by M. D. Lee
In only a few minutes I’ve got a good sized hole going, about a foot deep and maybe three feet wide. The next scoop, when I push the shovel in it makes a dull thunk. It’s not the same sound as if I had hit a rock, it’s more like wood. Instantly I realize I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my head like someone’s kicking to get out. Carefully, I take a couple of smaller scoops around where the shove made the thunk.
This IS it; treasure! I can’t believe I actually found buried treasure. I wonder what it’ll be; precious jewels or diamonds, or maybe gold coins? Probably gold coins, I reason, because it was tax money they stole from the French. Either way we are going to be rich!
I dig quicker around the area. When I’m about as far as I can safely go with the shovel I drop down to my knees to carefully scoop more out by hand. Soon I have what’s left of a rectangle box in front of me, but there seems to be no type of lid on it, just sort of a wooden outline buried in the sand. Carefully digging, I remove more damp sand out of the center and around the sides of the wooden rectangle. It’s clearly what’s left of a chest. When I pick up a loose piece the wood crumbles in my hands almost as if it too were just wet sand. I have to be extra careful. The more I dig the more I realize there’s not much of the chest left; just a few pieces of rotting wood here and there. The gold must be close now!
When my fingernails scrap wood, I realize it’s the bottom of the chest. Instantly it feels like someone karate-kicked me to my gut. It’s the bottom. There’s nothing in it! But I have to be sure, so I keep digging all around the sides scooping as much as I can. But the more I do scoop, the more certain I am there’s nothing in it. Not a dang thing! It’s just a few rotten pieces of wood that were probably once a treasure chest with millions of dollars of gold. Blast! This isn’t fair. I grab the flashlight and shine it all around the hole. I’m absolutely positive there’s nothing here. There was probably treasure in it once, but there’s nothing now. I grab the shovel and heave it at the rock sides of the cave. It makes a loud clank when it hits.
“Everything okay in there?” Jo calls from the entrance.
“There’s no treasure,” I say mumbling more to myself.
“What’d you say? I can’t hear you out here.”
Grabbing the flashlight and shovel, I start crawling back out the entrance. “I said, there’s no friggen treasure in here.”
When I poke my head out, Jo says, “Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m certain,” I say. “Have a look for yourself.” I hand her the flashlight. With a disappointed look on her face she takes the flashlight from me and crawls into the cave. With Jo now under The Old Man, I take up her position to watch the trail for Sara.
I’m only in position for a minute when I see Sara running down the path waving her arms. I kneel down to the entrance and scream, “Jo, we gotta go, NOW!” In an instant I can see the flashlight beam aimed toward me as she starts crawling out.
“What’s going on?” Jo asks as she nears the opening.
“I don’t know, but Sara’s waving her arms like a maniac.”
Chapter 19
Jo’s Plan
Sara comes running up to the Old Man cave just about the same time Joe crawls out. “We have to go!” She says excitedly. “They made their delivery much faster than I thought they would. The water was calm enough that they were able to bring the pick-up boat straight up to the long ramp.”
“Really?” I say. “I would’ve thought they’d have had to anchor out and row in, but I guess not.”
“No,” Sara says. “The boat wasn’t that big; maybe twenty-five feet, so it was actually very easy for the boat to land on the ramp. The two guys in the boat loaded the boxes of stereo equipment really fast. Turk and Skinny Pete just stood there while the other guys moved the small pile on board. After the boat left, Skinny Pete and Turk started to cover up the pile of equipment. That’s when I took off. It shouldn’t be long before they’re done.”
Sara looks at Jo holding the flashlight, then says, “How about you, was there treasure?”
With a sour look on my face, I shake my head as we start into a jog along the path. “Nothing but an old wooden box; probably the treasure chest.”
“Really?” Sara says while she’s trotting behind me. “That’s pretty cool. I honestly didn’t think you’d even find that much. So that means there was a pirate who buried treasure; probably Blarney Bart Bonney.”
