Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) (3 page)

The yardarm on the mizzen mast snapped and the upper half of the yard crashed through the poop deck, killing the Captain instantly in his bunk. The loose sheets whipped across the poop deck, their pulleys trying desperately to crush the skull of anyone in the way.

Miguel clung to the wheel while the wind and spray whipped at his clothes, snapping his sleeves.
If we can only make the harbor
, he thought. In the darkness he could only pray that his course was true, and he did. He fought the wheel like a madman as wave after wave came crashing over both the forecastle and main deck.

Above the roar of the wind ripping through the shrouds and stays, Miguel heard an ominous sound. Surf crashing on rock. He’d miscalculated and the wind was driving the ship directly onto the reef. He had to make a choice.
Was the harbor entrance north or south
? He had but seconds to decide, and then he turned the great wheel to starboard. If he was wrong, perhaps they’d miss the reef, or find a hole though it and become beached on the island.

The next sound he heard broke his heart. The sound of the hull being torn open on the submerged reef. The ship shuddered, then spun broadside to the wind. Within seconds she began to roll onto her side. There was no time to give the order to abandon ship. Many of the crew had already been swept from the deck into the sea, the jagged edges of rock and reef putting a quick end to their lives.

Still Miguel clung to the wheel, as if by sheer will he could pull the ship off the reef. Suddenly, everything went black as one of the pulleys on the mizzen sheet connected with the back of his head.

It took only minutes for the ship to break apart in the crashing waves, spilling treasure, cargo, and bodies into the sea. Of the seventy-five crew and twenty-two passengers, only a handful survived the wreck and many of those died struggling in the water.

Miguel found himself in the water, clinging desperately to a length of wood. He had no idea what part of the ship it was from. Fifteen minutes later, he was thrown up onto the beach. For a moment he lay there, thinking he was dead. When he tried to turn his head, the pain in the back of his neck and shoulder told him he was not.

He struggled to his feet and staggered across the sand in the gathering light of dawn. Once he made it to the top of a dune he stopped and looked back through the driving wind and rain. There was no ship to be seen.
Was I thrown overboard and the ship sailed on?

Then he began to see the flotsam being pushed ahead of the foamy water. Wood, canvas, rope, and everything imaginable. And bodies. He staggered down to the water’s edge, forcing himself forward against the wind and spray. The first body he came to was obviously dead, the man’s head caved in by a powerful blow.

He nearly wretched at the sight but moved on. After finding five people dead, he found the first survivor, Juan Castellano, his left arm bent grotesquely above the elbow. Helping Juan to a sitting position, the man moaned in great pain.

“Juan,” Miguel said, “can you hear me?” Juan nodded, his face ashen, blood flowing from an open wound in his scalp.

Miguel pulled his sheathed dagger from his belt. He ripped both sleeves from his shirt and, using the sheath as a splint, he bent Juan’s arm back into place, tying the makeshift splint with one sleeve and binding the head wound with the other. He then ripped Juan’s right sleeve off and tore it longwise into two pieces. Tying the pieces together he made a sling to hold his friend’s arm.

“I must go,” he said. “To see if there are others. Can you make it up to the dune?”

“I think so,” Juan replied, struggling to his feet.

Miguel left him on his own and went further down the beach. Within ten minutes, he’d made it to a large rock jutting out into the sea and could go no further. Among the dozens of bodies, he’d found two others who were still alive and had tended to them. Going back the way he came, he found one more man who’d just been washed up on the beach. It was Enzo Navarro, struggling to his feet in the heavy surf.

“Enzo!” Miguel shouted. “You’re alive!”

“Am I?” the younger man asked, besieged by the pounding waves.

Together the three men made their way back to where Juan waited. The two injured men sat on the lee side of the dune with Juan as Enzo and Miguel went south, looking for others. They found no one else. Out of ninety-seven souls on board, only five had survived.

“Enzo,” Miguel said, “I have no idea what island this is, nor if there is food or water here. There are many barrels strewn across the beach. Let us empty the contents and partially bury several of them, open to the rain, for drinking water.”

One of the others, Pablo Nieves, was only slightly hurt. “Captain,” Pablo said, conveying to the others that Miguel was now the leader. “While you two set about doing that, I will go among the debris in search of any food supplies not ruined by the water. I will also drag the dead higher on the beach. We can bury them after the storm passes.”

The three men split up, leaving Juan and the other injured man, the pilot Antonio Martinez, to look after one another’s wounds. After two hours of struggling in the heavy surf, wind, and rain, Miguel and Enzo managed to retrieve four sugar barrels, which they emptied and set deep in the sand to gather rain water. Pablo found only a few pounds of salt-dried pork and had dragged twenty-one bodies up to the top of the dune. The others had been claimed by the turbulent sea.

