Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Ten yards before the break in the stone barrier that led to the lake—aka the cold-ass nature shower—we took a right turn and walked deeper into the jungle. No more than a hundred feet from there, we stopped at a gap about eight-by-eight feet in the ground.
“This is John.” Hunter squatted at the hole’s edge, resting his arms on his knees.
“You gave him a name?”
I dropped to all fours and peered over to look inside.
At the bottom, roughly twenty feet down, rested a grayish skeleton dressed in torn brown pants, a dirt-covered what-once-was-white shirt, a belt with a buckle, a sword, and a leather tricorn at its feet.
The skull was turned skywards, its hollow eyes staring at me.
Instead of raising horrified emotions, pity enveloped me.
He looked sad and disappointed, like someone whose last thought was, What the fuck was I thinking coming here?
“Edward and I didn’t want to say ‘a dead guy’ or ‘a skeleton’ when we discussed him in public places.
So Edward named him after William Thompson’s friend, John Keating.
Before Captain William Thompson died, he left the treasure’s location and instructions with Keating.
And since we found him here with the compass, Edward thought it was John. ”
“Are you sure this wasn’t a Halloween party gone wrong? He looks like Captain Sparrow.”
Hunter chuckled. “I’m pretty sure he is John Keating.”
“This is your rope?” I pointed at the cable, tightened to a healthy tree and tossed into the hole, its end reaching the bottom.
“Yes. I left it there on the off-chance I accidentally fell into this trap.”
“Why do you think it was a trap?” I stood up and rubbed my palms on my jean shorts.
“What if he was digging the treasure up? What if he dug it all out and then accidentally fell into it and broke his neck? And what if he didn’t dig deep enough and was sitting on it?
” Good grief, the questions piled up in my head quicker than sand in an hourglass.
“He didn’t have a shovel, and at the base, there were stakes. I removed them all just in case, with the exception of the one in his back. I didn’t want to disturb the fellow much.”
“Do you think there are more traps?”
“I crisscrossed this place a million times and haven’t found another”—he gave me a warning look—“yet.”
Hunter rose and motioned for me to follow him around the hole. “I numbered each landmark that would have been here two hundred years ago and used the numbers to measure in feet. I marked the waterfall landmark number one.”
I scrunched up my face. “Why did you decide the waterfall was number one?”
“Because John was here. I rotated landmarks. First, I tried the waterfall, then the cave.”
“The cave?”
“Yes, I’ll show it to you soon.”
From there, we went to the beach, where, not far from the black rocks at the edge of the woods, Hunter pointed out remains from the old sunken vessel he and Edward discovered in the ocean half a mile from the island and dragged onto the beach.
“Edward believed it’s the barkentine John and his men sailed on to here,” Hunter said. As he and I got closer, medium-sized crabs raced sideways to the water while smaller ones dashed into the nooks and crannies of the debris.
“I don’t know what barkentine means.”
“It’s a smaller three-mast ship with only the foremast square-rigged, whereas a full-rigged ship is square-rigged on all three masts.”
“Ah.” I smiled, shaking my head. “Yeah. I still don’t understand, but it doesn’t matter.
I’m trying to understand the story. So they came to this island, then John got killed, and then their ship sank somewhere nearby.
Or did it sink first, and he was the only survivor and somehow made it to this location, just to fall into a trap? ”
Hunter scratched the back of his neck. “We don’t know. It might be someone else’s boat. I haven’t found any markings on the pieces.”
“Assuming it was John’s, wouldn’t he need a bigger ship to take all the treasure back?” I asked as we meandered our way into the jungle and strolled north.
“What we found is just a small part of it. From what we can tell it was a large vessel that could fit all that treasure.”
My head spun slightly from all the ship types and too much uncertainty.
In reality, the only boat we had to worry about was the Reely Nauti, but Hunter seemed to want my help to figure out the location of this loot, so we needed to focus more on what he knew and not what he didn’t know about old scraps of wood on the beach.
“Go back to how you searched the island,” I said.
“With each starting mark,” Hunter explained, holding a large branch out of my way and letting me pass, “I first walked seventy-eight north, then turned right and walked sixty-three, then turned left and moved two hundred and twenty-one, then—”
“Do you know the numbers by heart?” I glanced at the digits above the arrows on his tattoo.