I’m too disappointed to answer, so I pick up the pace into a run. I can hear both Sara and Jo keeping up right behind me. I shout back to them, “With a little luck the tide will be running out and we can shoot right out of the channel into open water without too much problem.”
At a run, it doesn’t take long at all to get back to the dingy. I stop and bend over to catch my breath before I shove it into the water. Then I see it. “I don’t believe this!” I say pointing a finger to the dingy.
Both Sara and Jo quickly stand next to me. Sara says, “What is it?” But as she asks she sees what I’m pointing at. The bottom of the dingy, which wasn’t strong to begin with, has been kicked out.
Jo says, “Turk must have found the dingy and kicked it out. The hairballs knew we were here all along.”
I look out into the cove, and sure enough, the tide is now running out at a fast rate. There might be several knots of current going past our sailboat on the mooring.
“I betcha we could swim to the sailboat,” Jo says as she studies the cove, tapping her hands on her hips.
“No way,” I say. “That current is too strong. You’d get flushed out into the ocean before you even got halfway.” To make my point I throw a stick as far out as I can, and when it hits the water, it takes off bobbing toward the opening. “We have to find some other way to get out there.” But no great ideas come to me.
Sara points to the old life-saving station. “Do you think there’s an old lifeboat or something in there?”
“Does a coon-dog have fleas,” Jo says. The three of us quickly take off running toward the life-saving station with Jo now leading the way. In broad daylight the thought of the face I saw in the window doesn’t bother me as much. Then I realize it was probably Skinny Pete’s face I saw the other night. Not a ghost pirate. What an idiot I am sometimes.
It doesn’t take long before we’re standing in front of life-saving station, and as rapidly as we can, try to figure out how to get in. Off to the side there are two very large garage doors that look like they should swing out. Coming out from under the doors are rails, that look like train tracks, leading over the rocks and into the water. It’s a rail system for launching lifeboats that’s behind the closed doors.
“If there’s going to be a boat or dingy in here, that’s where it’s going to be,” I say pointing to the doors. We walk in front of the big doors to get a closer look, and in the middle of the fading paint is a sign posted from the US Coast Guard saying it’s been closed down and we are trespassing. Under the sign I notice the big heavy paddle-lock and latch going across the doors. Without thinking I quickly grab the handles of the two doors and start yanking on them with all my might. Everything’s pretty old and weather beaten, so it shouldn’t take much to burst them open. I pull even harder with everything I’ve got, but they will not budge. “Son of a …” I give the doors a swift kick with my foot.
“Maybe there’s another way to get out to our sailboat,” Sara says as she looks back out over the cove.
Jo walks up to the doors and grabs hold of the paddle-lock, and turns it upside down while giving it a good look. “Hmmm…” she says nodding.
Sara points down toward the old wharf back toward the north part of the cove. “It looks like someone’s lobster boat is docked at the old wharf.”
I look where she’s pointing. There’s something very familiar about the boat when it instantly becomes clear. “That’s Skinny Pete’s boat! I get it. When they have a delivery scheduled they just dock the boat there and walk up the island where they’re set up. It makes sense because there r
eally isn’t a safe place to anchor a boat where their stereo equipment is stacked.”
“Then let’s go see if there’s something on his boat we can use to get into the life-saving station,” Jo says.
“Are you completely nuts?” Sara says. “They’ll be headed straight back there any minute now.”
“Then we better hurry,” I say and start to run back down the path we just came toward Skinny Pete’s boat. I know Skinny Pete; he’s never in a hurry to do anything, and certainly not walking almost two miles back to his boat. But we still have about a quarter of a mile to get to the old wharf so I keep up the run.
When the three of us run out onto the old wharf, we stop to catch our breath. I turn to Jo and say, “Last time I was on his boat it was kind of a mess. I’m not sure if we’ll find anything useful to open those doors.”
Jo doesn’t say anything and instead hops immediately onto the lobster boat. I swing a leg over and climb onto the aft deck as does Sara. I start picking around the stern of the boat where there’s some old traps and gear. Nothing strikes me as useable.
“Guys,” Sara says, “we have to do this quick. They’ll be back any minute.”
