Marathon Gold

By Chris James

Chapter Nine

The reef looked so different here. Deep canyons of coral loomed over Jimmy's head as he kicked his fins and moved in and around the formations. Something... he had to find something, anything to tell them they had chosen the right spot to dive.

They had been coming to this area all week with nothing to show for it except an old rubber tire. That modern artifact must have washed in off a tugboat or a trash barge heading up from Key West to the mainland. Clark was amused when Jimmy brought it back, but he liked the idea of cleaning up society's litter.

The water here was twenty-five feet deep and Jimmy didn't feel like he could handle anything deeper. As it was it took longer to surface for air and if he waited too long a mild panic would set in as his lungs begged for more oxygen.

He'd never considered drowning before since he had always felt capable enough in the water. Now his eyes swept the nooks and crannies of the reef, looking for unusual shapes embedded in the coral or under the sand. He had seen several barracuda, but they were startled at his presence and swam away. Gene had suggested a spear gun for defense, but that would just be something else to lug up and down.

The section of reef he was beside was covered with little sand filled cavities. There were so many of them that he almost gave up running his gloved hand through the sand to see if they contained anything. If he had stopped he would have missed it entirely. A sweep of the glove and his finger struck something solid.

Jimmy stopped his forward progress and turned for a closer look. His fingers scrabbled at the sand and he grasped something, pulling it up in front of his mask. Whatever it was gleamed dully in the dim sunlight from above. It looked like brass and it had a hand grip worked into one side. And then it hit him, this was the hilt of a sword.

It was almost time for air so Jimmy kicked his way back to the surface and held his trophy aloft as he edged up to the dinghy. Gene took it and yelped with delight.

"Yeah, it's the hilt of a sword, the grip from a cutlass I bet," Gene exclaimed.

Jimmy pushed the mask up on his head. "The blade might still be down there." He said.

"Doubt that, it rusted away long ago. But this is brass, this stuff lasts forever," Gene said. "Good going, where did you find it?"

"Oops, I forgot to tag it before I came up. Be right back," Jimmy said.

He reset the mask and plunged back down. Now he had a lungful of air, he could stay down longer. He found the cavity and pulled out a tag, number one-twenty-eight. He tied it to the top of the reef where it could be seen and searched all around the area. There was nothing else to be found so he surfaced.

Okay, it wasn't much, but it felt like confirmation that they had chosen the right area to search. Jimmy would now focus more along the bottom of the reef and in the sandy cavities where the current seemed to swirl. He pulled himself back in the boat and sat there grinning.

"Yeah, man... this is something," Gene said. "Maybe this is from the cutlass that Oliver threw overboard."

Jimmy laughed. "Two boat loads of cutlasses went down around here, but I like your idea a lot."

"School starts in three weeks, we need to stay on top of this," Gene said.

"I agree. Hal won't need me much, we can search twice a day until school starts and then continue on weekends."

"Weather might not cooperate. I'd hate to be out here when it gets choppy. Guess you wouldn't feel it as much down there."

"I don't know about that," Jimmy said. "The current is pretty strong, even the fish get knocked around in places. We'll work it out."

"You wanna go down again?" Gene asked.

"Your turn, I need to catch my breath," Jimmy replied. "Look for tag one twenty-eight, its right above the spot where I found this thing."

"Gotcha," Gene said, and then he was over the side.

Jimmy pulled off his fins and stood up to stretch his legs. He could see the lighthouse about two miles away; even in daylight the beacon's flash was quite visible. Out towards the east he could see some clouds building up like they did most afternoons. They might have to head back before too much longer.

Clark had warned them to err on the side of caution. Choppy waves would give them an indication of a storm's strength, but a strong wind from the wrong direction could force them to beach the dinghy. At least Jimmy had never heard the bell ring. That would probably scare the hell out of him.

Gene surfaced with a grin. "There was a boat down there," He said.

"You're kidding, how can you tell?" Jimmy asked.

Gene raised his hand and placed an odd shaped piece of metal on the gunwales. It consisted of a flat metal base with two upright pins. "Seems a lot of the metal parts on the boats were good solid brass or bronze, this would have been an oarlock for rowing. Have we got a spare coil of rope?"

