Blackbeard's Lost Treasure

by Caleb Wygal

  This journey had managed to distract him from the horrible sequence of events with Kristen leading up to the night Darwin had called. Even if they didn’t find treasure, he was happy to see Darwin and spend some time with him. Lucas knew the young man had never had much to look forward to or had the means to pursue his dreams. He hoped this adventure gave Darwin the confidence he needed to get a new outlook on life.

  And Lynn, well he didn’t know much about her. Yet. He’d have to wait and see what happened there.

  Lucas directed Earl to guide the boat along the bank near where the part of the peninsula facing away from the ocean was. They could see the ruins of the tabby wall rising from the ground. Near there was a part of the bank that curved in a U near where the peninsula returned to the riverbank headed upstream. Tall sea grass grew up from the riverbed, concealing most of the wall made of rocks and sand.

  Using Google Earth earlier, Lucas saw this area from above where he could imagine a tunnel entrance. The shape of this small area, he thought, would be concealed from anyone floating by on the river. Barely noticeable, although just big enough in which to launch an escape craft.

  The tide was now at its lowest point. They could see the riverbed beneath the green water. He had Earl pull the boat up close to the depression in the bank. There was just enough water to keep the boat from running aground. The water in front of it was only a few feet deep.

  “Darwin,” Lucas said, raising his injured arm in the sling and pointed to the area obscured by sea grass. “You don’t think you could hop out and check out that area right there could you?”

  Darwin could barely contain his excitement. “Sure thing, cripple,” he joked and climbed out over the side.

  • • •

  Darwin landed in the water with a splash.

  “Be careful,” Lynn said.

  Darwin could feel his heart pumping. The sense of discovery he felt at first discovering the map back at the museum and finding those coins on Pine Island paled in comparison to what he was feeling now. This was it. The absolute end of the journey.

  He didn’t want to go back to Raleigh yet, although knew he would have no recourse if they came up empty here. Back to his dull job. Back to his boring life. He didn’t want that. Since setting out on this trip, he imagined what would happen if he found this treasure. Riddick was right; Darwin would become famous overnight. He hoped he’d be able to do whatever he wanted to in the field of marine archaeology. This could open doors previously unknown to him. He wanted to do his part to help the world understand some element of the past. That was his goal when choosing a college major.

  “Look over there on the wall on the side of the curve nearest the home,” Lucas called to Darwin from the boat.

  Darwin waded into the depression. Small crabs darted away and into the water. He pushed into the seagrass and started moving his hands over the surface of the bank. He moved a few paces to his right, going deeper in. His hand hit something and he stumbled. Lynn made a noise while Earl and Lucas looked on. Darwin regained his balance and investigated the area where he had stopped. They saw his hands moving through the sea grass, lost from their view.

  With his eyes focused on the bank in front of him, he shouted, “Guys, I think I have something here!”

  “What is it?” Lucas asked, the pitch of his voice rising with every syllable pronounced.

  Earl eased the boat a few feet to the right to give them a better view of what Darwin was seeing.

  With his hands still buried in the grass, Darwin looked back at them and gave the biggest smile of his life.

  With both hands, he parted the grass revealing a big, dark opening.

  • • •

  Earl dropped an anchor to keep the boat from floating away. Darwin helped everyone climb over the side of the craft and into the shallow water, taking special care with Lucas and his shoulder. Darwin pulled two flashlights from his backpack and handed one to Lynn. Lucas needed his right arm free to help him keep his balance. Lynn would help guide Lucas. She handed Darwin one of the shovels. Earl Grimball had a lantern for camping he had brought from home when he went to get his boat earlier.

  Darwin parted the grass on one side while Earl grabbed it from the other side, allowing Lucas and Lynn to enter the tunnel entrance. She shined her beam around a grotto not much bigger than an averaged sized bedroom. Water covered the floor. The walls were made of dark bricks. The sounds of moving water echoed throughout the space. Darwin and Earl followed close behind. The combination of his lantern and Darwin’s flashlight greatly increased the level of light in the cave. Along the left side of the grotto was a raised area.

