On the seventh placement, as it neared the end of its reach, the probe struck something solid and refused to go deeper.
Excitement built as the man on the raft measured the depth of the probe and ordered another attempt. The men surrounding the pit became strangely silent. The driver was hauled up and on the signal, allowed to crash down on the probe. Nothing happened. The probe refused to sink. The third time the driver struck and the probe refused to budge, the men began to cheer.
“Haul it out. We’ll move a foot south and try again. You want to stay down there or should I send down a replacement,” called Amos.
The workman shook his head, determinedly refusing to give up the taste of success he was feeling, despite the windless, over-baring heat.
“I’ll do it again,” he answered, wondering if his stamina would hold.
“Whatever you say. Just don’t collapse down there,” shouted Amos. “Throw a bucket of water over him so he’ll cool down,” he ordered. Men above dumped cold fresh water on their comrade in the pit.
The second probe reacted the same way as the first.
“Sure as hell, there’s something down there! We better make sure the brass knows about this. You, go tell the top dogs,” yelled Amos over the din of the pump that had to run constantly.
Within minutes the senior partners had all gathered around.
“We’ve hit something hard down about ten feet. So far we don’t know what size it is. We are going to pound down another probe. We know it’s only on the left side of the pit. The probes on the right side showed nothing. I think we found it!” cried Amos, excitedly.
The pudgy executive pulled Amos and the other partners away from the workmen so that they couldn’t overhear the conversation.
“We don’t know that. It might be a tree stump,” replied the pudgy faced executive.
“How would a tree stump get that deep?” demanded one of the others.
“The same way Blackbeard’s treasure got that deep. It sank! Look this island didn’t look this way when Blackbeard was here. The sand shifts worse here than in the Sahara desert. Every time there is a storm …. A hurricane …. The whole island gets swept. Afterwards, the surge runs off the island, back to the sea. It makes river beds as it retreats, eating away the sand. Something gets lodged in the crevice the run-off makes. The water rushes all around it, undermining it. It sinks in the sand. We are digging in quicksand. The more we dig, the chances are the more whatever we find will sink. Look what it has cost us to get this deep. Another ten feet! We might as well look for some asshole in a sampan.”
“We’re not digging to China. It’s a lousy ten feet away,” stated Amos, adamantly. He strutted back to the pit, stood tall and bellowed, “Get that man out of the hole and start the pumps. We keep running day and night from now on. Let’s find it men. There’s gold down there.”
The men, all of whom had gathered around the hole whooped with excitement. Orders were yelled and every man on the job began working, stoking the fire for the steam engine that ran the pump, harnessing up the mule teams, repairing the track and the wooden road where the wagons hauled away the sand. The cook knew the men would be tired and hungry by evening and began to prepare a double ration of stew for everyone. At least with the bosses all here there was lots of meat. The cook decided to slaughter one of the pigs that had arrived on the same barge that had brought the New York brass across from the mainland.
After a few frantic hours Amos began to plan the night shift and sent some of the men back to the bunkhouse with strict orders to lie down in their bunks. “Sleep! You are going to need it if you plan to work all night. The men grumbled. The Carolina sun turned the wooden shack into an inferno during the day. The men found sleep impossible and the foreman had to threaten to fine any man who left the bunkhouse for any reason other than to use the latrine.
“I want to be out there working when we bring up the gold,” one man screeched at him.
“Well then get some sleep. That’s not going to happen until we build at least two more sections onto the dam. You know how long it will take to go ten feet.”
The workman, who had been there since the beginning, certainly did know. Progress had been slow and painful. A year ago, two men had been killed by a cave-in, drowned in the soupy sand. Since then there had been no serious accidents but a few men had been scalded by breaks in the steam lines, another had been kicked by a mule, but no one else had died. Still grumbling, the motivated worker threw himself on his bunk and tried in vain to sleep.
At eight o’clock in the evening, the shift changed. Things went all right for a few hours but then the pump began to give problems and the machinist had to be woken up to make the repair. The mules balked at the night work. They too, were used to resting.
By the following morning, after thirty-six hours of backbreaking labor, the two teams had succeeded in gaining one foot in depth and the iron workers had completed the preliminary work for an entire section of the dam. They stood by, ready to rivet it in place the moment it was called for.
The night crew, exhausted by their long night, retreated to the bunkhouse but found it impossible to sleep because of the heat, the noise of the steam engine that ran the pump and the banging of sledge hammers on the rim of the dam. The excitement began to wear off as the men tried to sink the dam lower. At first the dam had sunk relatively easily, but the deeper it went, the more friction there was from the outer walls and the work became increasingly more difficult.
The next day the rain hit and work slowed down so much due to the extra runoff into the pit that by night the pump was barely maintaining the water level and very little sand was excavated. By morning the saturated sand from beneath the dam had seeped back in and the gains of two days work was lost as the level of the sandy muck rose instead of going lower.
Frustration grew among the crew and many were beginning to think like the partner who had proclaimed that ten feet was impossible.
Amos remained steadfast. He was the only one of the partners who had actually worked at the hole. He had lived in the rough shack most of the time for the last two years sometimes going as much as two months without visiting his house on the mainland. His brief trips had allowed him to at least occasionally experience a night’s sleep in a proper bed with fresh linen sheets and a brief opportunity to eat decent meals, prepared by a cook with a proper kitchen and a fully stocked larder. But he spent most nights in camp and usually ate much of the same food as the other men. It was true that he supplemented the camp food with cheese, biscuits and cakes that his cook on the mainland packed for him. And he had whiskey whenever he wanted it. That made the nights more bearable. Notwithstanding, it had been a rough two years. Only the dream of Blackbeard’s treasure had kept him motivated.
The other partners had never stayed in camp more than three nights at a time and had always brought their own supplies of hams, fresh beef, vegetables and good liquor. After two days of non-stop banging from the sledge hammers, the incessant roar of the steam engine that ran the pump and the braying of the mules, they were ready to return to New York. When the rains came and the excavation filled back in by a foot and a half, their commitment, already waning, drained away completely.
“We said we’d give it a week. That’s all we’ll give it,” stated one of the partners, angrily. He knew the two other partners were on side, in varying