Living Legends

22) Findings

The sky was tinted orange by the time Hayley and her group of men—led by the Spaniard—returned to the Silver River.  Though everyone was weary from the day’s events, morale was still high.  The treasure was somewhere on the island.  It was only a matter of time.

            Hours earlier, Clyde had organized his men into three groups.  Some searched the bay area, some hiked along the base of the cliffs, and others trekked through the jungle.  They had searched almost the entire island for the roche à pois, the ‘spotted rock,’ with no such luck.  Everyone had returned to the Silver River just before nightfall.

            To Hayley’s dismay, she didn’t get a chance to speak to Jack for the rest of the evening.  They had been separated during the search, and it seemed Clyde had made it his personal duty to separate them again—for punishment, maybe? Clyde had been uncharacteristically calm and collected all afternoon.

            “Tomorrow,” he said as the men built a campfire, “we find the roche à pois.”

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Hayley was rudely awakened the next morning.  The Spaniard shook her shoulders more forcefully than an earthquake.  She sat up and grumbled to herself, already feeling hunger pains.  Though everyone had eaten last night, the meal had hardly been satisfactory.  Clyde had put his men on strict rations.  Their water supply was taken care of thanks to the Silver River, but they only had as much food as was in their backpacks.  So far, they hadn’t seen a single sign of game.  There were no fruit trees, either.

            “It’s as if this island was made to protect the treasure,” Hayley remembered Jack saying.  “Think about it: the island’s surrounded by dangerous rocks, there’s no food available, and the cliffs are keeping us from exploring the northeast coast.”

            If I was a pirate, Hayley thought, this would definitely be the place to bury my treasure.

            After a quick and unsatisfactory breakfast, Clyde split the men into three groups again.  He gave each group slightly different directions.  Everyone was to meet back at the Silver River by noon.

            Hayley was in the second group, which meant she was forced to go across the river.  She had traveled that way last night but hadn’t found anything resembling a spotted rock.  Though no one in her group spoke to her, she could almost feel their frustration in the air.  She suspected they thought she’d lied to them—after all, she was the only one who spoke French.  She could easily lead them off track and make up clues.

            Minutes turned into hours, and before long Hayley’s throat felt like the Sahara.  She needed water badly, but she was afraid to ask for fear of being ridiculed.  The men pushed doggedly through the jungle.  The thick humidity made their hair stick to their foreheads.  Sweat poured down their necks.  The buzz of mosquitoes and other insects filled the air.

            Suddenly, they reached a clearing.  The large palm trees that had blocked the sun were now gone.  Hayley didn’t feel closed in anymore, but the heat was still intense.  She nearly cried out in relief when she spotted the ocean, dotted with the island’s noticeable defense mechanism—the pointed rocks.

            The group descended a large bank, their feet sinking into the warm sand.  The golden mounds soon gave way to hard, brittle rock, which in turn gave way to solid rock that dipped towards the ocean.  They were approaching a series of tide pools.