  “I wonder if that’s where they kept their raft,” Lucas said. “If it were made of wood, keeping it elevated would have prevented it from rotting.”

  “Could be,” Darwin agreed.

  Along the wall behind the raised area, toward the rear, was another opening.

  Lynn stood on Lucas’s left side—his injured side—and kept an arm around his waist to help keep him steady. She held the flashlight in her left hand. She helped him step up onto the platform and down the length of the wall.

  They stopped at the opening at the back of the cave. She raised her flashlight and shined the beam on the first ten feet or so of the tunnel. The beam illuminated the general direction of the where the house would be up above.

  “Go on,” Lucas urged. Her arm tightened around his hips. She trembled. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he whispered into her ear. “We’ve got you.”

  Relieved and determined, she pressed forward.

  “This is absolutely remarkable,” Earl said from behind them. “No one knew about this tunnel for three hundred years.”

  “There are probably old tunnels such as this all over this side of the United States,” Lucas said. “They’ve just been lost in time. Like this one.”

  They had traveled down perhaps twenty feet of the tunnel when the floor began to angle upward. The walls of the passageway here were made of faded red bricks. The tunnel terminated at a door made of wood, faded with age. Its doorknob had long since rusted in the damp, salty environment and disappeared.

  “Is the treasure behind there?” Earl asked.

  Without answering, Lucas reached forward with his good arm and put his hand in the opening left in the door by the missing doorknob. He pulled. The door creaked on ancient hinges as it swung around. Behind it was a solid wall of brown dirt.

  Dead end.

  Lucas punched the wall in frustration. Everyone else echoed his sentiment in their own way.

  “Earl, do you know where we might be in relation to the old house?”

  The older man tried to get his bearings. He looked around the tunnel and back in the direction from which they came. “I would say if the home didn’t have a basement, then this would have been behind the kitchen probably. In the butlers’ pantry. That would have been a fine spot to hide the entrance to this tunnel I reckon.”

  Lucas didn’t know why, but he had expected a warren of tunnels running in many directions. Similar to one of those ant farms he played with as a kid. Instead, the tunnel was just a single long area leading to a small cave. That appeared to be it.

  Darwin seemed to share the same thought. “This can’t be it can it?”

  Lucas shook his head. “I hope not.”

  “What if there is more to it?” Lynn asked. They looked at her, waiting to hear an explanation. “I mean, what if other parts of the tunnel are hidden.”

  “Like, did Paul Grimball put the treasure in another part of the tunnel and then sealed it shut?” Lucas said. “I had that thought too. That could be why his kids didn’t know about it.”

  “I had the same thought,” Darwin said.

  “Yeah, me too little lady,” Earl—who had the most to gain from finding the treasure here—said. “How do you all think we can find any other spurs to this tunnel?”

  Lucas gazed back behind Earl and Lucas along the long walls leading back
to the entrance by the river. He looked to the wall beside him and thwacked it with his fist, making a solid thump. “We go back and pound on the walls all the way down, listening for anything that sounds hollow or any area where the bricks look to be a slightly different color or don’t quite fit in properly.”

  They nodded and started hitting the wall with the side of their fists, where the action wouldn’t hurt so much. As they moved back towards the entrance of the cave, the sounds of fists hitting walls resonated in their ears.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thwunk!

  Earl, Lucas, and Darwin stopped what they were doing and looked over at where Lynn stood staring at the section of the wall where her small fist made the muffled sound. Darwin stepped over and hit the wall a few more times to make sure it hadn’t been a mistake.

  Thwunk!

  Thwunk!

  Thwunk!

  “Guys,” he said he said to Earl and Lucas. “You might want to come over here.”

