up and the island was as it used to be. Perhaps the most disturbing of all the myths, though, was that the pit required a “blood sacrifice” before any treasure would be found. Not just one sacrifice either, but seven. That one scared me the most—six people had already died here in their attempts to solve the islands riddle.
“What are you thinking about?” Scott asked, interrupting my grim thoughts as we stood on the beach of Pirate’s Cove, metal detectors in hand. There was an odd piece here and there, but so far nothing of value.
“Nothing really,” I sighed, waving the device over the spot in front of me.
“Flights back home are expensive?” A small grin graced his face for a second as he glanced at me, before returning to his work.
“Does everyone know?” That would be just great if Dad knew and wasn’t saying anything. I’d feel like an even bigger jerk.
“Oak Isle isn’t an easy place to work,” he replied in a contemplative tone. “For more than two hundred years, no one has found anything that would prove there’s treasure here. And yet, we keep going. Why? It’s hard to say. It could be stubbornness, faith, or even downright stupidity. But everyone wants to quit at some point, I believe. Some of us have become accustomed to the look a person gets when they’re ready to throw in the towel.”
“I don’t know how you do it. You spend all of your time out here, or thinking about this place, and you have nothing to show for it.” The confession hung in the air for a moment as he examined something on the ground his detector had registered.
“The pit is here, isn’t it? That alone is enough for me to know that someone did something at this place. There may not be a treasure, but I would like to understand it. I don’t think of my time spent here as wasted. Instead, I think of each day as one step closer to finding out the truth.”
Remaining silent, I followed after him as he moved on, scouring every inch of the sand. The warm May sun shone down on us, making me think of other things that were much more fun to do on the beach. Waves lapped against the shore softly, lulling me into a peaceful state as we walked.
“You know, Samantha,” he spoke again, squatting down to examine another item on the ground. “If I were you, I wouldn’t throw the towel in just yet. Give it a little more time—one month isn’t so long to be looking in the grand scheme of things.”
“There’s nothing here!” There it was, the exclamation I’d been aching to say for days now. “How can so many men, over two hundred years, not find anything after working and working and working? Everyone here is just wasting their time, hoping to strike it rich while they funnel their money into a hole in the ground. There’s probably been more cash spent trying to find out what’s down there than whatever’s there is actually worth. Come on, Scott! You’re a grown man! Do you really believe that there’s a massive pile of treasure down there?”
To my surprise, he laughed, sitting down on the beach, removing his hat, and rubbing the bald spot on his head. “I do, actually.”
“You’re serious? What are you, a pirate man or a Templars?” Sitting beside him, I tried to breathe out my frustrations, already feeling bad for having released them.
“Neither.” He continued to beam, obviously not upset by my outburst. “I think there’s Spanish gold down there, things that the conquistadors took from South America when they came to explore. They would have feared pirates, naturally, so they hid the loot where no one would find it until they could come back for it.”
“But no one ever came.” I sighed. “So that theory makes no sense.”
“It does if the ships that hid it were lost at sea. No one would have ever known what became of them, or where they carried all of the treasure. It was a new world, full of mystery. For all Spain knew, they could have been killed by Indians and written off as lost.”
Groaning in disbelief, I covered my face with my hands. They were all crazy. I’d known it when we first met, and now I knew for sure.
“I just don’t understand how you all keep believing after days and days of nothing,” I muttered.
“No one does. Like I said, it could be a lot of thi—”
“Scott! Sammy!” Dad’s voice burst into our conversation, his form running down the beach excitedly, arms waving in the air like a maniac.
“What is it?” Scott called back, rising to his feet.
“Come quick,” Dad yelled again. “To the swamp!”
“The swamp?” Rising to my feet, I brushed the sand from my pants and tried to think of what could have gone wrong. Mark had never found anything, but somehow still managed to convince everyone to let him try and drain the swamp again. It was a huge, muddy mess at the moment. “Is something wrong?”
