LAST ASSAULT ON OAK ISLAND 17

Chapter 17

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Carlos made great headway in the Brielle diary Thursday and Friday, covering lengthy passages in the time he and Lauren were not tending the light or Rudy and escorting tours. The literal content of those pages, however, scarcely revealed new developments as to the actual burial of the payroll.

And there were no hints at a map or definite pirate flags.

Brielle did go into detail about the original pit's construction, and this was as remarkable a discovery as the whereabouts of the treasure itself. Stuart's plans had called for a 170-foot hole dug straight down from the designated oak tree, but Brielle argued the depth was too great. Stuart persisted and the depth was kept.

At the same time, the flood tunnel from North Cove, which was presently Smith's Cove, was also being burrowed 500 feet away at a twenty-two percent gradient. It was two-and-a-half feet wide by four feet high, serviced by a railway of wooden skids to remove dirt, and lined with stones. It would meet the pit Brielle was constructing at about the 100-foot mark.

At this point, Stuart awkwardly admitted an incorrect calculation to the admiral; he intended the flood tunnel to engage the pit at 150 feet, not 100, and the gradient to Smith's Cove had been factored in to that depth. After another day of recalculation and Brielle's insistence, Stuart suggested they line the bottom of the pit with clay and cap it with a thick metal plate. Brielle ordered his men to fill the pit to a depth of 130 feet. The diary had now reached an entry date June 21, 1777.

Lauren stretched her cramped fingers, yawning in the humid air of the small kitchen. The warm rain outside made the page of her notebook curl at the edges and the radio wove in and out of fuzzy stations.

"He's only had three dates in the last eight pages," she noted with exasperation to Carlos also seated at the table. "The last was the seventeenth. He must be lumping them together because of the long shifts."

Carlos agreed. "Bring out the side view you drew yesterday." He looked over the sketch she placed on the table by their notes. He consulted a compass, and then read silently for a moment from the diary.

The only sounds were the rain outside and Rudy cracking his knuckles at the end of the table before dealing himself a game of solitaire.

"Good," Carlos said after a moment of reading. "This air shaft Williams oversaw was 170 feet south-southwest from North Cove, and intercepted the flood tunnel at about fifty feet down. Same entry, note that Brielle mentions digging a second air shaft 100 feet north of the pit along the tunnel. Also, this is where the flood gate will be located, but he gives no details yet." He frowned, reading silently for a moment. "This flood tunnel wasn't very straight."

"Hold it," Rudy said, abandoning his card game spread out over his end of the table. "Where's that first air shaft again?"

Lauren repeated the location. "Have you heard anything about it?"

He nodded slowly. "I think so. There was a woman who fell into an old closed up sinkhole in the late 1880s or so. She was plowing with oxen, I think it was, and the ground collapsed about four meters. A couple different companies tried to dig it up or blow it up later. They call it Cave-In Pit."

"You know the location?" Carlos asked hopefully.

Rudy nodded, returning to his game. "It's a popular spot with tourists. There's still water in it, which rises and falls with the tides at Smith's Cove. Yearbright and Neeley are working with the tourism people to arrange chaperoned tours."

Carlos smiled. "Another identifiable landmark." He studied Lauren's cut-away sketch and pointed to a mark. "We'll have to rework the flood tunnel to come in here."

She updated the cross-section from the new notes.

The drizzle outside was changing to a soft shower. The room grew muggier, making Rudy's newly diagnosed asthmatic condition thicken.

Carlos pushed his glasses higher onto his nose. "Brielle welcomes the rain on the twenty-fifth, thankful work must be halted for the day. He writes he is 'comfortable with my position of deposit. A fortnight will see my entrustment, after which departure must be made with haste,'" he read slowly. He waited for Lauren to catch up in her notes, reading on to himself.

"Ah, now this is interesting. An insight into Jonathon Stuart. Same date, dear," he said. "The admiral invites Stuart into his cabin on the leisure rainy day. He begins by telling Stuart that his plans are 'careful and fascinatingly complex,' to which Stuart, apparently well into the liquor by now, admits that not all of his knowledge came from Britain's engineering academies. Earlier in Stuart's career, he had the misfortune of being on a ship that fell prey to a pirate captain—no names given—sailing to St. Dominguez, present day Haiti. Stuart accepted being forced into piracy to keep his throat from being cut. He sailed with them for nearly two years, after which he and several other engineers escaped when the ship was back in French waters.

"He tells Brielle he underwent 'a peculiar apprenticeship,' working with Spanish and Caribbean 'buccaneers skilled at limestone vaults.' These operations were much like the pit Stuart devised," Carlos said, surmising as he read, "using flood gates in the air shafts to stop the tunnel waters to retrieve the treasure from the pit. Stuart originally wanted to try this, but it required more manpower and time than Brielle thought necessary."

For a moment both Lauren and Rudy simply stared at Carlos. The clock was striking six, its chimes worn to a metallic pinging sound.

"It was pirate technology?" she asked. "They did know how to design something of this magnitude?"