Jimmy lifted the lid on the stern bench and found a coil of nylon rope. "What's this for?" He asked.

"You'll see," He said and then dived again.

Jimmy stared down through the bottom of the bucket but could barely make out what Gene was doing, then the boy was on his way back up and he climbed in the boat.

"It's gonna take the two of us to pull it up. Just go easy so the rope doesn't get snagged and break."

Hand over hand they pulled on the rope. Whatever was down there weighed a great deal and then it thumped against the hull of the boat. Both of them leaned over and pulled up a rusty chunk of metal, the anchor from one of Caesar's boats.

"Good Lord, what a find," Jimmy said.

"It was sitting half buried in coral. Afraid I damaged the reef a little pulling it out. There's probably more stuff around but we need to bring some tools with us on the next trip."

"My father has a big old crowbar. That sure ought to tear things apart. Damn, Gene... this is so cool."

And then they both froze as they heard the distant peal of a bell. Clark was calling them back and one look at the distant sky told them they had to get moving. Jimmy stowed their diving gear in the locker while Gene put on his vest and took his seat at the tiller. They pulled on the anchor line and moved the boat until they felt it break free of the sand. Then Jimmy raised the sail.

There were several large gusts of wind which varied their speed, but Gene managed to line them up and slide through the breakwater. The clouds had piled up into towers of gray and white that glowed with flashes of internal lightning, and soon the rains would come. Clark hurried on down the dock and smiled.

"I saw you bring something up, what was it?" He asked.

Gene and Jimmy lifted the anchor off the bottom of the dinghy and lay it on the dock.

"Oh my... how wonderful," Clark said. "Jimmy, run and fetch my garden cart from the shed, we'll use it to move this up to the porch."

Jimmy ran for the cart as Gene secured the dinghy for the coming storm. Clark had been handed the sword hilt and the oarlock which seemed to excite him even more. The boys lifted the anchor into the cart and rolled it up the yard and onto the porch.

"Now take that bucket and fetch me some water from the inlet. Quickly now, it's going to rain soon," Clark said.

It took three buckets full of water to immerse the anchor which Clark said was necessary to keep the rust from spreading. And as the storm broke with sheets of water cascading from the eves of the roof they stood and looked down at the anchor.

"It's very old," Clark said. "Considering where you found it I'd say it came off one of Caesar's boats. Do you agree?"

"Yes, and that means the gold is around there somewhere," Jimmy said.

"If it's there we'll find it," Gene said. "The best is yet to come."

Finding an anchor was a great clue. Because of its weight chances are when the boat sank the anchor went straight down and sat there over the years. Sands and currents may have moved other things around, but not the anchor. It gave them a starting point.

"The cutter couldn't have been more than a few hundred feet away if this was the boat Caesar rode in, double that for the other boat," Gene said.

They looked at the chart and realized there was still a lot of reef to cover. Jimmy suggested they place a buoy over the site where the anchor was found so they could calculate the distance towards shore. With another fixed point on the shore they could search a fan shaped area on either side of the perpendicular.

"We're getting closer, I can feel it," Jimmy said.

"Just be cautious, there is no need to hurry and injure yourself," Clark said.

It took them a few dives to relocate the site where they had found the anchor and Gene tied off a white buoy to a large chunk of coral. With the dinghy sitting next to the buoy they held up the binoculars and studied the shore line. There was very little beach on shore here, lots of sea oats and grasses with scrub pines further back. Clark had worked his way from the house to a spot on the shore where he could see the boys. Between them they figured out where to place the central marker, a three foot wooden stake.

Clark paced off a hundred yards west and placed another stake, before turning around and setting the final one a hundred yards to the east of the center. From where they sat in the boat it looked like a lot of area to cover, and it was. But the cutter had been moving west along the shore so they would start at the outer line on that side and work their way in towards the middle.

Nothing was guaranteed, until Gene came up from his second dive of the day with some pieces of a boat's rigging. The small boats Caesar commanded had a single mainmast and a small jib at the bow. The small brass pulley would have been attached to the mast and the two cleats would have been places the lines were tied off.

"I think the mast lay there for a long time, but it's gone now," Gene said, and then he grinned. "We're close... damn close."