  They all gathered around the big man. The bricks on the section of the wall where the noise came from didn’t quite fit in perfectly. They were the same color as the rest of the bricks, likely from the same batch. However, in this spot, the mortar in between the bricks was noticeably darker. The area went from floor to ceiling and was about three feet wide.

  “This part was bricked in at a different time,” Earl said. Everyone agreed.

  “Step back,” Darwin said, hefting the shovel.

  The three moved aside, giving Darwin room to work. He handed his flashlight to Lucas and then turned the shovel around where the he was gripping the wood near the spade end. He reared back as much as the width of the tunnel allowed, and plunged the wooden end of the shovel into the wall. The tip of the handle made contact on a junction of mortar between four bricks, causing a loud noise. The wood of the handle splintered from the force used by Darwin.

  Where the shovel handle hit the wall, bricks caved inwards at an angle, exposing a thin crack of open air on the other side.

  A strong, musty scent bled through the opening causing the four of them to move back involuntarily. Earl held the lantern above the opening giving them better light.

  Darwin threw the broken shovel aside. It clattered down the tunnel. He lifted his big foot and stomped at the exposed area causing a few of the bricks to crumble under his strength. The space of the opening was now about the size of a baseball.

  Lucas dropped down to his knees and shined the beam through the opening. The small size of the opening and the power of the flashlight limited his vision. He had the sense that the area behind the bricks was large. Larger than the grotto at the cave entrance.

  “What do you see? What do you see?” an excited Darwin asked. “Is it in there?”

  Lucas stood, dusted off his knees, and handed the flashlight to Darwin. “You tell me big guy.”

  Darwin’s hand was shaking as he accepted the handle of the flashlight from Lucas. He kneeled, wiped some dust off from the edges of the hole, and pointed the flashlight through the opening.

  Through the hole, light reflected off objects of many varying shapes and sizes. Straight edges, rounded curves and more. Much more.

  Gold. Gold was everywhere! Gold bars. Gold coins. Gold ingots. Gold jewelry. He saw the dull gleam of silver and copper in places as well as the sparkle of different colors of jewels. Underneath it all were dozens of wooden crates the size of shoeboxes.

  Overcome with joy, tears flooded his eyes. He began sobbing, lowered the flashlight in one hand, and covered his face with the other.

  Lynn and Lucas got down beside him and wrapped him in an embrace. Lucas said to him, “There, there big fella. You did it. You found Blackbeard’s treasure.”

  Darwin ran the back of his arm across his nose. “No Lucas. We found Blackbeard’s treasure. I couldn’t have done this without you, or Lynn, or Mr. Grimball.”

  Getting antsy, Grimball pushed forward, moving them out of the way of the hole. “Gimme one of those flashlights,” he said. Lynn handed him hers. He turned with it and looked in the hole. He gulped. “Holy hell. I’m rich!”

  He handed the flashlight back to Lynn and did a jig, singing, “I’m rich, I’m rich, I’m rich.”

  Darwin, Lucas, and Lynn shared a smile and watched the man dance.

  • • •

  Earl left them there. He owned a construction company and said that he thought he had a sledgehammer in the back of his truck. He’d go retrieve it and be back.

  Lucas and Darwin sat side-by-side on the floor of the tunnel facing the new hole in the wall while they waited. Lynn sat close to Lucas.

  Their conversation had little to do with the treasure on the other side of the wall or the events leading them to this point. At some point, Lynn’s hand crept over and she intertwined her fingers with Lucas’s. They laughed. They joked. They were happy. They were relieved it was over.

  After a few minutes, Darwin turned serious. “So, what do you think he’s going to do with the treasure?” he said of Earl. “Think he’ll donate it? Give us some, or keep it for himself?”

  “Darwin, I don’t know what to tell you,” Lucas shrugged. “It’s out of our hands now. I hope he does the right thing, although in this situation, there is no clear-cut answer to that. It’s on his land. By what the South Carolina state law says, he is the rightful owner. Maybe he has a philanthropic side and donates it to a museum. Who knows? He could give us all equal shares. I don’t know anything about this man other than what we’ve seen today and what Angie told us back at McConkey’s. That he can be cantankerous.