“I know, I know,” I say. “But there’s gotta be something around here we can use to pry open the doors.”
“Fisher!” Jo shouts. “Grab these and put them in a sack.” She hands me two handfuls of firecracker bricks.
“WHOA! Why does he have these on board? And what are we going to do with them?” I ask while looking at them.
“Would ya just put them in a sack? Here; take these too.” Jo hands also hands me a pair of binoculars. There’s a canvas bag under the gunnel with a bunch of rusty parts in it which I dump out.
“Sara!” Jo shouts. “Grab those lobster buoys over there in the corner.” She points to four brightly painted bullet-shaped buoys, about the size of a milk jug, which are used to tie to the traps. Sara looks at me and shrugs her shoulders then fills her arms with four buoys. While she’s doing that Jo finds two coils of rope and also shoves them into the bag I’m holding.
Next, Jo pulls up the floorboard in the cockpit then hops down to the engine. “Fisher,”she yells. “Hand me a screwdriver; Phillips’ head.” I quickly find one lying near the helm and hand it down to her. A moment later, she says, “Here, grab this.” She hands me up a thing that looks like a large black cup with eight sockets around the underside. Turning it over in my hands I look closely at it.
“It’s the distributor cap, lunkhead. The engine won’t run without it. Put it in the bag.”
Jo sticks her head up from the engine well and looks around for something. “See if you can find a can of oil.”
Luckily there’s one sitting just under the port gunnel. Things certainly are not in any kind of order on Skinny Pete’s boat, but there seems to be everything we need.
“Open the can,” Jo barks at me. My jackknife is still in my pocket, and I quickly flip open the can-opening blade then swiftly punch triangle holes into the oil can. Being careful not to spill any, I hand it to Jo. After she grabs hold of it, I lie down on my stomach and peer down into the engine-well to see what she’s doing. Very carefully she is pouring all the oil over the engine block. Normally the oil is supposed to go inside the engine block, not the outside.
“What in the world?” I ask. But Jo doesn’t say anything and quickly climbs out and places the floor boards back in place.
Looking at me and Sara, Jo brushes some of her red hair out of her face, and says, “Let’s get out of here.”
I scrunch my face and say, “But we don’t have anything to burst open the doors with.” Jo points to the canvas bag in my hand and jumps off the boat onto the wharf. “Come on, let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
I turn to Sara. “What’s up with your cousin? She’s a strange chick.”
With her arms full of lobster buoys, Sara also jumps over the side onto the wharf. “I don’t know. But she might just surprise us.”
We’re starting to tire with all the running around we’re doing, and it’s taken us almost fifteen minutes to get back to the life-saving station. Skinny Pete and Turk have to be on their way back by now. I wonder if they realize we’ve escaped from the barrel. If they didn’t, they will when they get back to Skinny Pete’s boat and it doesn’t start.
I set the canvas bag down by the big doors and Sara dumps her armful of lobster buoys. Jo quickly reaches into the bag and pulls out the distributor cap. “Let’s have some fun with your pirate friends.” Without wasting any time she heads over to the graveyard where I fell through into the open grave.
Jo hops the low fence and kneels down by the open grave. “Fisher. Cut some thin branches off that bush over there. I’m going to need a lot of them,” she says pointing. “And Sara. See if you can find a lot of big leaves. I’m going to need a lot of those too.” Sara and I both get to work. I pull out my jackknife and start cutting off the thin branches. When I collect a good amount I hand them to Jo.
I stand just outside the short stone wall watching. I have no idea what she’s doing. I shout to her, “For someone who’s deathly afraid of ghosts and graves, you don’t seem to have a problem with it anymore. What gives?”
She smirks. “This is too much fun to be scared of ghosts.” She goes back to what she was doing. As I watch closely I can see she’s carefully placing the branches I just cut across the open grave. The way she’s laying them across, she’s sort of making a square pattern. Just then, Sara dumps a pile of large leaves next to Jo. Jo looks up at Sara, smiles, and says, “Thanks, cousin.”