Jimmy was excited. As Clark had originally said, the chest would have rotted long ago leaving the gold sitting amidst the wooden fragments. Gene had found his pieces by combing through the sand, but they were small parts, things that would have been moved around by the current. Jimmy doubted if the gold had moved at all.

Clark had found the gold coin along the edge of the cove and figured it was one of those that Michael had tossed over to anger Caesar. But the chest would have remained intact for years, time enough for the coins to have become stuck together, crusted over with salt brine and the excrement of small sea creatures. If they had lain undisturbed then they might now appear to be a part of the reef. Their search would have to be patient and painstaking.

In the last week of August they worked like fiends. School would resume on the sixth of September and Jimmy knew he would be on a short leash during the week. His father had already agreed to allow them time on the weekends unless the weather turned bad. But it never got cold in the Keys where the average winter temperature was seventy-five to eighty degrees.

Clark was empathetic, but encouraged them to consider they now knew it was out there. All their finds had pointed to the authenticity of Michael's written account. Writing after the fact often led to inaccuracy or exaggeration, but the journal had demonstrated none of that. And there on the porch table lay a half dozen items that spoke of the events that happened on the reef that stormy afternoon so long ago.

"You know, things changed in the Keys the year Michael and his friends escaped," Clark said. "This was all part of the United States and the Navy brought a force of ships down here to suppress the piracy. There was a fishing station established on Key West even before Michael's run to Cuba."

"You mean if they had sailed all the way to the end of the island chain they would have discovered people living there?" Jimmy asked.

"Yes, ironic isn't it?"

"I bet Caesar knew something, they took great pains to disguise their camp," Gene said. "Maybe that wasn't a Spanish warship, it could have been American."

"We'll never know, that's all a long time ago. Look at all these things you've turned up, this is a great piece of history," Clark said.

"We'll find the treasure, I know we will," Jimmy said, and then he laughed. "Probably a lot sooner that Nelson finds anything."

Half the island was aware that Nelson had been employed by the Martin sisters to plant trees on the broad stretch of sand behind their house. Some saw it as folly, others figured the ladies had some insider information about further development in the area and were building a forest of trees as a buffer zone. Nelson did everything he could to encourage these views.

So far Jimmy had resisted going over there to see what Nelson was doing. Melvin and Thomas would be up to their knees in sand every day. The three of them had formed a partnership driven by greed and beer. They might need to find that treasure to pay their expenses.

Jimmy wondered how many holes it would take before Nelson gave up. He didn't want the man to become curious about what they were doing on the reef, but he would if they kept after it. And then Jimmy found the second anchor.

It was lying in the sand and he had only discovered it because Gene had brought a garden rake along. It seemed logical that they had to examine the areas of sand between the coral mounds. It took an average of four dives to examine each boundary of the odd coral shapes. The many strands of grass made it a difficult task, but Jimmy knew he had to paw his way across every surface.

The rake allowed the sand to be combed almost down to the coral. They had discovered that in some areas the sand was several feet deep, and if the gold had sunk into one of these sand traps it would never be found. But they were both confident, looking ahead to the moment they recognized something different, something unique in the shape of the coral.

Jimmy raked across the sand at the base of a coral structure and struck something. He let go the rake and began to dig in the sand with his fingers. A fluke of the small anchor revealed itself and Jimmy was elated.

"I got the second anchor," Jimmy yelled as he surfaced. "Get me the rope."

He was tired by now and knew he had little endurance left for a long dive, but he took the rope down and tied it to the anchor. Gene helped pull it up and they had what they thought would be the final clue they needed.

Jimmy lay in the bottom of the dinghy and stared at the anchor. A corroded piece of metal that didn't look like much, but he knew this one had been on the boat that held Caesar in his final moments of life.

"The cutter would have been real close at this point, a hundred feet away," Gene said.

"I wish we could both dive, you think Clark would come out with us?"

"We have four days before school starts. Are you doing anything on Labor Day?"

Jimmy nodded. "I'm going to be out here, nothing else is this important... nothing at all."

Clark was amazed and overjoyed at the appearance of the second anchor. He concurred; they were close... so very close.

"Come with us tomorrow," Jimmy said. "If Gene and I both dive things will go faster."

"I don't know... maybe, let me think about it," Clark said.

