by Peter Ackers
22
Lunenburg County
By the time Jacky got settled in a hotel room, it was early evening and just starting to get dark. And to rain.
Having a room in Halifax, many miles from Oak Island, was not practical, he had decided. Calling Leo’s mobile, he had insisted she drive him to Lunenburg, where Jacky directed her around the streets until they found a house that had been converted into a three-room hotel. Small, cheap, and close to the action. Perfect.
Leo had offered a nightcap, but Jacky refused. Not because he was resisting her advances, he explained to Leo’s saddened face, but because he wanted to read through the things that Bates had given him. This Leo accepted.
Jacky had booked a room and gone up. The owner, a one-armed Argentinean who had fought in the Falklands War, made him a hearty supper that Jacky accepted gratefully, but insisted on recounting his highs from the war, which the archaeologist didn’t enjoy. Didn’t he realise Jacky was English?
Once upstairs, Jacky had undressed and climbed into the fluffy single bed. With the lamp on and the curtains open so he could watch the rain on the black glass whenever he needed to think. And now here he was, reading.
First Jacky went over the physical aspects of the Pit. They certainly hinted at buried treasure, despite Bates’ misgivings. A rim of carefully laid flagstones across the 13ft wide pit. 10ft down: a layer of oak logs, and again every 10ft down all the way to a depth of 90ft. Since sea level was reached at 33ft deep, the designers had had to install a water-tight seal; this they did with a layer of charcoal covering the logs at 40ft, a kind of putty at 50ft and coconut fibre at 60ft.
After 93ft, serious flooding meant that any further discoveries would have to be by core drilling. At 98ft-103ft, a spruce platform, then more oak, some metal, and spruce again. Some thought the wood and metal were chests filled with treasure.
A little further down, drilling reached a metal layer protecting a cavity. When this was drilled through, the platform collapsed, and all the soil and water above it dropped roughly 15ft. Any treasure the cavity might have contained was destroyed.
126ft and drilling discovered more oak and metal, but this was likely the destroyed platform originally located higher up, before the collapse.
At 130ft, it seemed, the designers had suddenly decided it was time for another watertight seal, this time a major one. They filled the pit to a depth of 154ft with a mix of blue clay and sand. Below this was a cement vault about seven feet high. Below it, another 10ft blue clay seal and then an iron plate at 171ft.
At 190ft there was a layer of rocks and gravel. Natural substances found deep underground - wow! Someone had claimed they were foreign to that land, but no photo was ever produced showing the words “Made in Taiwan” on the rocks. Jacky was with Bates on that one.
At approximately 237ft there was discovered a cavity that supposedly contained the Money Pit’s treasure, although this was at a separate location. But other digs had produced similar cavities, each purported to contain something of worth. That was the problem, Jacky thought. Just as Bates said: there had been so much damage done over 200 years to the area around the Money Pit, the underground was a labyrinth of cavities and shafts; nobody was even sure any longer where the Money Pit was actually located. Today there basically was no Money Pit, just the prospect of something buried somewhere at the eastern end of Oak Island.
Jacky rubbed his eyes, feeling tired but not sleepy. He thought. Beneath the surface of Oak Island was limestone and that made for the presence of natural cavities. The original Pit could have been destroyed by subterranean movement, which would explain the presence of oak and metal and other unnatural substances at locations apart from the Money Pit, but . . .
It posed another question, though: how on earth was he going to find whatever Lawrence Marcellus had buried there.
Whoa, boy, remember one thing: it was a decoy. Who says there will be anything buried at all? Perhaps it was just a little pit designed to give the impression that there was treasure buried. So that whoever dug there would continue to do so for 200 years and still, even with modern technology, not excavate the truth.
That didn’t make sense. Too elaborate for a decoy. Too far-reaching. Lawrence Marcellus only needed to distract the world from his real activity for a short while, until he could unearth Mudammiq’s tomb. And why had he never promoted the Money Pit as the location of the tomb? It had taken the discovery of a depression by a teenager to bring the Pit to light. Why had it been kept so secret if it was meant for the world?
Jacky didn’t know. And the hour was late. He turned off the lamp and tried to sleep.