She carefully places them over the branches making sort of a cover. After she’s satisfied with how it looks, she starts to sprinkle dirt and grass over the top. Finally, she stands up, looks over at us and gives a thumbs-up.
I get it. She’s made kind of a Burmese Tiger Trap just like the one Wily E. Coyote makes to catch the Road Runner. And sure enough, she takes the distributor cap and gently places it in the center without disrupting the cover she’s made.
Jo quickly hops back over the short stone wall, and says, “Come on. Let’s get back to the life-saving station.” Both Sara and I quickly follow Jo to the big doors.
“I still don’t get it,” I say. “How the blazes are we going to get these doors open?”
“You’ll see,” Jo says as she reaches into the canvas bag.
“Guys!” Sara calls out. “Look down there. It’s them.” Jo and I stop what we’re doing and look where Sara’s pointing. Back at the old wharf we can see Skinny Pete and Turk climbing aboard their boat.
“Don’t worry, I got this,” Jo says with confidence.
“You got what?” Sara says with a look of confusion. “We need to get to our boat. And it may be too late.”
Jo reaches into the canvas sack and pulls out the block of firecrackers. Pulling a single firecracker off she hands it to me. “Here. Use your jackknife and carefully cut the tops off.”
I do as I’m told and carefully slice through the top that’s really just a paper tube. “Now what?”
Grabbing the paddle-lock, Jo turns it over so the bottom is pointing up, and balances it there. She holds her hand out to me. “Hand that to me. Then cut another one.” I hand it to her, but I want to see what she’s going to do with it before I cut the next. Carefully she takes the firecracker and pours out the little amount of gunpowder into the keyhole. I hand her the next one and she does the same. I think I get it.
She points to the ground. “Sara, grab that little twig over there.” Sara hands it to her, and Jo holds her hand out toward me. “Jackknife.” I put the jackknife in her hands.
With the jackknife she whittles down the twig so it’s very thin. Once she’s done that she pokes it into the keyhole where she poured the powder, and begins to tap lightly. “Another firecracker,” she demands.
Off in the distance, as Skinny Pete tries to start the engine it is whining loudly without catching. It just keeps making that awful noise, but we know t
hat’s the only noise it’s going to make. Without the distributor cap, they’re dead in the water. The engine keeps whining for about thirty more seconds, and when it stops, from up here we can see Skinny Pete stepping out from behind the helm scratching his head.
I promptly start cutting the tops off more firecrackers and keep handing them to Jo.
Sara says, “He’s opening the engine hatch and climbing in. He’s going to figure it out any second!”
Just after that, Jo says, “That should be enough to do the trick.” Then from one of the firecracker tops I had cut off, she gently removes the fuse and sticks it into the keyhole. She’s made a sort of bomb out of the paddle-lock. I gotta say, I’m impressed with this idea.
“Just one problem,” I say. “we don’t have any matches to light it with.” I smirk because I’m getting tired of her thinking she’s so smart all the time.
“Would’a relax, I said I got this.” She reaches into the canvas sack and pulls out the binoculars. Not wasting a second, she unscrews the large lens off the end and holds it up to show me. “We don’t need matches.”
I still don’t get it. Next she holds the lens to the sun then aims the very fine point of sunlight that’s going through the lens at the fuse. To my amazement, the fuse suddenly starts to pop and sizzle. It’s just like the magnifying glass trick to start a piece of paper on fire.
“RUN!” Jo screams.
The three of us dive around the corner just as it goes off!
BOOM!
There’s instantly a puff of smoke and the smell of gunpowder in the air. The noise was so loud I can’t hear anything for a moment.
“That got their attention!” Sara shouts pointing down at the lobster boat. Sure enough two surprised heads pop up looking in our direction. In an instant, both of them are scrambling off the old wharf. I can see Turk still has the three pronged trident in his hands. It won’t take them more than a few minutes to get here.
We don’t waste another second watching them and run back around to the big doors. Hanging from the latch is what’s left of the paddle-lock, violently ripped apart and barely hanging by the U-part.