Jimmy went home and reported the second anchor to his father. His mother had been ignoring the progress of their dives, more concerned about her son's safety than anything else. But Jimmy and Gene had been at it for a month, at least she was aware of how it was going.

"So what does this anchor mean?" She asked.

"We're closing in on what we're after," Jimmy said. "And it proves the journal account was accurate, that's what is so important."

Jimmy went to bed that night knowing the treasure was within reach and that in the next few days he would make a dive and find it. And then what? Clark had said they would have to find someone to evaluate the coins and tell them what they were worth. Gold was valuable but in this form it was precious enough to auction off, and there were people who did that.

Clark was sitting on his porch with a coffee cup staring out at the horizon. "Good morning," He said when Gene and Jimmy walked up the steps. "Sit... we need to talk."

"Is everything alright?" Jimmy asked.

Clark shook his head. "I don't know, but we'll soon find out. The news says there's a large hurricane already formed out in the Atlantic. It will hit the Leeward Islands by tomorrow night and we'll know for sure where it's headed. But the military has a plane up evaluating the darn thing and they say the winds are in excess of a hundred fifty miles per hour."

"Oh My God, that's terrible... is it coming here?" Gene asked.

"It could, we'll know in about forty-eight hours... the day after Labor Day."

"We're supposed to be in school... what will they do?" Jimmy asked.

"Cancel it, I'm sure. You boys have never seen a storm that strong and we haven't had one like that here in twenty-five years. If it reaches Cuba with that strength we'll be ordered to evacuate. What I'm telling you is that we have at most a few days on the reef before the wind and currents get too strong, we'll have to abandon the search."

"Oh no, we've almost got it," Jimmy said.

Clark smiled. "This has all been about the adventure of looking for the treasure. If it's been down there all these years I doubt if it will go anywhere. We'll just have to come back some other time."

"But we have three days before we know," Gene said. "Are you going to come out with us?"

"I am, but only for the morning. I can't be out in the sun that long anymore," Clark said.

"That's good, we'll get a lot more done with your help," Jimmy said.

Now they all looked out at the horizon, imagining what a huge storm would do to the island. Michael's description in the journal was pretty frightening, and they were all thinking the same thing.

"If it comes here, will you stay?" Jimmy asked.

"No, I think everyone will have to leave. You have family in Miami, that's not too far away," Clark said.

"When would you come back?" Gene asked.

"When I can, when they let us I suppose. Evelyn and I will probably drive up to Boca Raton; she has a sister living there. We might have to stay away for a week or more if the bridges get damaged. I guess we better decide what to do with the artifacts we've collected."

"Bury them in the yard," Jimmy suggested. "No one will find them. When we find the treasure we'll take it with us."

Gene smiled. "Ever the optimist. I'll go set up the dinghy."

Clark enjoyed the outing tremendously, it had been quite some time since he'd been out sailing. Gene explained how he always remembered their position by studying the white buoy and the stakes. That mental image stayed with him as they crept ever closer to the shore.

"See the way the boat sits in relation to the inlet? If the wind was coming from the south-west then the cutter would have been able to make that starboard turn and slide into the cove." Gene was pretty happy with his explanation as he slid the anchor over the side.

Jimmy tossed out the diver's buoy and prepared his gear. Clark got comfortable on the stern seat and watched the boys slide over the side into the water. Jimmy looked up and smiled.

"We never did get that sack to put all the gold in, we might need it today." And then he sank beneath the water.

If a hurricane of that size and power reached the southern tip of Cuba they would see the effects of it here. The cloud cover extended out for hundreds of miles from a storm like that. The current would push the waves higher just as far away. Clark smiled, Mama Koobo wasn't a voodoo witch, she was just observant and experienced.

He could see the roof of his house over the pines. Would it survive such a terrible storm? Just to be on the safe side he would begin packing tonight. There would be no way to take everything, but he already knew what had to go with them. Evelyn would help him pack, and they would leave together.

It would be a shame to leave behind everything these boys had accomplished in the past six weeks. But in their minds they would take away the adventure of their exploration and a good deal of the newly discovered maturity they now held inside. They had tested their limits and expanded their horizons, and he was very proud of them both.

