Mango Lucky (16 page)

"Yeah it's okay. I know the people. They won't be around. Don't worry about it."

She turned and walked down a paved path leading to the side of the home facing the ocean. From there, I could see that the home was built on a dune, rising about forty feet above the Atlantic. The views out over the water were incredible.

I continued to follow Anna as the path joined a wooden walkway which led to a large deck overlooking the beach.

The deck was separated from the beach by a weathered fence with a small gate in the center, which opened to stairs leading down.

Standing on the deck, Anna scanned the beach. "Looks like we're the only ones here so far. That's good. We'll have the place to ourselves."

"We'll do like we did yesterday. We'll search in grids. You go north about 100 yards, and then turn back south. Repeat that until you cover from the dune to the waters edge."

She continued, "I'll do the same going south. If you find something big, get my attention and I'll come running."

Then she smiled, "Good luck. Hope today is as good as yesterday."

Anna opened the gate and climbed down the steps leading to the beach.

I followed.

On the beach, we turned our detectors on and started out on our grids.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. And the temperature was in the mid sixties. Perfect weather.

I followed my grid line going north, sticking as close to the sand dune as I could. I swung the detector coil slowly, hoping to hear the tone that would tell me that I had found something of interest.

For the first thirty yards, I found nothing. Not even a single peep from the detector.

Thinking that maybe something was wrong with the settings, I reached into my pants pocket, found a dime and dropped it on the sand.

Swinging the detector over the dime, it immediately signaled a tone indicating metal. The detector was working as it should.

Reassured, I continued my grid search.

After walking what I thought was at least one hundred yards, I turned around, moved over six feet, and started detecting a line going back the way I had just come.

I could see Anna in the distance doing the same thing. It looked like her luck today was no better than mine.

We both continued detecting along our grid lines. When I was detecting a grid facing Anna, I'd see her occasionally stop and swing the detector several times over a single location.

Then she'd either dig the spot with her scoop, or shake her head and continue on the path.

We did this for three hours, and during that time the only things I had found were four heavily encrusted iron nails.

With each pass on my grid, I moved closer to the incoming surf. I knew that when I reached the waterline, it would mean detecting this grid would be over.

After four hours and not finding anything significant, I was looking forward to moving to another location.

Finally, I reached the waterline. Still no major finds. No gold. No silver.

Anna and I met at the end point of our first grid.

I asked her, "You find anything?"

She shook her head, "No, just a few nails. What about you?"

"About the same. A few nails, some rust chips, no coins."

Anna smiled, "That's the way it goes. Some days you find treasure. But most days you don't.

"Yesterday was the best day because so much sand was stripped away. But last night's high tide brought a lot of sand back in. So treasure won't be easy to find from here on out."

"Still, being on the beach on a day like today is better than working for a living."

She was right about that. Being on the beach was a whole lot better than working in an office or a factory. Both of which I'd recently done.

Thinking about that cheered me up. What happened next would cheer me up even more.

52

"So," asked Anna, "do you want to keep detecting here, or do you want to try somewhere else?"

I thought for a moment, and then said, "Since we're already here, let's stay here. But let's go south."

Anna nodded, "Sounds good to me. But this time, let's detect in the same direction. You at the waterline and me up near the dune. That way, we'll stay close."

I agreed, and we both set out to follow the same path going south, separated by about twenty feet of beach.

Early on, I'd learned my detector would start to send false signals near the water's edge. To prevent that I had to do a ground balance on the wet sand.

I took a moment, did the ground balance, and the falsing stopped. Then I followed the edge of the incoming tide, swinging my detector slowly over the shallow water and wet sand.

Anna was slightly ahead of me up on the edge of the dune, and I was able to keep an eye on her as she swung her detector, looking for treasure.

As before, her movements were gracefully fluid. Almost like a ballet dancer.

I watched her as I slowly moved south. The headphones over my ears muted the sound of the incoming tide, and the warm sun on my back lulled me into a detecting trance.

I may have covered fifty feet, maybe more while in that lulled state. Occasionally glancing over to watch Anna's graceful progress.

A sharp tone in my ears broke the spell. I stopped and looked at the display screen on the detector. It indicated a large object buried at least twelve inches deep in the sand directly in front of me.

Grabbing my scoop, I started removing layer after layer of sand. I'd dump the sand on the beach, and run my detector over the it to see if I'd recovered the object. If there were no tone, I'd remove another layer of sand and repeat the process.

Being close to the incoming tide, the sand was wet, and keeping it from falling back into the ever increasingly deep hole was becoming a challenge.

At about fourteen inches, the scoop hit metal. Whatever it was, it was large. Much larger than a coin.

Getting down on my hands and knees, I started digging the sand out from around the object.

The more sand I cleared away, the more I could see that whatever the object was at least thirty inches long. After clearing away enough sand, I could see that the target looked a lot like a piece of iron re-bar, a common construction material.

But if it were re-bar, it was oddly shaped. It had a large lump on one end.

Glancing up, I noticed Anna walking over.