The five men huddled beside a downed coconut palm on the lee side of the high dune for six hours as the storm increased in intensity. Soon it became dark and the storm began to lessen. They tried to sleep, keeping one man on watch at all times, but none slept well though the night.

As dawn broke, the storm had passed, moving off to the northwest with only scattered clouds left behind to show its passage. That and the debris on the beach.

The three men that were able, turned to the grizzly task of burying the dead. Three more bodies had floated up on the beach during the night, making twenty-four graves that would need to be dug. Out of necessity, they were shallow graves. None of the three men digging even considered more than one body per grave; it just wouldn’t be proper. The burying took all morning.

Juan left the other injured man and went inland to try to determine where they were. It didn’t take long before he reached the western shore and realized they were on one of the many smaller islands, not the main island of Lucaioneque as he’d hoped.

He went north along the western shore, which was mostly tidal swamp and uprooted trees. Soon he came to the tip of the small island, before returning along the eastern shore. He came to a large rock that he had to wade into the water to get around. Miguel saw him approaching and at first thought it was another survivor, until he got closer and could recognize his friend.

“Juan, where did you come from?” he asked as the man approached.

“I crossed the island and came around the northern tip,” Juan replied. “This is not Lucaioneque, but one of many smaller keys off its coast. None of which is known to have water or food, save for coconuts. I saw a few trees that bear fruit resembling guava, only smaller. I know not if they are edible.” As they walked back to the others Miguel asked what more Juan knew about these islands and the early inhabitants.

“The Lucayos people were a backward, barbarous people,” Juan said. “Much like the Arawaks of Española. They wore little or no clothes and were without inhibition or greed. Some adorned their faces and bodies with paint and jewelry made from shell or bone. There are no native people left on any of these islands. On Española, the Arawak once numbered in the hundreds of scores. Today, there are but a handful.”

Miguel considered this. “If they lived here, they ate and drank water.”

“Much the way you and Juan have done, they collected vast stores of fresh water from the rain. There has not been any discovered source of fresh water on most of these islands. Their diet was mostly fish, crab, and occasional reptiles that inhabit the interior.”

When they arrived back at the makeshift camp they began to devise a plan to survive. The water kegs were half full and if they were careful it would last several weeks. They piled dry wood on the beach to light for a signal fire should they see a ship. Enzo disappeared into the interior and after four hours returned with three large iguanas.

By the end of the second day, they had enough food to last them for several days, certain the rest of the fleet would eventually find them. They turned to the business of trying to recover any of the treasure that they could reach. After three days of diving below the surface they managed to recover quite a bit of the silver, nearly all of the gold and five intact chests of emeralds. They placed the gold and silver in three large chests, and buried them, along with the emeralds, on the lee side of the large rock.

Over the next few days, things worsened on the tiny island. It didn’t take long to confirm that they were indeed alone, nor did it take long to confirm there was little food and no water to be found. The temperature was unbearable during the day as the sun never ceased. What trees there might have been at one time had been razed by the hurricane, and little shade was to be found. The crewman, Lugo Esparza, died on the seventh day and was buried on the dune with the others.

“I fear his might be the fate of us all,” Juan said after burying the man.

“Nonsense,” Miguel replied. “Someone aboard one of the other ships had to have noticed we turned easterly before the fog set in. The rest of the fleet will find us.”

“And if they didn’t survive?” Pablo asked. “Or sailed on?”

“Then we may be here a while,” replied Enzo. “We should find a way to gather fish to eat.”

“We will do just that,” Miguel said. “And to secure the treasure, we should mark its location somehow.”

Enzo bent and picked up a newly fallen green coconut. Tossing it to Miguel he said, “Put use your dagger and inscribe the location with a riddle.”

The two men laughed, having shared many riddles over the course of the voyage and to lighten their spirit after arriving on the island.

“I will do just that,” Miguel said.

The days turned into weeks and soon the small guava-like fruit was gone. It wasn’t long after that before Enzo’s foray into the interior resulted in not a single iguana. Nor did he find any the next day. What coconuts they were able to gather soon diminished to the single one carved with the riddle. Miguel had placed the coconut in Juan’s chart chest, which had spilled its content of charts into the sea. He placed the chest high in the crook of the only tree that hadn’t fallen, a young mangrove.

Rain fell sporadically and the four men used palm leaves to gather more rain into the barrels, but they soon dried up to nothing. With no food or water, their mouths dry and bellies rumbling, it wasn’t long before delirium set in. Pablo ran to the sea and drank his fill of the salty brine. Later on that night, he fell ill and died in his sleep.

