The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

Now it was Nick and his brothers’ turn, and he had deduced something his uncles and father had not. At the time Pierre Devereaux had excavated the pit to hide his treasure, the only pump available to him would have been his ship’s hand-operated bilge pump. Because of its inefficiency, there was no way the pirates could have drained the pit with their equipment when three ten-horse pumps couldn’t.

The answer to how the pit worked lay someplace else.

Nick knew from the stories his uncles told that they had made their assault during the height of summer, and when he consulted an old almanac, he saw the men had been working during a period of particularly high low tides. He knew that to be successful he and his brothers would have to try to reach the bottom at the same time of year Devereaux had dug the pit—when the tides were at their very lowest—and this year that fell at a little past two o’clock on December the seventh.

The older brothers had been planning their attempt at cracking the pit since early summer. By doing odd jobs for anyone who’d hire them, they’d scraped together money to buy equipment, notably a two-stroke gasoline-powered pump, the rope, and tin miner’s helmets with battery-powered lights. They’d practiced with the rope and a laden bucket so their arms and shoulders could work tirelessly for hours. They’d even devised goggles that would let them see underwater if necessary.

Jimmy was only along because he had overheard them talking about it all and had threatened to tell their parents if he wasn’t included.

There was a sudden commotion off to their right, an explosion of birds winging into the bright sky. Behind them, Amelia, their golden retriever, came bounding out of the tree line, barking wildly with her tail swinging like the devil’s own metronome. She chased after one gull that flew close to the ground and then halted, dumbfounded, when the bird shot into the air. Her tongue lolled, and a string of saliva drizzled from her black gums.

“Amelia! Come!” Jimmy cried in his falsetto, and the dog dashed to his side, nearly bowling him over in her excitement.

“Shrimp, take these,” Nick said, handing Jimmy the mining helmets and their satchels of heavy lead batteries.

The pump was the heaviest piece of gear, and Nick had devised a sling with two carrying polls like he’d seen on Saturday-matinee serials when natives carried the movie’s hero back to their camp. The poles were lengths of timber taken from a construction site, and the four older boys hoisted them on their shoulders and lifted the engine from the rowboat. It swung and then steadied, and they started the first mile-long trek across the isle.

It took forty-five minutes to haul all of their equipment across the island. The pit was located on a bluff above a shallow bay that was the only feature to mar its otherwise perfect heart shape. Waves smashed into the coast, but with the weather so fair only an occasional drop of white spume had the energy to climb the cliffs and land near the pit.

“Kevin,” Nick said, a little out of breath after their second trip to the boat and back to the bluff, “you and Jimmy go get wood for a fire. And not driftwood either, it burns too fast.”

Before his order could be carried out, natural curiosity made all five of the Ronish brothers edge closer to the pit for a quick look.

The vertical shaft was approximately six feet to a side and perfectly square, and for as far down as they could see it was ringed with age-darkened timbers—oak, in fact, most likely cut on the mainland and brought to the island. Cold, clammy air climbed from the depths in an eerie caress that for a moment dampened their enthusiasm. It was almost as if the pit were breathing raspy, echoing exhalations, and it didn’t take much imagination to think it came from the ghosts of the men who had died trying to wrest secrets out of the bowels of the earth.

A rusted metal grate had been laid over the mouth of the pit to prevent anyone from falling in. It was anchored with chains looped around metal pegs drilled into the rock. They had found the key to the padlock in their father’s desk drawer under the holstered broom-handled Mauser he had captured during the Great War. For a moment Nick feared it would break in the lock, but eventually it turned and the hasp clicked open.

“Go on and get that firewood,” he ordered, and his youngest siblings took off with a raucous Amelia in tow.

With the twins’ help, Nick dragged the heavy grate away from the opening and set it aside. Next up was the erection of a wooden frame over the pit so the rope would dangle directly into the hole from a tackle system that would allow two of the boys to easily hoist a third. This was done with the wooden carrying poles and some metal pins fitted into predrilled holes. The butt ends of the lengths of lumber were nailed directly into the oaken balks ringing the shaft. Despite its age, the old timber was more than strong enough to bend a few nails.

Nick took charge of tying the knots that would literally make the difference between life and death while Don, the most mechanically inclined, tinkered with the pump until it was purring sweetly.

By the time everything was ready, Kevin and Jimmy had a nice-sized fire going ten yards from the pit and enough extra wood to keep it going for a couple of hours. They all sat around it, eating sandwiches they had packed earlier and drinking canteens filled with sweetened iced tea.

“The trick’s gonna be timing the tide just right,” Nick said around a mouthful of baloney sandwich. “Ten minutes before and after it’s lowest is about all we’ve got before the pit floods faster than our pump can keep up. When they tried back in ’twenty-one, they never got it cleared below two hundred feet, but they knew from when they plumbed it that the pit bottoms out at two-forty. Because we’re on a bluff, I figure the bottom will be maybe twenty feet below the low-tide mark. We should be able to plug wherever the water’s coming in, and the pump’ll do the rest.”

“I bet there’s a big ol’ chest just bursting with gold,” Jimmy said, wide-eyed at the prospect.

“Don’t forget,” Don replied, “the pit’s been dragged a hundred times with grappling hooks, and no one ever brought up anything.”

“Loose gold doubloons, then,” Jimmy persisted, “in bags that rotted away.”

Nick got to his feet, wiping crumbs from his lap. “We’ll know in a half hour.”

He put on thigh-high rubber boots and slung the battery pack for his miner’s helmet over his shoulder before zipping into an oilskin jacket, feeding the power cord out his collar. He slung a second satchel of equipment over his other shoulder.

Ron lowered a cork bob down the pit on a string marked off at ten-foot increments. “One-ninety,” he announced when the line went slack.

Nick donned a web harness and clipped it to the loop at the end of their thick rope. “Lower the hose for the pump but don’t fire it up yet. I’m going down.”

He tugged the rope sharply to test the tackle block’s brake, and it held perfectly. “Okay, you guys, we’ve been practicing for this all summer. No more screwing around, right?”

“We’re ready,” Ron Ronish told him, and his twin nodded.

“Jimmy, I don’t want you coming within ten feet of the pit, you hear? Once I’m down there, there won’t be nothing to see.”

“I won’t. I promise.”