"What'd you find?", she asked.

"I don't know. But looks pretty old."

I reached under the object and carefully pulled it from the wet sand. It came up in one piece.

Brushing the sand off, I held it up so Anna could see.

She took the object from me, and after a moment she said, "I'm not sure, but this might be a Spanish rapier. It looks like this end is the handle, and the other end is the blade."

"A rapier?" I asked.

"A small sword. The Spanish sailors carried them. I saw one in the McLarty museum and it looked a lot like this."

I smiled, "A rapier, huh? Wouldn't that be cool."

She nodded, then said, "Guess what I found."

"You found something? Let me see."

Anna held up a small gold ring.

"It's a hand made ring. Looks like it was hammered out of single piece of gold. And it looks pretty old."

She held out her hand, "Go ahead and pick it up. You'll be amazed at how heavy it is."

I took the ring from her and she was right, it was a lot heavier than I expected.

The gold shined bright. The ring wasn't damaged in any way.

I smiled as I handed the ring back to her, "That's a pretty nice ring. Where'd you find it?"

She pointed over her shoulder, "Down there. I almost missed it. The detector gave a very faint signal and I figured it was just another nail. But I dug anyway.

"And about a foot down, I found the ring. It's the only decent thing I found all day. Everything else was just rust chips."

I nodded, "Me too. Other than this, all I found was nails and rust. But I'm not complaining. I found what might be a rapier. And you found a ring, and That's pretty good.

"You want to keep detecting?" I asked.

Anna looked at her watch, "I wish we could, but the tide's coming in. This beach will be under water in less than an hour. And I need to go into town and take care of some business."

We decided to call it a day. Back at the Land Cruiser, we stowed our gear, and left through the same gate we had come in, making sure it closed behind us.

Back at the campsite, Bob met us at the door, and soon was purring while rubbing his head against Anna's ankle.

"Bob sure likes you," I said. "He starts purring as soon as he sees you."

Anna smiled, "Maybe if you'd treat him better, he'd like you too."

I laughed, "I treat Bob like a king. And he repays me by loving up on you, right in front of me."

Anna smiled, "That's because he's got good taste in women."

Then she hugged me, grabbed her gym bag and said, "I've got to run. I should be back in a few hours."

"You want me to go with you?"

"No, I need to take care of this on my own. But I'll be back later. And if you want, I can pick up some food and we can have dinner together."

"Sounds good. Call me if anything comes up."

We exchanged phone numbers. Anna kissed me on the cheek on her way out the door.

53

While Anna was gone, I took the opportunity to clean up the motorhome. I'd been at the campsite for five days and trash and dirty clothes had been piling up.

I stuffed the clothes into a pillow case, grabbed a handful of quarters, and walked to the campground restrooms where they had laundry facilities.

I started two loads of clothes, and then headed back to the motorhome. Inside, I swept up the sand we'd tracked in from the beach, cleaned Bob's litter box, and emptied all the trash cans.

Remembering my clothes, I walked back to the laundry room, and moved the clothes from the washing machines into dryers.

Forty minutes later, my clothes were dry and I took them back to the motorhome and hung them in the bedroom closet.

Since Anna had yet to return, I retrieved my laptop from its hiding place in the bedroom, and checked my email.

Nothing important and no messages from Sarah.

After checking the email, I decided to search Google for 'Spanish rapiers' to see if anyone else had found one.

It didn't take long to discover that at least three had been found on the Treasure Coast, and the photos looked very similar to the one I had found.

All were heavily encrusted, but the general shape and size were the same.

Surprisingly, while the rapiers were quite rare, they were not exceptionally valuable. They didn't contain any gold or silver, and were only sought out as museum curiosities.

The most recent one that sold at auction had fetched just under one thousand dollars.

On the same auction site, I saw a ring similar to the one Anna had found, and it had sold for more than five thousand dollars. Good for Anna.

Looking further, I found a ring similar to the one I had found, hammered gold with a big green emerald.

I was astounded to see that it had an asking price of more than four hundred thousand dollars!

That meant that the combined value of the gold and silver coins I had found, along with the ring would be a lot. Probably a lot more than a hundred thousand dollars!

Not bad for two days walking on the beach.

As I was thinking about this, a knock on the door brought me back to earth.

"Walker, it's me. Come out here. I got something to show you."

It was Anna. She had returned from her trip into town.

Opening the door, Anna stood there grinning from ear to ear.

"Guess what I bought!"

54

Anna grabbed me by the hand and said, "Come look!"

We walked to her campsite and she said, "What do you think?"

Parked behind her Land Cruiser was a white, egg shaped fiberglass camping trailer.

Anna was beaming, "I've been looking for one of these for months. A Scamp sixteen footer with the bathroom and side dinette floor plan."

I nodded. It did look pretty nice.

Anna continued, "This means I don't have to sleep on the ground or in the back of the Land Cruiser. I now have a real bed, a bathroom, a shower, fridge and microwave. It's even got air conditioning!.