One by one, the other men met similar fates, until only Miguel was left to bury his new friend, Enzo. The effort of digging the grave, dragging his friend’s corpse to it, and covering it, proved to be too much. Captain Miguel de Benito died of exhaustion and thirst while sitting next to the graves of his friends. It was there, after two months on the island, that his body turned to dust and bone and was soon covered by sand.

September, 2006

“What’s this?” Bob asked, lifting an old chest from the attic floor. Bob Talbot and his new wife, Nikki, had come to Hunters Creek, a suburb south of Orlando, two days earlier on Bob’s Indian Chief motorcycle. It was a four-hundred-mile ride from their home on Stock Island in the Keys. They were visiting Nikki’s parents to help them move out of their house and into a condo.

“Looks old,” Nikki said. “I don’t remember ever seeing it before. Anything in it?”

“Like everything else around here.” Bob gave the chest a quick shake and something large rattled inside. “Should we open it?”

“The house is a hundred years old—of course everything in it’s old. Better set it aside and let Dad open it. It might be personal.”

He placed it by the ladder leading down to the second floor. They were nearly finished with the attic and after moving a few other items to the ladder, Nikki went down so her husband could hand the things down to her.

It seemed a shame that her parents were moving out of the old house. It was where she’d grown up and where her father had grown up before her. The home had been in the family for several generations. Her father had offered it to her, but neither she nor Bob wanted to leave the Keys. So for the first time in nearly a hundred years, the old house would be owned by someone unrelated.

They carried the things from the attic down to the kitchen, where her mother was sorting what was to be kept. The upper floor had already been cleared out and everything given away or sold off. Only her parents’ bedroom furniture and the furniture in her father’s study remained. That would go to the new condo in Satellite Beach, some fifty miles away on the east coast.

Bob gently placed the old chest on the table. Abbey Godsey, Nikki’s mom, looked at it with disdain. “Carry that into the study, please, Bob. Frank will have to decide what to do with it.”

Bob picked up the chest and carried it through the kitchen and across the hall to his father-in-law’s study. Frank Godsey was a retired Orange County Judge and although he liked the man, Bob sensed the Judge was skeptical about Bob’s chosen profession. Bob was the First Mate of a combination fishing and diving charter boat out of Marathon.

“Hey, Judge,” Bob said from the doorway to the man’s inner sanctum, addressing him by his former title out of respect. “Your wife said to bring this to you.” Placing the small chest on a table in front of the older man, Bob thought he saw a glimmer in the man’s eye.

“Ah, the chest,” Frank said and looked up at Bob with a grin. “I’ve tried to solve the mystery of that thing since I was a kid. My dad gave it to me when Abbey and I married, and his father gave it to him on his wedding day. Story is, that chest has been handed down from father to first son for over two centuries and not a one of us has ever figured out the mystery.”

His face changed, a look of melancholy replacing the glimmer of fun that had been there. “Have a seat, Bob, and I’ll tell you the story.” When Bob sat down across from the older man, he noticed another facial change, to an expression of resolve.

“I have no son to give this chest to,” he finally said. “Nikki’s my only child, so this thing’s yours now.”

He proceeded to tell Bob about his early family history. The Judge’s fifth great-grandfather, Quincy Godsey, had been a seafaring man. He’d been born in Charleston, South Carolina, during the American Revolution and went to sea at an early age. At twenty-five, two years after the birth of his first son in 1802, his ship ran aground off the island of Elbow Cay in the northern Bahamas. At the time, it had only recently been settled by colonial Loyalists who had left Charleston after the war. The situation with the British on the islands and the former colonists was tenuous at best. As it turned out, one of the first settlers on the island knew Quincy’s mother, Elizabeth. Quincy was by that time the First Mate of the merchant ship
Gloria
and was able to negotiate a price with the local wreckers to help pull the ship off of a sandbar, with the help of Winston Malone, the son of his mother’s friend.

While waiting for the tide to rise the following day, young Quincy went exploring on the northern shore of the island. A recent hurricane had submerged that part of the island and most of the trees had been swept away. Quincy’s sharp eyes noticed something unusual in the high boughs of an ancient mangrove that had been toppled by the wind and waves. The branches had grown around and encased an ancient chest that was now exposed after the branches had broken apart.

With some difficulty, Quincy was able to remove the chest and open it. The chest was watertight and when he opened it he found nothing more than a coconut inside. It was at this part of the story that Nikki came into the study and the Judge opened the chest, revealing the coconut.

“A coconut?” she asked. “Your ancestors handed down a coconut through how many generations?”

