Still, he couldn’t help but admire their raw beauty.
“Do you like them?” Rodriguez asked.
“Certainly. What’s not to like? It’s a sports car, built for a battlefield.”
“And the Australian bush is a battlefield. Come, let me take you for a drive.”
Sam sat in the driver’s seat of the massive SUV. The steering wheel was on the left hand side, having been built for Americans, but that wouldn’t cause any problem where they were headed. The front windscreen was raw in its vertical beauty, and not only bulletproof, but it was Pilkington blast resistant glass.
Rodriguez directed Sam out of the town, towards the east. After ten minutes the blacktop road turned to dirt. Another ten minutes later and any semblance of road disappeared completely, only to be replaced by the rugged bushland of his mother’s land.
Sam put his foot down and the brutal 5.5 liter, bi-turbo V8 roared into life.
The bush was dry, and large eucalyptus trees spotted the otherwise barren horizon. After an hour’s drive, Rodriguez pointed toward a hill in the distance.
“It’s up there?” Sam asked.
“I know what you’re thinking. The cave system is obviously below the height of the mountain, but that’s where we found the Spanish ducat.”
Sam looked around at the barren mountain in the distance. “Strange place for the Mahogany Ship to finally rest.”
He then drove up the hill.
A large tent had been set up to house the exploratory equipment. It looked out of place in the dry, barren land.
A single man emerged from the tent and watched them, his hands in his pockets.
Sam parked the big truck, waited a moment for the red dust to settle, then he and Michael got out.
“G’day. My name’s Frank Edwards,” the man said, striding up to Sam with his hand outstretched. The stranger was noticeably shorter than average, with thick arms, and a large beard concealing his face. It gave him the appearance of one of Tolkien’s Dwarven miners.
“Pleased to be working with you,” Frank said, gripping Sam’s hand firmly. “I read about your exploits with the lost airship, the Magdalena.”
Sam Reilly stared down the dark hole in the ground.
It looked unnatural in the otherwise rugged Australian bushland. Just slightly wider than his shoulders, it was far too deep for Sam’s gaze to reach its black ending. The entrance had been reinforced with concrete and steel. Below every foot, a reinforced iron ring supported the earthworks behind, forming a natural ladder. It looked professionally built, as he would have expected from the mining operation that built it.
Frank gulped a drink from his water bottle, and then offered it to Sam. “After our first core sample returned the Spanish coin, we decided to drill a larger one so that we could reach the cave system below. You can imagine how excited we were. Particularly after I had contacted Mr. Rodriguez and he’d brought up the mystery of the Mahogany Ship. We really half expected to breach the opening and find the ship intact.”
Sam stepped back from the hatch, unable to see any further. “And once you reached it?”
“Then we found a cavern made out of limestone, which appears to form the entrance of a maze of underground water systems, so enormous that…” Frank stopped, failing to find the right description and then said, “You’ll just have to see it for yourself, mate. I can brief you better once we get down there.”
“Okay, so how deep is this thing?” Sam asked.
“Five hundred feet, but the cavern opens nearly 50 feet earlier.”
“And at the bottom of the cavern, is it dry?”
“No, the entire cavern is flooded, approximately halfway up, but there’s plenty of evidence that the height of the water has risen and fallen many times before.”
“How can you tell?”
“Byron, our geologist, noted that the rock formations on the walls have hundreds of lines within them, spreading from the very submerged ground, through to the surface high above the water line. Most likely indicating the changing erosion of limestone via the flowing river,” Rodriguez explained.
“So, it’s safe to say that the Spanish coin didn’t sink through 450 feet of soil to reach the cavern. Therefore, it must have entered at a point further upstream, where the difference between the surface and the underground waterway is smaller.” Sam said out loud, speaking to no one in particular. “And if that cavern is a hundred feet high, then it’s conceivable that the Mahogany Ship, if that is indeed where the Spanish coin once originated, may be further upstream.”
“Let’s go have a look then, shall we?” Frank said, as he pressed the green button hanging from a cable that dangled inside the mineshaft, “After you, Sam. It’s only big enough for one person at a time. Byron’s already down there. He will look after you once you’re at the bottom.”
Sam peered over the side again and spotted it.
The miner’s elevator — a makeshift, cable driven device, used to gain vertical access down the narrow shaft. It was a ten-minute journey to where a team of miners had already constructed a large work platform, from which to base their expeditions.
Sam stepped onto the steel platform of the miner’s elevator as it reached the surface, “I’ll see you at the bottom, shortly, shall I?”
“I’ll start loading some of the equipment you brought and meet you down there soon,” Rodriguez said. “Frank will follow and bring you up to speed with where the underground operation is progressing.”
The dry heat of the Australian outback disappeared along with all external light as Sam began the long descent. After several minutes, the shaft opened up to a massive cavern, and a large grin came across Sam’s face at what he saw.
Four large spotlights had been bolted into the walls and were projecting light around the room, allowing the enormity of the cavern to be fully visualized. Not quite as large as the one that held the Magdalena for 75 years, the cavern commanded a similar interest over his imagination. Below, the water lapped around the newly constructed work platform, which was approximately 50 feet in length by 20 feet wide. At the southern end, a small computer station had been set up, and three laptops displayed geophysical information.
These people aren’t amateurs… but why then do they need my help?
The water was flowing, but without any tremendous strength. It would be easy enough to dive. There were five tunnels through which water fed into the cavern and only one out of which it drained. Taking a cursory glance at it, Sam could see that only two tunnels were large enough for a ship to travel, but that didn’t mean that the ship wasn’t stuck further up one of the smaller tunnels. On the platform a man prepared dive equipment.
Sam pressed the red button on the lift controller and it came to an abrupt halt, approximately half a foot from the work platform, causing him to nearly slip.
“Welcome to the Mahogany Cavern. My name is Byron.”
“Mahogany Cavern?”
“It’s just what Mr. Rodriguez named it when the coin was found here.”
“He’s quite convinced, isn’t he?” Sam eyed the man in front of him. He was clean shaven, with thick glasses.
“That we’re going to find the Mahogany Ship? Yes. He says he had a hunch when we first found the coin, and then metallurgy analysis placed it around the same time that Magellan’s ship would have been in this vicinity.” Frank shrugged his shoulders. “In my experience, Mr. Rodriguez’s hunches are always right. If it came anywhere near here, we’ll find it.”
“Time will tell whether or not it was a myth or something much more interesting, after all,” Sam replied, with an indifference that he didn’t feel. “So, there are five entrances and one exit?”