After half a day in the woods, they were not encouraged. However, that was nothing new for them. Their project was planned for seven days, and budgeted for that long, and they never backed away from a challenge. All of them had read Lovely’s book and believed her story. The proof that had not been swept away by the storm was buried somewhere on the island, and they were determined to find it.
They needed bones.
Over breakfast they looked at more maps and aerials, all prepared before Leo and thus terribly outdated. The decision was made to wave off the pontoon for the day and hack through the woods from the ocean side. They loaded their gear in backpacks and left the campsite just after nine o’clock. Diane and Mercer tidied up the place and relaxed under a canopy with Lovely. Cell service and internet connections were still unstable.
Diane put down her paperback and asked, “How often do you think of Nalla?”
Lovely smiled and said, “All the time. We always believed that she and the others came ashore right along here. Two hundred and sixty years ago.” She gazed at the ocean as if looking for a ship. “A slave girl, pregnant with a white man’s child. Captured and taken in chains, shipped across the ocean like an animal. I guess she got lucky with the storm, don’t you think?”
“I would never call it luck.”
“Oh, I think they were all lucky to find this place. They were not slaves here. They fought and killed the white men who came after them, and they protected each other.”
“Now the white men are back,” Mercer said.
“Indeed they are. This time they’re using money and lawyers and courts to take this island, not guns. But we’ll win, won’t we, Diane?”
“I believe so.”
Lovely reached for her cane. “Let’s walk on the beach while the sun is behind those clouds.”
The sand was firmer at the edge of the water and they took off their boots. Lovely used the cane with her right hand and held on to Mercer’s arm with her left.
But the walking was too strenuous and they turned around. Back at the campsite, they heard the distant whine of a chain saw.
The scariest thing about a diamondback was not the venomous fangs, but the rattle itself. The rattle meant only one thing — the diamondback saw or heard you before you saw it. The rattle meant the snake was upset, frightened, ready to protect itself. If you were lucky and saw the snake soon after hearing the rattle, you could move away, give it plenty of room. But when you heard the rattle but couldn’t find the snake, well, that was the scariest part.
After hearing two rattles but no sightings, the team was on edge. They took a water break and rested on the trunk of a fallen oak, listening for snakes. Dr. Gilfoy took a drink, wiped his mouth with a sleeve, and saw something in a pile of rotted timbers thirty feet away. It had the glint of metal. Holding a shovel, he walked to the pile and moved some debris. Carefully, he picked up a two-foot section of cut board partially rotted and covered with mud.
“It’s a hinge!” he announced with excitement. The other five quickly gathered around to inspect it. They had found the first sign of civilization.
“A three-inch butt hinge for a door,” one said.
“Antique cast iron,” said another.
“Could it be a cabinet hinge?”
“No, not at three inches. It’s too big.”
“Steeple finial. Definitely a door hinge.”
“How old?”
“A hundred years.”
“Yeah, early nineteen hundreds.”
They passed it around so everyone could touch and feel it. A rare diamond would not have been more precious.
Dr. Sargent said, “Well, we now know that a hundred years ago there was a dwelling close by and it was advanced enough to have butt hinges on its doors.” He pointed and said, “If you look at the tree line there you’ll see that the terrain rises. Lovely said the cemetery was on the highest part of the island. If the houses were around here, might the cemetery be up there?”
“I like it,” Dr. Pennington said.
“Let’s give it a try.”
For an hour they hacked and cut a trail to the top of a slight elevation and stopped at a small clearing choked with weeds and thick scrub brush. Lovely had said there were no trees in the cemetery. The gap in the woods might possibly be the site. They cut and cleared for another hour, found nothing, and stopped for lunch.
Dr. Sargent walked behind a thick tree to relieve himself. In a grove of saplings he noticed a row of indentations, all covered with grass, each about two feet from the next. Lovely had said there were no headstones to mark the graves because there were no stones or rocks on the island. Each grave had a small wooden cross with no name on it.
Sargent said, “I think these might be graves.”
The dig was on.
