Rain beating on the window woke Wesley and Junior early the next morning. The clouds in the East had finally made their move over the Keys and would soon be gone on into the Gulf. Marcy had a great breakfast ready as they came out of their room. She was setting out on their back screened in porch drinking coffee and eating. She announced loudly that breakfast was ready and on the bar. Bill came out of his room seconds after she said it. By the time the meal was finished and all possible sincere compliments were given to the cook, the rain had stopped and a beautiful sunrise came slipping in under the trailing clouds over the green tropical plants and the many shades of blue, green waters around Big Pine Key. They took turns telling Marcy about the trip on the Holly Lynne. She soaked it all in with a knowing smile. By noon not a cloud could be seen and the Holly Lynne was clean with everything put away into its proper place. Dennis seemed truly happy to have the Holly Lynne in such a state of readiness. He was talking about going out and looking for Snow Top for Junior, just for the fun of adventure. Even if the whole story was fiction, it would be a grand sounding reason to set sail out toward the deep blue sea again.
Dennis was going to have to deliver a piece of his artwork down to a customer in Key West at about three p.m. so that trip would have to be planned for a few days ahead off into the future.
Zack appeared as he came walking across the lawn between the yellow hanging buoy balls. Dennis invited him aboard the Holly Lynne.
“What are all of you studying on so intensely,” Zack asked as he came on board and saw the book opened on a table and maps around it.
Junior spoke,” It’s an old book I brought down from home up in Arkansas. It was in a boat I bought from an elderly man who lived up on Bull Shoals Lake. It was the last thing he sold before he moved off out to Colorado to live with his daughter in Peablo. He told me to take, The Old Girl, out on the lake and anchor in a secluded cove and read the books he was leaving on her. They were in waterproof boxes and were mostly about the Caribbean, Gulf and the Florida Straits. Three or four were on the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. A leather bound copy of Treasure Island in its unedited original version was there along with other works of fiction. All of Hemingway's works were there. Books on pirate's true history and books about treasure and legends there of. This is one of the books about legendary treasures called, Sea of Gold.
Bill was becoming more interested in the story all the time and he said, “Let me read it to you Zack.”
“Ok,” Zack easily agreed. All set and listened closely for each possible clue as Bill read each word in his most detailed way. Bill had just ended the reading when Amy called Dennis and reminded him it was getting closer to the time they had to leave for Key West.
“Well me Matties, you can stay aboard the Holly Lynne as long as you wants to, but I've got to step ashore. I'll see ye tomorrow perhaps.”
Parting words were spoken. Zack looked at the book and maps. “That's quite a story but the locations are kind of vague, for obvious reasons of course. Let's take this over to my house and compare it to a book I’ve got. The stories are different but both have some similarities that intrigue me.”
All agreed to adjourn on the Holly Lynne and assemble again at Zack’s House.
When the re-gathering was completed Zack already had the old detective magazine out and was reading it over again to himself.
“What's it say”, Bill asked after a second or two past?
This one tells of a man who hurriedly got on the train going up to Miami from Key West. He got on board here on Big Pine Key. The police and other law enforcement officers were alerted of his hurry to get on the train and leave. How he carried two heavy looking bags, by the way he struggled with them, on board the train and insisted on keeping them by his side. He walked the train from rear to head end and back again many times and seemed extremely nervous. Nervous not just about the weather, but about someone watching him. When the police detained him in Miami, the two bags were very light with only wrinkled dirty, sandy clothes and boots in them. He was released after questioning. Smuggling has always been a problem down here. The next train was taken out by the hurricane in 1934. The rails were never put back together. Two weeks later a guy was found dead in the town called Flamingo. He had been trying to hire a boat to take him on a short tour of the Keys. He had no luck that, soon after a hurricane. He was lying chest down on the sandy beach and had drawn a bottle in the sand and the word snow was spelled out next to it. That is what made me see a little connection, and of course it all takes place in these waters.”
Bill said, “Yeah. A bottle and snow as in Snow Top. You reckon he had found Snow Top and had all them bottles in them bags?”
“Dirty sandy clothes in the two bags would seem to say so,” Wesley stated.
Jr. added, “Bags looked loaded, heavy when he got on board and light when he got off. Obviously he pitched them off, probably in the water at different places up through the Keys. Yet the tosses could have been all in one place.”
“That would have been some quick tossing,” Wesley said.
“All in one spot could have been found by someone and all would have been lost at once,” Bill put in.
“Could have been bottles in sacks within the grips,” Jr. suggested.
“And could have been two or three smaller sacks in each grip or luggage bag. You know, to keep the bottles from breaking on each other,” Zack suggested.
“I wonder if old dirty sandy socks were found in the grips,” Jr. questioned.
Zack read the detailed list of items found. Interestingly no socks were listed.
“We can look at it like he found some or all of the Spaniards bottles on Snow Top or only a few,” Zack continued. “If he found Snow Top, so could we. With Bill’s diving tanks and Wesley and Junior’s snorkeling equipment more could be found.”
“I've got an underwater metal detector that would certainly help cause you know lots of those heavy bottles could be covered with sand and or coral by now. Maybe even mangroves have taken root on Snow Top by now,” Bill shared his thoughts.
Junior ask, “Do we look for Snow Top first, or the tossed from the train east out of Key West bottles. There are a lot of miles of railroad to look at from Big Pine Key to Miami. Open water and mangroves, and don't forget, he could have set them off at the depot stops along the way too.”
“Snow Top is my vote,” Wesley stated firmly.
“Yea, Snow Top,” Bill agreed.
Zack looked over at Bill and asked, “Have you still got that old map of the Florida Straits hanging on your wall?”
“I sure do,” Bill confessed.
“Make a couple copies of it, and make one enlarged and I’m up for hunting for Snow Top. Too much may have moved, covered or broken up the bottles along the old right of way by now and whoever was after the man may have found them long ago too.”
“Dennis was right. We're headed to the deep blue sea again,” Junior grinned.
CONTINUED TO BLOG FIVE-(5) BOTTLES
© 2011 A.L. Shipman, Jr. All Rights Reserved. Watermark template. Powered by Blogger.
No comments:
Post a Comment