His children had given up their sense of adventure long ago. Lost in the world of business they had no idea how fulfilling a dive to the bottom of the ocean could be. Where had he failed them? He had allowed them to grow up pretty much by themselves because that's what they wanted; at least that's what they had expressed to him.

But he had been at sea for most of their childhood until Saipan put him ashore in the hospital. Wounds heal, but do lives? Daddy was a virtual stranger until the Christmas of 1944 when they were all but grown up. Clark had built up a long list of regrets in his life, and that was just one of them.

The boys dove in tandem so they could see what the other was searching. But by lunchtime there had been nothing found.

"Perhaps we overestimated the speed of the cutter," Gene said as they made their way back to the inlet. Clark had to admire the way the boy handled the dinghy, it was second nature to him now.

"Their sail was down, it couldn't have been very fast," Jimmy said.

"We'll look further towards the center this afternoon," Gene suggested, and then he groaned when they saw Nelson standing on the dock.

"Afternoon," Nelson said. "You having fun out there?"

Clark nodded. "I haven't seen you in a while, how's the digging?"

"We be fine... you hear about the storm?"

"Yes... what a mess," Jimmy said.

"All the same to everybody, we get kicked off the island for sure," Nelson said.

"We have some time," Clark said. "I imagine you'll be digging up until the last minute."

"You right, I can almost feel rich... we find it soon enough."

Clark was glad he'd put the anchors in a barrel full of sea water under the porch, that would take too much explaining if Nelson saw them. But he seemed just as enthusiastic as always and happy as a clam to be digging holes, and still so sure he would find the treasure.

"You boys be careful, storm she gonna make for bad seas next few days," Nelson said. "I see buoy out there, what's with that?"

"Our favorite anchoring spot," Gene said. "We're getting tired of having our anchor get fouled up in the coral."

"You find good things?

"Mr. Osborne will take all the nice coral we can give him, maybe some sponges too," Jimmy said. "But I guess we have to wait now because of that storm."

Nelson smiled. "You a good little businessman. So back to planting trees, nobody figure me out yet." And he laughed. "I got them all fooled."

They watched him walk around the house and head back to the Martin property.

"He's suspicious," Gene said.

"Of course he is," Clark said. "What we're doing looks easy to him. If he thought we were onto something he'd be out there in a boat right beside us."

"He can't do that, we're going to find it first," Jimmy said.

They went back at it that afternoon, and the following morning. By then the storm, named Hurricane Donna, was blasting its way through the Leeward Islands with winds of one hundred and sixty miles per hour.

"We have to be right on top of it now," Jimmy said. "I don't know why we haven't found a trace of anything?"

It was afternoon and they had skipped lunch, favoring a peanut butter sandwich on the dinghy to save time. The area they were in held low mounds of coral and broader stretches of sand. They had raked through the sand pretty quickly and found nothing, although Gene was determined to do it again just to be safe. Jimmy was busy going foot by foot over the reef material, convinced that the coral held the treasure locked inside.

Tomorrow was Labor Day and Jimmy's father was already concerned about his garage. Billy had loaded his pickup truck with their tools and his precious motorcycle as the news kept saying the storm was advancing in a westward direction. West would mean Cuba, and in the past hurricanes which hit that island nation were often deflected northwards towards the Keys.

They had already removed the sheets of glass from the front windows of the garage's office, replacing them with plywood and cross bracing. Jimmy's mother would drive her car and the family while his father would fill the pickup with their possessions. The decision to leave would be made on Wednesday morning, for by then the storm would have struck Cuba and its course would be determined.

Jimmy had gone home and thrown all his stuff in one suitcase and piled his books in a box. He was determined to spend one final day in the search and then the dinghy would have to be taken out of the water. Clark's porch was large enough for them to push the boat underneath and that's where it would ride out the storm. But Jimmy wasn't convinced that was necessary, he felt sure they were on the verge of the discovery.

The eye of the hurricane was four hundred miles away, too far to see any of the effects, and yet the sky looked stormy. Even the waves had taken on different characteristics, rolling a little longer and higher than before. The dinghy sat at anchor alone now as both boys went over the side in one last attempt to find something.

Jimmy was sure the coral held the prize trapped inside and he pried away pieces of it in his search. By late morning he was exasperated and tired, just wishing he'd pry away a section and see a pile of gold coins, but it didn't happen like that.

