The operation continued like that for a year and a half, until the pipe was driven into the soggy hole to a depth of twenty feet where the muck took on the consistency of quicksand. The men could no longer stand on the bottom of the hole. Now the entire job was being done from the top by moving the intake nozzle of the steam pump around the perimeter of the hole, sucking out a slurry of sand and water.
The suction nozzle was guided by a man, standing on a raft deep down in the iron walled pit.
Occasionally something would go wrong and the suction nozzle or pipe would plug-up. Using the derrick above the pit, a second raft would be lowered to provide a larger work platform. Then a man with a rope around his waist would be lowered into the hole to clean a plugged suction pipe. Whoever got the job was paid an additional two dollars danger pay and there were always two or three men prepared to risk their lives for the bit of extra money on their paycheck.
Although Amos Reeves had purchased a house on the mainland, he spent the majority of the time living alone in the executive shack, working diligently, directing the men. Every three or four months, his partners from New York would come to visit. The rest of the time he had the shack to himself. That had been the case for nearly two years. The partners had arrived again for their tour of inspection but this time the mood was significantly different.
After supper, the partners gathered around the table in the shack to discuss the venture. The discussion was purely for Amos’ benefit. The other partners had already made up their minds during the train trip from New York to North Carolina.
“We are running out of money, here and we haven’t found a damn thing,” said one of the executives. The others wasted no time in agreeing.
Amos had sensed that the inevitable was going to occur but he tried to hold back his emotions. “We pumped out a piece of wood not long ago. I swear it was hand carved. That means we are getting close. I say we keep digging. No point digging a well and quitting two feet before you hit water.”
“What about the readings we got off our metal detector?” asked the third. “Why can’t we put it down the hole and take some new tests.”
“We tried that two months ago. There is so much steel in the dam that the machine just goes crazy,” replied the Amos. He was dressed like a miner. The other executives wore suits and white shirts. He had been on the job since the beginning and was still committed.
“We have all heard about that piece of wood. It could have been sitting on the beach. Someone could have thrown it in or it could have been on the surface and sucked down the outside of the damn. I’ve seen the cave-in holes around the perimeter every time you run the pump. I say it didn’t come from the bottom of the pit at all. It’s time we give up and pull out!”
“Where exactly do we stand, financially?” asked one of the men.
“Look, here’s the situation,” answered the man in charge of the accounting. “There is a God damned depression going on out there. The stock market lost ninety percent of its value. Our investors have put in nearly forty thousand dollars and we have spent roughly twenty. I say we make a few adjustments to the bookkeeping and quit. We get back to New York, tell the folks we’ve run out of money and have stopped temporarily until we raise a bit more capital. Then we make a token effort to get some new investors. When we don’t find any, we give up. We still have twenty thousand dollars and we can split up four ways.”
“I tell you the gold finder works! There is gold down there. We just have to keep going,” insisted Amos.
One of the executives attempted to find some common ground.
“Why don’t we go back down the hole and drive spikes in. See if we hit something, this time. If we do, we keep going. If we don’t, then I’ll go along with you fellas who want to pull out. But I insist that the men here are paid in full. It looks better that way. If everybody is paid, it looks like we are just pulling out temporarily. It won’t stir up any controversy, that way.”
“What about the machinery?”
“We leave it here. Let the locals keep it. It cost a fortune to get it here. No point in spending another fortune to get it out.”
“Give me another two months,” begged Amos.
“One week. That’s all,” stated the first executive. “I’ll go along with driving down search prods, but unless we actually find gold, which I doubt we ever will, in one week we pull up stakes.”
“You are all making a big mistake. If that is Blackbeard’s treasure down there the paltry sum we have left from the investors wouldn’t account to a hundredth of what we might find,” stated Amos.
“But if we find nothing, it’s a helluva lot more than nothing.”
“We’ll give Amos another week. We have to be unanimous. Can we all agree to that?”
Each of the men acknowledged their assent. One banged his hand on the table, another grunted and the last man made a slight wave of his hand.
“It’s settled then.” The pudgy executive reached for the whiskey bottle and topped up everyone’s glass. Lifting his own glass he pronounced; “Resolution Passed.” The men all took long pulls on their drinks.
X X X X X
The next morning, Amos told his men to lower a raft into the pit. The raft was a small affair, barely four feet by five feet, made of pine logs, lashed together. But it did float on the soupy mix of sand and water that always lay in the bottom of the pit and although wobbly, it could support a man. Nevertheless, it was no easy job to be lowered down on a rope, rappel off the side of the cofferdam and jump onto the raft. Once on the raft, working in the confined space in the intense heat that wafted off the iron dam required almost superhuman effort. The men on top lowered the twelve foot probe into the pit. The blacksmith and machinist on the job had built the probe and a probe driver that morning. The probe was a twelve foot length of round steel. The driver was a crude affair, little more than a piece of three inch pipe, six feet long, with one end capped tight. The cap was held in place with rivets. Secured on the top of the pipe was an iron ring.
At first the miner in the pit manhandled the probe, sinking it about three feet in the soup with just his own weight. He probed in a dozen places before exhaustion forced him to climb back out. Another man went down.
Using the derrick, the six foot probe driver was guided over the probe. The man in the pit held the probe, keeping his hands below a painted mark, seven feet from the probe’s top end. When all was in place, he signaled to the men leaning over the edge of the cofferdam. Two men pulled on the rope attached to the iron ring, causing the driver to slide up the probe to within two feet of the top. On a signal from the man in the pit steadying the probe, the men holding the rope let go.
The man at the bottom pulled away his hands and almost fell off the raft as the pipe slid down around the probe. With a crash, the iron cap struck the top end of the probe and hammered it down into the soup. The probe sunk six inches each time the driver was released, indicating that there was nothing solid to impede the probe. The driver was hauled up and on the signal slammed down again on the butt end of the probe, driving it deeper into the mud. At first the probe had to be held in place by the man on the raft but as the probe went deeper, it supported its own weight. The man on the raft barked out orders and repeated the