“This is amazing. I don’t care if it has nothing to do with the skunk ape, it’s still going to make for an amazing story.” She turned and barked out a sharp command. “Dave! Carly! Get down here. I want this all on video.”
“Be careful,” Bones called. “Let me help… ”
With a hollow crack, the main deck above them gave way again and Dave came crashing down on top of them. Bones managed to wrap his arms around the young cameraman and partially slow his fall, but Dave still landed hard on his backside. Bones froze, wondering if the force of the fall would cause the deck to give way again. This time, it held.
Carly followed, more carefully than her colleague. Bones sat her down lightly on her feet, and she stared in wide-eyed amazement at the macabre scene.
“This is like a haunted house,” she breathed.
“More like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride,” Dave said, climbing to his feet. “You know, the part where they all turn into skeletons?”
“How about we focus on doing our jobs?” Slater rode over her crew’s conversation. “You can talk about amusement parks later.”
“Sorry.” Dave’s gaze dropped to the floor, but he brightened almost immediately. “This is going to be some of the best footage we’ve ever gotten.” He made a slow circuit of the deck, recording every inch of the bizarre scene. He lingered over the fire pit in the center. The crew had piled a thick layer of sand on the deck to prevent the wood from catching fire. Chunks of bone poked out of the silt and ash. When Slater was satisfied that they had enough footage, they moved on to the officers’ quarters.
Inside, they found more skeletal remains, all with smashed skulls.
“It’s strange,” Slater observed, “that some are lying curled up in a ball. Do you think they just curled up and waited to be killed?”
“Possibly,” Bones said, “if they were frightened enough. We don’t know how long they holed up here. It’s possible some of the crew were already dead from malnutrition or disease, and whoever did this to them bashed their heads in just to make sure.”
“Scary stuff.” Slater led her crew around the cabin, commenting on the few artifacts she found lying about. The officers’ personal effects were few, but among them were knives, rings, Spanish coins, and crumbling bibles. “It’s clearly a Spanish galleon. And the fact that things like this remain,” she held up a fat gold coin, “proves that we are the first to find it. If its presence had been discovered before, it’s almost a guaranteed the valuables would be long gone.”
They ascended to the captain’s cabin, which lay just above the officer’s quarters. The door was wedged closed, and Bones finally resorted to main force to smash open the top half of the decaying wood.
“Looks like somebody blocked themselves in,” he said, looking down at the footlocker and small chest that pushed up against the base of the door. But that wasn’t the only thing that had held the door fast. Here, the intrusion of years of silt was clearly evident, as a thick layer of dried black muck caked the floor. Bones climbed over the remaining portion of the door and then helped the others in.
The captain lay on his bed, his empty eye sockets gazing up at the ceiling. Dave moved in with the camera while Slater resumed her hosting duties.
“At first glance it looks like the captain also had his skull smashed.” She pointed his shattered left temple. “But that isn’t the case. If you look at the other side of his head, you’ll see a smaller hole. And then there’s this.” She pointed an object half-buried in the muck. “It’s a pistol, lying roughly where it would have fallen from limp, dead fingers.”
“So he barred himself inside and took his own life.” Dave said the words slowly as if trying to convince himself of their veracity.
“Whatever was outside that door was more terrible than the prospect of suicide.” Slater turned to Bones. “Can you tell u anything about the gun?”
“It’s a matchlock.” Bones knelt beside the weapon but left it untouched. “The matchcord, which was just a burning wick, went here,” he pointed to the hammer. “It came down and hit the flash pan which ignited the gunpowder. That’s about all I can tell you.”
“Does the type of gun give us any clue as to the age of the wreck?”
Bones nodded. “By the early 1600s, matchlocks were out and flintlocks were in, so this is probably sixteenth century.”
An inspection of the captain’s truck revealed little of interest, but the small chest was filled with coins, many of them silver and gold. Bones resisted the urge to pocket a few. Maybe when the camera was no longer rolling.
“Where to next?” Slater asked.
“All the way to the bottom,” Bones said.
“What do you expect to find down there?”
He grinned. “The cargo hold.”
Chapter 9
Of all the various parts of the galleon, the cargo hold had suffered the most from the intrusion of soil and water. Toward the bow of the ship, where the hull had been split when the ship ran aground, the dark mud lay knee deep, descending to a depth of several inches toward the stern. But it did little to cover the crates that lay all around, scattered and broken by the wreck so many centuries ago.
Carly clapped her hands and Dave let out a whoop of triumph as the beam of Bones’ light glinted off blocks of gold and silver bullion and scattered gold chains. Here and there, jewels sparkled like stars in the dark mire. Trying but failing to suppress a grin, Slater discussed the find at length for the benefit of the camera.
“Why so many gold chains?” Dave asked.
Bones knew the answer to this one. “Tax evasion. The Spanish crown placed a tariff on precious metals, but jewelry was exempt. Europeans didn’t do much in the way of fine craftsmanship in the New World, but they could make rough chains and rings like what you see here, and that was good enough to get around the law.”
“Why not make it all into jewelry?” Carly asked.
“I guess it’s one of those things you can only take so far. The crown would look past a certain amount of circumvention as long as it made its share from the transportation of New World treasure, but if it got out of hand, they’d have eliminated the exemption. Nobody wanted to be the one that killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”
“Speaking of eggs,” Slater said. “Have you seen anything like this before?” She pointed to a small crate filled with dirt, straw, and mud-encrusted egg-shaped objects caked in mud.
“I’ve never seen one up close, but I’ve read about them.” He knelt beside the crate, took out his recon knife, and scraped away the mud that encased one of the strange objects. “These are bezoars.”
“You’re kidding,” Dave and Carly said in unison.
“What are bezoars?” Slater asked.
“Somebody hasn’t read Harry Potter,” Dave said.
“A bezoar is a sort of stone formed from material found in the digestive tracts of two-stomached animals. Given that this is a Spanish ship, we’re probably looking at stones from a llama or alpaca since those were found in the major Spanish colonies. And, just like in Harry Potter, people believed a bezoar could absorb poison. Somebody rich enough to buy one would dip it in his cup of wine before drinking it, just in case his enemies had tried to poison his cup.”
“I take it they were pretty valuable?” Slater asked.
“Very, and not just because of their supposed properties. Being able to afford one was a status symbol. People would have them carved, mounted in a gold setting, and would wear them as jewelry.”
“Did they work?” Dave asked. “I mean, do they really absorb poison?”