In his urgency he'd taken a large bite with the crowbar and the coral fell apart. Nothing and then he set the bar back against another piece and froze in place, what was that? He dropped the bar and scrabbled at the coral with his fingers pulling away at a strangely shaped piece of metal. He picked up a piece of coral and banged on the pry bar to alert Gene.

Gene swam over and pointed at the surface, he needed air. They came up beside the boat together.

"What?" Gene gasped, pulling the snorkel out of his mouth.

"I don't know, could be part of the metal that bound the chest. Come look at it with me," Jimmy said.

They took in a lungful of air and dived. Whatever it was seemed stuck fast in the coral and Jimmy tugged while Gene worked around the coral with the bar. Finally it pulled free and there in the center was the hasp and latch of the treasure chest. Jimmy dropped that and they both attacked the coral, but it was no use.

They surfaced again and crawled into the dinghy. "I need a rest," Jimmy said.

"It's there, we found it," Gene said.

"Yeah, that and a stick of dynamite would make it ours. We need to pulverize more coral and that bar isn't doing it well enough," Jimmy said.

The dinghy was buffeted with a gust of wind and the sky was starting to look threatening.

"Clark is gonna ring that bell, sure as shootin," Gene said.

"We have to go down again just to see if we can get a piece of it, anything," Jimmy said.

Gene looked at the waves and the sky. "It's gonna go to hell out here in less than an hour, you make one more dive and I'll stay with the boat."

"Deal, I'll leave the crow bar stuck in the reef to mark the spot," Jimmy said, and then he was back over the side.

Jimmy had been gone only seconds when Gene heard the bell, Clark was calling them in. One minute became two and Gene knew Jimmy had to be out of air by now. And just as he was getting really worried the boy broke the surface and spit out the snorkel.

"I found it," Jimmy yelled. He swam over to the dinghy and dropped something into the bottom of the boat. Gene leaned down and picked up... a rock? It didn't look like gold. Jimmy scrambled aboard and they both heard the bell peal out once more.

"We have to go in, what is this?" Gene asked.

Jimmy looked around and then rubbed the rock on one of the line cleats and turned it over to show Gene. There before him was the gleam they had spent six weeks searching for, Caesar's gold. They tugged up the anchor and raised the sail, only then did they realize how strong the wind had become.

"This can't be the hurricane," Jimmy yelled.

"Thunderstorm, see the rain in the distance... we're gonna get wet," Gene yelled back.

He was worried now, the waves were higher, the current stronger. They had one chance to make the inlet.

"When I tell you, drop the sail," Gene yelled.

"What for?" Jimmy asked.

"We'll miss the inlet if the wind hits us with that rain, just do it when I tell you."

Jimmy could see the rain coming down in the distance and it was fast approaching. It would be hard to see the inlet, and if they missed it there would be a hard landing on the coral rocks of the breakwater. The rain began as large drops, but it was building when Gene yelled.

"Drop the sail, we're going in now."

Jimmy was worried, would it work, it had to work, and he let go the line that held up the sail. The dinghy immediately began pitching with the waves as Gene aimed them dead center at the inlet, and then the rain obliterated everything Jimmy could see.

It was a tense few minutes. The rain was coming down so hard he couldn't see, he looked back and saw Gene wearing his diving mask to keep the rain off his face. And suddenly the waves ceased to toss them around, they were inside the breakwater. Neither of them could see the dock so Gene aimed for the beach and they grounded.

Jimmy leapt out over the bow and planted the anchor in the sand. And then Clark was there with an umbrella.

"We heard you, really we did," Gene yelled above the sound of the rain.

"My fault, I was diving... and found this," Jimmy said, and then he held up the chunk of rocky material in his hand.

Clark looked at it and saw the gleam where Jimmy had scratched it.

"My God... you found it."

They left the boat and retreated to the porch, all of them soaked to the skin.

"Evelyn... Evelyn, make us some hot tea will you," Clark yelled. "And bring me that scrub brush from under the sink."

She was on the porch a minute later, brush in hand. "I put the kettle on... what have you there?"

Clark held up the chunk of dark material. "Treasure, dear lady... everything we hoped to find."

