Voyage to Blackbeard’s Island

Voyage to Blackbeard’s IslandRick and Rose Sinclair Adventure #2Russell James www.severedpress.comCopyright 2023 by Russell James Other books by Russell JamesRick and Rose Sinclair AdventuresQuest for the Queen’s TempleGrant Coleman AdventuresCavern of the DamnedMonsters in the CloudsCurse of the Viper KingForest of FireMammoth IslandAtoll XDesolation CanyonRanger Kathy West National Park AdventuresClawsDragons of KilaueaRavens of Yellowstone DedicationFor Christy,The finest treasure I have ever found. Chapter One1915Pablo raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun’s unrelenting glare. He squinted across the bow of his bobbing dory to the open Caribbean Sea.Yes!His pulse quickened. It hadn’t been his imagination. In the distance, he’d spotted an island. His salvation was at hand.Days ago, now he was unsure how many, he’d left his fishing village in his sailing dory. Money had been tight since the Great War started, and a decent catch would be enough to pay the overdue rent.He’d been hoping for one last cast of his nets before the darkening clouds in the sky became a storm. By afternoon, a contrary wind and an outgoing tide had proved to be more than his little boat could fight. He’d gotten so far from shore that he lost sight of land. Then the great, gray clouds turned black, and the storm broke. Lightning, thunder, and lashing rain sent him cowering down by the keel, only looking up long enough to bail water from the swamping boat.The storm passed and left a uniform gray sky behind. With no sun to orient himself, and no idea how far the storm had swept him from shore, Pablo realized he faced an almost hopeless situation. The storm had torn the mainsail, so he shortened it and set a course that maximized the wind he had available. He had no idea where he was going, but wherever it was, he might as well get there as quickly as possible.Finally, with an island sighted, it looked like he’d gotten somewhere.He tacked for the shore. As he closed in on the island, his hopes soared. A single, barren peak rose from an island covered in lush green. He had no idea where this island was, but he doubted that a place like this could still be uninhabited in 1915. The opening of the Panama Canal last year had turned most island real estate here into a precious commodity.As he came within a hundred yards of shore, he could make out the narrow, white sand beach that ran like a skirt around the island. He also saw something far less welcoming. A fishing boat half buried in that brilliant sand. A big chunk had been taken out of the keel. The captain must have run her aground on a reef. Nothing that he’d ever seen in the sea would have been big enough or powerful enough to take a bite like that out of a boat.Further north, he spied a break in the beach. Closing on it, he saw it was an entrance to a cove. Now that was a godsend. Such a place would protect him from the worst of the sea if another storm blew in. He sailed through the channel and into the bay.Jungle ringed the cove on two sides, but straight ahead across the water rose a wall of jumbled rocks that was part of the island’s central mountain. What he didn’t see on any side was civilization. His hope of spying a dock with cold beer and warm food for sale nearby evaporated.But there was evidence people had been here before. The skeleton of an old wooden sailing ship lay nose-first on the beach. The planking that had made up the outer hull was long gone, but the sturdier timbers that had supported them rose up from the sand like the ribcage of a long-dead creature. He’d seen examples like this at home, where storms scoured away sand and threw old wrecks up for all to see, at least until the sea again claimed them for its own.He began to wonder what kind of ship this had been that had sunk in this little bay so long ago. In the days when wooden ships sailed the sea, they frequently carried treasure back from the New World to Europe. Images flashed through his mind: gold, silver, jewels. He’d heard of people finding lost treasure and becoming rich overnight. Maybe getting blown here by the storm would wind up being the best thing that ever happened to him.All his worries about his thirst and hunger disappeared, replaced by dreams of fantastic wealth, of digging his hands in the sand and bringing up Spanish pieces of eight, of opening a chest stuffed with a rainbow of precious stones. He beached his boat to the left of the wreck and jumped over the side into calf-deep water. He had no shovel to do any proper digging, so he took what he did have with him, the paddle.Pablo splashed his way over to the wreck and stepped into it amidships between the ribs. He still stood on sand, but if the ship’s ribs were intact, they had to be attached to a keel down below. Any seaman worth his salt would store treasure down low by the keel to help keep the ship stable.Wouldn’t it be something if a little bit of it was still there? he thought.The idea of being so close to fantastic wealth made him giddy. Facing the bow, he dug the sand away with the paddle, then knelt down in the water and sifted the area with his hands. Churned silt obscured his view and he searched by feel. His fingers touched something hard. He grabbed it and lifted it into the daylight.Pablo held a cleat in his hand, about eight inches long and pretty well-preserved. He threw it up on the beach. Not what he was looking for, but at least proof that something valuable might still be here.He whipped around and faced the ship’s missing stern. Pablo began a frantic, shoveling search of the sand at