  “Whatever he does Darwin,” Lucas said, “know this: we helped shine a light on a lost chapter in history today. All of us.”

  Darwin leaned his head back against the wall and thought, that’s all I really wanted.

  • • •

  Earl Grimball returned a bit later, hefting the sledgehammer as though it was a Super Bowl Trophy. He came in and handed it to Darwin who set to work on demolishing that part of the wall. Within a few minutes, he created a space large enough for all of them to step through.

  As was his right, Earl went in first. The treasure almost completely filled back half the cave. Lucas estimated the space was around four-hundred square feet. Tons of gold and silver coins, statues, jewelry, and trinkets made up the treasure.

  • • •

  Later, they celebrated with Earl’s wife at the restaurant above the marina. They watched a dramatic sunset go down over the A.C.E. River Basin through the windows of the eatery. A few dolphins played in the waters beside the docks of the marina while a dozen seagulls floated by overhead. Families going out for an evening stroll in the waters of Edisto floated by.

  Lucas sipped a beer with his arm around Lynn gazing at the grand vista. His shoulder was already feeling better. He had discarded the shoulder sling in Lynn’s car on the way here. He thought back to the half sun Blackbeard had drawn on his map indicating a sunset and laughed.

  “What is it?” Lynn asked.

  Lucas tilted the bottle at the sunset. “That,” he said. “Just consider all the tales of Blackbeard and how he was supposed to be this big, bad pirate who brought terror to the New World during his time.”

  “What about it?” Darwin asked.

  “I was just thinking,” Lucas said, “that it’s humanizing to think that a salty, vicious and violent pirate who became famous for his fearsome persona could still take the time to appreciate something as beautiful as that sunset.”

  Everyone agreed.

  They celebrated well into the night.

  EPILOGUE

  Riddick would never walk without a cane again. The kick from Darwin saw to that. Riddick may never see the outside of a jail again either.

  Because he fired his guns, the police charged him with attempted murder. After speaking with Darwin, Lucas and some of the other townspeople of Bath, they discovered his many transgressions. The entire town li
ved in fear of him. No more. The police investigators attained a warrant from a local judge and searched his home. In it, they found evidence tying Riddick to several missing persons cases, including correspondence and valuables previously belonging to those who had disappeared.

  When they went back and seized Riddick’s yacht at the Harbour Town Marina, they discovered that he stole it a year earlier from an elderly couple in Key West.

  Blackbeard the pirate created a façade to make people believe he was something more than he truly was. Riddick impersonated the pirate in more ways than one. Riddick apparently didn’t have as much money as he let on he did. The board of directors of the shipping company found out long ago that Riddick spent money with reckless abandon and placed a limit on how much he could spend. He resorted to theft and piracy to get the rest of what he wanted.

  That greed was now going to send him to prison for the rest of his life.

  The day after they found Blackbeard’s treasure, Darwin and Earl Grimball arranged for how to deal with it. They called an appraiser to come down from Charleston to estimate the value of the treasure. The man was astonished at what they had found. After looking through a few of the shoebox-sized chests and studying their contents, he placed a conservative estimate of one hundred million dollars on the treasure’s value. Possibly much more depending on what they found as they sorted through the chests.

  Grimball wanted to keep most of it for himself. He wanted to retire and set up his family to lead comfortable lives for generations to come. He donated a portion to the South Carolina Maritime Museum in Georgetown near Charleston with the provision that Darwin lead the research.

  As for the three who led him to the find, Earl Grimball let them choose one sealed treasure chest apiece. They couldn’t look at the contents beforehand. He told them to imagine they were opening a box of Cracker Jacks. They didn’t know what surprises might be in store. They figured each chest was worth at least a million.