31
Everyone gathered around the pit was silent, watching, staring down at the open trapdoor of C-1, shocked by the sound coming from inside, a kind of rumbling. Nobody could think straight enough to even guess what it was.
Bates and a couple of others were stood in the right place to see down at an angle through the trap and to the trap at the far end of the floor of C-1. Their jaws dropped as they saw dirty water burst through the trap, swirl about inside the vault and then recede slightly, settling finally, flooding the first foot of the vault. This was sea level. The Photo collector was down there, soaked to the knees, frozen with fear.
“What the -“ the man closest to Bates began, then was cut off as Jacky rushed into the action.
“C-10, dammit! They destroyed it by drilling more than a hundred years ago!”
“My god!” Bates said, staring down into the pit. He was talking to Jacky, but Jacky had gone, moved over to the Landrover, where he was fumbling through the gear in the back. “That means when he opened the trapdoor he let the sea in. The bloody sea! It’s flooded.”
“No shit,” one of the men by him said.
Jacky was back, a diver’s air-talk strapped onto his back, fumbling with the straps to tighten it, one hand clutching a torch. “He can’t last long!”
He jumped into the hole, landing with a resounding clang on the roof of the vault. The echo carried in the night.
“Jacky, what are you - you can’t!”
“He’s blind down there. The force of the water might have knocked him out cold.” And that was all he said. He dropped through the open trap, rushed to the far end of the vault and disappeared with a splash through the second trap, into C-2, far above what he hoped would not be a watery metal coffin for real when he got there.
32
Six people have so far died trying to unlock the secrets of the Money Pit, the most expensive treasure hunt of all time. 1861: the boiler powering a steam pump explodes, scalding a man to death. 1897: a rope slips from its pulley under the weight of Maynard Kaiser, plummeting him to his doom at the bottom of a pit. 1965: Robert Restall is overcome by carbon dioxide fumes and drowns at the bottom of a pit; during their attempts to rescue him, his son Bobbie and two workmen are also lost. There was a rumour that the death count had to reach seven before Oak Island would surrender; Jacky was determined that that fateful number was not going to come tonight.
The murkiness of the water was the scariest part of all. During his descent, he twice got his air tank jammed in a trap, but even those nervy moments didn’t match for fear effect the sight of his torchlight penetrating only a couple of feet. It was as if the light particles were being eaten away. As he descended and the pressure became greater, making his head throb, as if the things eating his light were trying to swallow him, too.
At one point he caught his hand on a trap as he was pulling himself through, and the torch slipped away from him. Panicking, he reached for it, but his fingers missed. It dropped out of sight, the twisting light swallowed by the black water in moments. Suddenly he was blind and the walls seemed closer and the water colder, and the trap was a mouth clamped around his waist, a mouth belonging to a monster that would hold him here until his air was depleted.
He broke free, swimming frantically down, hands scrabbling before him on the cold surface of the lower coffin. He couldn’t even see his hands.
Then his hand closed over the torch, fingers searching, pressing the button. If it was broken, he was dead.
The light came on. A burst of courage and adrenalin coursed through him.
What seemed like minutes later he was reaching through another trap when the light illuminated a haggard face, full of fear, which coughed bubbles at him. Carter had resisted death for probably two full minutes, but upon seeing his salvation he had submitted. His face creased as he took in water. How horrible it must be, Jacky thought as he shoved his mouthpiece between his gnashing teeth, to try to draw in breath and receive only water.
He had to throw his arms around Carter and squeeze tight to cease his thrashings. After a moment or two, he apparently realised he was breathing air and not water; his movements calmed. Their hug seemed to bond them, even though they couldn’t see each other’s face in the murky water.
Jacky raised the torch to his face so the man could see it. He nodded his head upwards, then aimed the light into the man eyes to see the man’s response. Realising this, Carter also nodded his head.
The swim upwards was tough because only one man at a time could pass through a trap and they had to keep swapping the mouthpiece between them. But at least there was no rush this time and that allowed them to remain calm, which in turn allowed them to perform better, more professionally. They were not so disoriented that they forgot to make the necessary decompression stops during the ascent.
When Jacky’s head burst through the surface of the water, his body halfway through the floor trap of C-1, arms grabbed him. The iron vault was filled with men stood knee-deep in water, men who hauled the pair out of the water and lifted them, fed them through the ceiling trap into yet more arms. Carter lay on the ground and coughed and coughed. Jacky sat there, watching him, feeling nothing. Men slapped his back, congratulated him, but he did not proud that he had saved a life: that had been his plan and success was expected; only failure would have elicited an emotion from him.
