Last Assault on Oak Island 1
Chapter 1
1995
Saul dangled 120 feet at the end of the cable, cursing. The metal casing of railroad tank cars around him was an eight-foot-wide intestine as he hovered suspended in the island’s belly. Static buzzed at his headset.
He scowled at the metal surrounding him. "Larsen there yet?"
His hard fingers felt a rusty patch of metal wall. A coppery slime covered his glove. The voice in his headset was tinny and far away. "If he shows up," he said into the microphone bobbing near his stubbly chin, "tell him he’s fired. And tell him he’s the worst damn engineer I’ve seen in thirty years."
A chunk of rust fell. Far below it dropped into saltwater.
He didn’t watch the rust fall, nor did he hear the splash it made. "Is Miles back?"
A rumble growled beneath him. Saul put a steadying hand to the wall as he looked down. His headlamp made a spot on the ringed water far below. The shudder grew to a bellow, bringing the water to a churn. The casing ten feet below suddenly squeezed shut, burping the rising water closer to his boots.
Saul knew what it meant, feared what it meant. "Up! Up! Bring me up! Now!"
The noise of the winch above was drowned out by screeching metal as the shaft below collapsed. Water rushed in from the buckling seams. It rose to Saul’s boots in five seconds. The pinching metal forced it higher.
At the top of that hole in the ground, two workmen pulled a drenched Saul three seconds from a crushing death.
Carlos Sheldon was the most unlikely of curators. To look at him, one would not imagine that this short, balding man commanded half the second floor of the Carnegie Museum of Antiquities in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
When Lauren Gates first began working as Carlos’ student assistant two years ago, she had no idea of the man’s far-reaching authority. Because of his exacting work and undisputed word on ancient manuscripts and illuminations, they had traveled the world extensively during her term as part-time assistant.
But nothing compared to this trip.
She pushed her hair out her face, letting the brunette waves settle to her shoulder as looked out the plane window at the approaching land mass on the Atlantic seaboard. Nova Scotia was easternmost of New Brunswick, Canada, a province of British and French descendants freckled with minorities of Irish, Scottish, and Indians.
As usual, Carlos had told her little about their trip, leaving her to speculate not only as to their goal, but destination, too. Usually he at least told her that, if nothing else, but this time he had been especially secretive.
It was part of the draw of being his assistant, that flirtatious hinting without telling. Usually she liked it, but not so much when the details were so sketchy. She put together what she already knew from the subtle hints Carlos had dropped about the mail he had received the past month at his museum office. She came up with very little.
All she had to go on this time were a few letters from Rudolph Maddock, Carlos’ long-time friend who lived somewhere in West Winds or Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. She hadn’t read the letters herself, but the envelopes were postmarked from both cities. From what Carlos had said on other occasions, she knew that Rudolph Maddock operated the last manual lighthouse on Mahone Bay.
That was all she knew, and she couldn’t imagine why they were going there to represent the museum now. "I give up," she finally said in exasperation, glancing to him in the seat beside her.
Carlos didn’t even open his eyes, but a small smile twitched at his lips. "Now, Lauren, think," he said in a steady voice. "Remember the newsletter last month? Don’t frown; it’ll give you wrinkles."
She immediately stopped scowling, her green eyes opening wider, refraining from rolling them at his motherly tendencies. "Last month was the May issue," she recalled. "Cooper made assistant director; acquisition of the Lenham Porcelain Collection from England House; Marie Davis had a baby girl; the Sisters of the—"
"No, no." He looked at her with one eye. "Something on a broader scale. Something about two hundred years old."
She sighed and looked back down at the cobalt waters out the window. "Does is have anything to do with Rudolph Maddock?"
"Yes."
She didn’t make the connection. "He runs a lighthouse in Mahone Bay, and the newsletter said nothing about Canada, or Nova Scotia, or . . . Oh, it did." She thought back on the newsletter’s contents. “Oak Island. Is that it, Carlos?"
"And what’s on Oak Island?"
She thought for a moment, then laughed. "The Money Pit. Right? Of course."
His face was unreadable.
"What do you . . . ? No. What does Mr. Maddock know?" She sat straighter. "Did they find something?"
He smiled broadly. "We’re not sure."
"He must have. If you got money out of Stends and Cooper for this trip, there must be some gain for the museum." She took his arm. "Does Mr. Maddock know what’s buried there?"
"Not exactly." He patted her arm. "It could be nothing at all, Lauren, but he’s seen enough to convince me, and Stends, to examine his . . . well, his evidence."
She sat back in her seat, watching him relax in his seat.
She would get no more out of Carlos Sheldon until they landed, but now she had something tangible to think about until they landed.
She thought back on what she knew about the find. The Money Pit had been discovered in 1795 by a teen boy named Daniel McGinnis. He and his friends, Anthony Vaughan and John Smith, dug up what appeared to be an old shaft sunk years before. At the time they had dreams of pirate treasure, but that was only one theory to become connected with the pit. Since then, theories had ranged from Knights Templar treasure to Spanish-plundered Mesoamerican Indian gold to the crown jewels of any number of European countries.
During the initial digging the boys had hit a layer of flagstones at a couple of feet down and a layer of old logs another ten feet down. From then on they found oak logs every ten feet, and at times other foreign materials such as charcoal, putty, and coconut fiber were uncovered.
Smith and McGinnis later purchased property on the island, but no treasure was ever recovered. An operation at the turn of the twentieth century had taken the hunt to nearly 100 feet, still with no treasure to show.
There were other excavations later. Sporadic efforts by several operations were made in the nineteenth century to recover whatever lay at the bottom of the Money Pit. Even celebrities like F. D. Roosevelt and Errol Flynn had been drawn to the mysterious pit at one time or another.
Now Dr. Carlos Sheldon and George Stends, director of the museum, had taken a decided interest in the age-old hole in the ground. By the smug look on Carlos’ face, Lauren could tell Rudy had definitely made a remarkable discovery of some kind.
Her mind wandered along a very romantic path, envisioning the controversial treasure being the Holy Grail or lost royal jewels. She had read the fantastic stories in some of the questionably legitimate trade magazines about fortune hunters several years ago. The anniversary of two centuries of the hunt this summer was a milestone that brought out new theories and all sorts of articles. The one that now came to Lauren’s mind was about a man named Clement or Clemens who claimed only pirate treasure could be at the bottom of the pit.
In the article, verified by dubious ‘experts’, Clemens had stated both Captain William Kidd and the notorious Blackbeard had referred to buried treasures, which Clemens placed on Oak Island. When she read it, Lauren dismissed the pirate theory because the Money Pit was too well engineered for the common lot termed pirate in days of old.
While she had no viable theory to replace that common thought, it was entertaining to imagine a chest of pirate loot.
She looked back out the window, willing her mind’s eye to let an old wooden sailing ship materialize on the blue waves below.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to subscribe to read the newest chapters to the search for Oak Island treasure!
Although this story is fiction, the Money Pit on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, is real. It was discovered in 1795 by teenage Daniel McGinnis and has remained a mystery, despite vigorous efforts by many people, to the time of this writing in the early 1990s. This story is based on factual research, but does not represent any treasure hunting operation conducted on Oak Island.
#treasure #treasurehunt #OakIsland #MoneyPit #mystery
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