“No!” The smile on his face probably could have been seen from space.
Shocked, I didn’t even realize that we were running all together then, excitement so thick between us I felt like I would drown in it.
“What is it? What did we find? Is it the door?” Scott asked breathlessly.
“Door?” I struggled to remember anything that had been said about a door before.
“The marsh is triangle shaped, which suggests that it was man made. For years, people have wondered if we’re not supposed to go in to the vault through the pit, but through an entrance in the swamp,” Dad explained, slowing until he was only at a fast walk. “But, no, it’s not a door.”
By this point, we’d reached the car he’d driven over and parked at the tree line. Scrambling inside, we took off, flying down the dirt road to the middle of the island and whatever find was waiting. When we arrived at our destination, Mark and the twins were already there, knee deep in muck, heads bent excitedly over something in Mark’s hands.
“Bring it over here,” Dad said, waving them to dry land.
“It’s a coin,” Eric practically shouted at us, scrambling to follow so he could continue looking.
“Let me see,” Scott d
emanded, holding his hand out.
“Scott is really good with old coins,” Dad muttered to me. “That’s why I wanted him to come right away and look at it.”
Shock continued shooting through me as I watched them all. If they’d found a coin, and it proved to be an old one, this would be the first thing of value ever found on the island. There would be legitimate proof and reasons for them to continue the search.
“There’s a lot of wear on it,” Scott spoke as he examined it. “It’s definitely been in there for a while, I can’t say how long for sure. What’s this?” Rubbing his thumb over the edge of the coin, he brushed away more of the mud before a sharp intake escaped him.
“What is it?” Dad asked excitedly.
“It’s a date,” he replied almost reverently. “Sixteen eighty three, it looks like to me.”
Mark began whooping and hollering, dancing around the edge of the swamp like a boy who’d just had his first kiss. The twins were clapping each other on the back and hugging, excited howls coming from them as well. Dad even fist pumped the air while I simply stood there looking confused.
“Here, Samantha,” Scott said, motioning me over amidst the celebrations. “Have a look.” He handed the coin to me, a truly joyful smile on his face.
It was about the size of a half dollar and unevenly shaped into a circle. It didn’t look like any coins I’d seen around before. Where Scott had rubbed, I could clearly see the date, as worn as it was. “I don’t understand,” I spoke as I looked at it. “Why is the date so significant?”
“It marks the coin as a piece of eight,” he explained. “It was a common form of currency used in Spain for several hundred years. If that is the year it was minted, then it would have had to been dropped here by someone around that time.”
“Pirate gold,” Mark crowed from behind us. “They loved those coins!”
“I know,” I replied, still in shock. “And you’re certain that it’s real?”
“We’ll send it off for testing,” Dad butted in. “But I don’t see how it could be fake, knowing where it was and how long it took to find it.”
“It was in the mud,” Kevin explained to me. “The metal detector started going off so we jumped in and went through it.”
“It went off in a few other places too. We need to get back out there and see if there’s more.” Eric was practically bouncing with excitement, slapping his hands together in anticipation.
“I agree.” Dad was obviously elated, but he was switching back into commander mode. “I think we should stop all activity at the pit and focus on just the swamp for a while. Agreed?”
There were several more whoops from Mark at this as everyone else approved. All I could do was continue to stare at the coin in my hand. They made plans around me and separated into groups to get to work and I just stood there, looking at it.
“You coming, Sammy?” Dad asked, walking back to his car with Scott.
“There’s actually something here,” I whispered to myself. “They found something. A real something.”
“Sammy?” Jerking out of my trance, I looked over to Dad, who was standing next to the car with my door open for me. His face shone so brightly with happiness, I couldn’t help but smile back. “You still ready to quit?” he asked me, chuckling.
Tightening my fist around the coin, I stared past him and out over the bay, feeling the weight of the silver in my hand. “Not a chance.”
Swept Away (The Swept Away Saga, Book One) Page 7