Bob was enthralled with the story and said, “Eight, beginning with your sixth great-grandfather, Captain Quincy Godfrey.”

The Judge smiled. “Nine now,” he said as he closed the chest and pushed it toward Bob. “If you can’t figure out the mystery, give it to my grandson.”

“You’re giving this to us?” Nikki asked.

“It needs a new home and a new set of eyes on it. Do you know Spanish?”

“I speak a little,” Bob replied. “Everyone in south Florida does. Why?”

“There’s some sort of riddle carved into the coconut and it’s in Spanish. Old Spanish. And parts of it have just faded away with time and can’t even be guessed at.”

“Thanks, Judge,” Bob said. “Means a lot to me. What have eight generations learned so far?”

“Almost nothing,” the Judge replied. “A few words translated, but like I said, it’s old Spanish. Even people in Spain don’t talk like that anymore. I’ll tell you exactly what my dad told me forty-two years ago. It’s better if you just start from scratch.”

Bob studied the chest a moment. It was longer than normal, nearly two feet, but only about a foot tall and less than that in width. The top was rounded and it had two ornate iron straps that became the hinges on one side and the clasps on the other.

“Did any of your ancestors learn anything about the chest itself?” Bob asked.

“The box?” asked the Judge. “No, not that I know of.”

“Is it the original box the coconut was found in?”

The Judge sat forward, glancing curiously from the chest to Bob and back again. “So far as I know,” he replied at last. “I don’t see why anyone would have put it in a different box. Why?”

“I have a friend that can probably tell us where and when the box was made,” Bob said.

“The ‘when’ was figured out a long time ago,” said the Judge. “The coconut has a date carved into it—September twenty-third, 1566. It’s partially rubbed off, but still legible.”

Nikki sat down next to her father. “1566? That’s right after Columbus discovered America.”

The Judge snorted and grinned. “A lifetime after, Peanut. And Columbus didn’t ‘discover’ anything, least of all America.”

She looked from her father to Bob with a puzzled glance. Bob explained, “The Judge is right. Columbus first landed on the islands of the northern Bahamas, where he was greeted by the people that lived there. Being a staunch Catholic, he named the first island San Salvador, after the Savior, and the second Santa Maria de la Concepción, after the Virgin Mary. It wasn’t until his third voyage that he landed on the mainland of South America. Thinking it was an island he named it Isla Santa, now called Venezuela. He was greeted by the people that lived there, also. You can’t really ‘discover’ a land where people already live.”

“You know your history, Bob,” the Judge quipped.

“It was my favorite subject all through school.”

“Back to the box,” the Judge said. “If the writing on the coconut is in Spanish and dated 1566, why wouldn’t you think the box was the same?”

“No reason to think it’s not,” Bob replied. “However, the early explorers bought and traded things all over the known world. Whoever put that coconut in the box might have bought it somewhere in their travels. It’s at least worth finding out. It’s in pretty good shape and could be worth a fortune itself.”

“Why would they put it inside a tree?” the Judge asked.

“You said the tree was a huge mangrove,” Bob replied. “The chest might have been placed in the branches of a small tree to protect it from the water and the tree grew around it. What year did you say Quincy found it?”

“His son, George, was two years old, so it would have been around 1804.”

Bob let out a low whistle. “If the date’s right, the chest was in that tree for almost two hundred and forty years. I know mangroves live over two hundred years sometimes, so it’s possible.”

“You’ve already figured out a part of this mystery nobody else has,” the Judge said, smiling. “I’ve no doubt you’ll be the one to finally solve it.”

A horn sounded from outside the house and Abbey shouted, “The moving van is here.”

Within a few hours, the movers had everything loaded on the truck and had left for the coast. Bob and Nikki, along with her parents, stood outside the old house as Frank and Abbey said their goodbyes to the neighbors, some of whom Frank had known all his life.

“You sure you won’t reconsider?” Abbey asked Nikki.

“About the house?”

“Yes, it’s been in your father’s family since they moved down here from Charleston during the War of 1812.”

“We like it in the Keys, Mom,” Nikki said. “It’s where our roots will be planted.”

Frank and Abbey took one last look at the old house, with its stately oaks dripping with Spanish moss, before handing the keys to the real estate agent who had just arrived. With that last formality, they each hugged their daughter and son-in-law, got in Frank’s big Mercury and drove away.

The day before, Nikki had arranged a small van to pick up the few things she wanted to keep and had them shipped to their home on Stock Island. Bob had strapped the chest to the small luggage rack on the back of the motorcycle after first stuffing it with padding that one of the movers had given him to keep the coconut from bouncing around inside. The ride back home was uneventful and they arrived in Marathon just before sunset.