She stayed to watch Clark brush away the corrosion and salts, watching as the mass reveled itself to be a half dozen coins all stuck together. Clark called for a bowl and poured the hot water from Evelyn's kettle over the coins. Slowly they came apart and Clark pointed out the details.

"They're doubloons, probably minted in Mexico. See that stamp, that's the Crusader Cross... a genuine doubloon. Large aren't they, this one might weigh a quarter of an ounce."

"There's more down there, we'll have to dig them out of the coral," Jimmy said.

"Not today or tomorrow," Clark said. "I'm afraid the hurricane is going to cause an untimely end to our adventure. But we know it's there, and you know where it is. Isn't this proof enough that we didn't search in vain?"

"Yes... we were so close to bringing it up," Gene said.

"And you will, the reef won't give it up until you go back and get it," Clark said. "But let's hide these, I expect Nelson to arrive at any minute. He always seems to show up then it rains."

They had just begun drinking their tea when Nelson arrived with his two helpers. Wet and bedraggled, the men sat on the floor of the porch and gratefully accepted the towels Evelyn brought them.

"This tree planting come to an end for now," Nelson said. "Be storming soon, these ladies going up the mainland tomorrow."

"You aren't staying, are you?" Clark asked.

"Nobody can stay. The sheriff already told my lady to pack and go. They bring the bus down from Miami to take us all. We come back three... four days. Storm make lots of work."

Nelson looked out across the inlet. "Bad out there, no coral diving for you now." He smiled. "Boys come back and work with Nelson, plant trees and look for treasure."

Jimmy shook his head. "We have school, Nelson... if it doesn't blow away. My father said my sailing days are over until Thanksgiving."

"Bad news for you. Go to school, learn smart things. We going to dig for treasure a long time I think. But we go home now, pack to leave. Nelson come see you when all come back."

He shook hands all around and motioned for Thomas and Melvin to follow him and they walked off into the rain.

"Let me call my father and we'll get the boat moved," Gene said.

Clark sighed and pulled the coins out of his pocket. "I suppose we can wait until it stops raining. Is anyone hungry? Evelyn is emptying the fridge; we're going to feast tonight."

Jimmy and Gene called home to say they were staying for dinner and would be home after the rain subsided. And so Evelyn cooked up a wonderful meal and they all sat at the dining room table with candles lit and wine glasses filled. Jimmy and Gene each had an inch of wine, just enough for the toast Clark offered.

"To my fellow treasure hunters, a successful mission well done. A toast to Michael Burns whose honesty and skill at the writing of his adventure allowed us to make this discovery. And to Henri Caesar, dastardly pirate, may you rot in whatever hell you deserve and know we have your treasure now."

They all laughed and raised their glasses. Gene's father arrived just after seven when the rain stopped. The boat soon slid under the porch and Skipper was just as happy to leave it parked there, it looked secure.

"Gonna be a bad one, Alfred," Skipper said.

"I know, think we'll leave tomorrow and beat the traffic," Clark said.

Skipper threw his arm around Gene's shoulder. "I think we'll go visit Gene's grandparents up in Raleigh, then come back and clean up the mess. Sooner we get back in business the better. I figure the boys had their adventure, time to settle back down again."

"Can I tell him?" Gene asked. "He'll keep the secret."

"What secret?" Skipper asked.

Gene reached in his pocket and pulled out two of the doubloons. "We found the treasure."

"Lord Almighty, you mean it was real?"

"Quite real, I assure you," Clark said. "Your son is quite the young sailor and adventurer, takes after his father I see."

Skipper held the coins and chuckled. "Never thought I would hold a piece of pirate treasure. Is there more?"

"Yes, Dad... but you can't tell, only Jimmy and I know where it is."

"My lips are sealed. Maybe once we get past this storm... who knows? Come on, boy, we have some packing to do."

Skipper walked through the door and Gene hesitated. "Thank you, Admiral... this has been great fun."

Clark shook his hand and Gene turned to Jimmy. "So, see you back here sometime soon?"

"You aren't getting rid of me that easy," Jimmy said. "We'll finish the job together, count on it." They shook hands and paused. It wasn't easy to say goodbye after such an intense summer. "Later, gator," Jimmy finally said.

"After while, crocodile," Gene replied, and then he was gone.