“I do.” He frowned. “I can recite it backwards too.”
Shaking my head, I walked on. “And when you found nothing, you started all over, but with a different turn order. Instead of going right, you went left, and so on?” Hunter gave me a pitiful glance.
“Ouch.” I cringed at the idea of how many possible patterns there were.
“In one of your journals, you have a complicated table with digits that went on for days. Was it the list of combinations you completed?”
“Yep.”
I came to a stop. If I had my laptop, I could easily code a simple program that could spit out results within seconds, but doing it by hand … my brain hurt just thinking about it, and my feet ached at the miles it would take too. “And you have walked them all?”
“I’m not even sure if I finished writing all the combinations. I did it for some time, then gave up. Once in a while, I’d pick up where I left off.”
We returned to the kitchen for a quick bite of boiled eggs and avocado.
While we ate, Hunter described more of his grandfather’s fruitless treasure quests.
After a short break we ventured further into the jungle, where lush greenery blocked out the sun, crafting cooler air around me, as our path ascended.
We were at the foot of the hill with the highest peaks when the sound of rushing water mixed with my heavy breathing.
Hunter showed me a carving on a bare wall, which he discovered soon after Edward’s passing.
It was a pirate ship drawing that could have been left by John Keating or Captain William Thompson.
The mark theoretically matched the one found on Cocos Island, per a Wikipedia printout he had in his journal.
“It must mean this area is important.” I ran my fingers over the grooves engraved into the stone. It was mind-blowing that two hundred years ago someone stood where my feet were and etched this image with their dagger. Maybe it was the pirate’s way to say, “I was here.”
“In a second you can decide for yourself,” Hunter said and slid between two stones blanketed with soft green moss. I followed him around the bend and found myself in a place that looked like it had been ripped out of a storybook.
Enclosed by a mountain, a cascading low waterfall flowed through a tremendous arched opening, spilling into a small pond.
A hundred feet above us, tropical flora surrounded the aperture to the blue sky.
Past the arched gate, a giant, gnarled tree grew in the center, its snake-like roots twisted and spread out, reaching into the water.
The tree’s meaty branches grew outward toward the sky, creating a vast canopy that cast us into a shadow, where some of its thinner branches dripped down, brushing the ground.
“This is amazing,” I breathed, gazing at the green Gulliver.
“It is something, isn’t it?” Hunter walked past me. “There is nothing like this anywhere else on this island.”
“How big is it?”
“At least six feet in diameter.”
I made a low whistle. “It’s the perfect place for it. There’s enough daylight and water, and the tree has protection from strong winds. It must be so old. I bet it was already here when what’s-his-name’s skeleton wandered around searching for treasure.”
“Probably.”
Hunter first climbed the slippery rocks up the stream, then held out his hand to help me.
Pushing hanging vines out of our way, we curved around the trunk, my fingers brushing reverently along the mammoth’s bark.
On this side of the tree the space darkened, as if rain clouds had gathered above, but when I craned my neck to look up, the sky was still blue.
Before us, a ravine ripped the mountain apart, and to our left, the wall held two large circular cavities, ten or so feet high, with a dark aperture at the bottom.
“If I were a pirate, this would be where I’d hide my stuff. It’s far from the shore and not easy to reach through the jungle,” I said, standing in the middle of the spacious, ghoulish area.
Hunter walked past the murky entrance, and I followed him but stopped by the cave.
“Did you check inside?”
He nodded. “Yes. It’s empty.”
I stepped one foot deep and sang, in my very best Adele voice, “Hellooooo…”
My word echoed into the cave’s depths, and an odd noise drifted back, accompanied by a squealing sound. My eyes fixed on the darkness, my body tense. A bat swooped past my head, followed by another grazing my hair, and suddenly dozens of black flying creatures rushed out.
“Shit!” I shrieked and flapped my arms in the air, hitting some of them by accident. Gross.
Hunter grabbed my forearm, and we ducked to the opposite side. We were jammed into a small corner, crouching, Hunter’s broad frame folded over me, shielding me from the outside elements, his chest to my back, his arms around my shoulders.
“You said it was empty,” I hissed.
“I meant there is no booty,” he said, his hot breath on my neck.