Bates tossed Jacky a towel.
“Get these two something hot,” he called. “And a medal for this chap.”
Jacky got to his feet. “Keep that tea warm for me. I’ll be back soon.”
“You aren’t going back in there!”
“Why else are we here, Alan?”
“After what just happened? Are you insane?”
“Don't listen to my ex-girlfriends, Bates,” Jacky answered with a grin.
33
This time the going was much easier. He was wearing a neoprene wetsuit to ward off the cold, a flat, internal air tank so he wasn’t encumbered, and a facemask with a powerful mini torch on each side so his hands would be free. In a utility belt around his waist were items he thought he might need.
The going was quick; in only just over a minute, Jacky had reached C-9 and the floor trap that Carter had unwittingly let the sea through. Cautiously, Jacky poked his head through, looking left and right, the powerful pair of torches on the side of his head illuminating everything clearly.
He was looking into a natural cavern. The walls were rough rock and soil. This was the original Money Pit, long ago collapsed. In the roof of the cavern he could see a hole, the result of core drilling, that he knew rose to the surface.
Hoping that the cavern wouldn’t collapse around him, Jacky pulled himself out through the trap and floated in the murky water, careful not to let any of the wood and mud floating all around him bump his facemask or mouthpiece. He could see that a good portion of C-9 was exposed, rock and soil having been loosened away from it over time by the water. If the decay continued and the chasm expanded, soon that vault was going to come loose, just like C-10. It would fall to the bottom of the chasm, just like C-10, which he could see below him, buckled from the fall, roof ripped open by the drilling of many years ago.
Because this was the point where the descending line of vaults doubled back on itself, the middle of the chevron, C-11 was twelve feet directly beneath C-9. The bottom of the cavern was much lower and C-11 was exposed as much as C-9 was. The chasm was some forty feet in height, but it was thin, tubular, and it was the walls that held the exposed vaults in place. Jacky floated in the space where C-10 should have been. He hung there in the black water and in his mind played the scene of so long ago as the drill sunk by the Oak Island Association hit the submerged iron vault, tearing through it, dislodging it, sending it crashing to the bottom of the cavern with a water-dulled, resounding thud.
C-9 and C-11 still swayed slightly in the movement of the water. Somewhere in this cavern was a vent that led directly to the sea; the movement was caused by the tide.
> Pressing on with his business, Jacky swam to the roof trap of C-11. The trap was at the opposite end to where it was on all the others. For the backtracking journey at the bottom half of the chevron, the vaults had been laid in reverse.
This was the first time he was seeing and touching the exterior of one of the vaults, and he was surprised at the extent of the rust. Great chunks of it came away as he brushed the iron surface. He almost thought he might be able to dig his way right through to the inside.
Of course, with so much rust the trapdoor was never going to open without help. He turned the handle and then tried bashing the trapdoor, but his movements were slowed by the water and thus without power. Soon, though, the trapdoor submitted and slowly began to give.
Jacky removed from his belt a tool he’d thrown together while up on the surface. It was simply a metal rod with wire tied around the middle, about five inches’ worth dangling free, looped at the end. The idea was to place the rod across the trapdoor, hook the loop over the handle and kick open the trapdoor. The wire would stop the trapdoor opening any more than five inches when the water rushed through, and thus stop Jacky being sucked through the trap and smashing his bones 12 feet below. Once the vault was fully flooded, he could open the trapdoor and go through.
Using this tool, Jacky made good progress. There were no more surprises involving watery caverns or missing vaults. In just under half an hour, he was swimming through C-20, the final, lowest vault.
The trapdoor in the floor of this vault was the final doorway to the Money Pit, or at least to the chamber that held the only treasures - or not - buried on this island. Jacky’s hand closed around the handle, but didn’t yet turn it. He pulled the small video camera from his belt, about to turn it on. Then he replaced it. It was selfish, he knew, but his spirit couldn’t be denied. And it was his spirit that wanted him to view the secrets beyond the door first, alone.
Despite the fact that the exterior of the trapdoor led into a flooded cavern, there was not enough rust to seal the door shut. It dropped open at his shove.
Jacky Jackson entered the Money Pit.