“George, look at this!” Nancy cried.
Nancy showed her friend the letter and explained Deke’s connection to the captain of the Henrietta Lee.
“If Deke knew about the Henrietta Lee, he must have heard about the treasure, too,” George said.
“Which means that Deke must be the one who stole the map half from Claire!” Nancy finished.
“What about all the sabotage?” George asked. “We still don’t have proof that he’s responsible.”
Turning back to the desk, Nancy opened the top drawer and began rummaging among the pens and papers. “There has to be proof here somewhere...”
The top drawer didn’t seem to hold anything incriminating. Nancy was about to close it when a tiny yellow-brown fleck caught her eye.
“Hey,” she said, picking up the scrap and examining it. “This is a piece of parchment. It must be from the map half that was stolen from Claire.” Nancy frowned. “There’s only one problem—I don’t see the map half anywhere.”
“What about the other drawers?” George suggested. She opened the next drawer, which contained a disorderly pile of notebooks. George pulled them out, and she and Nancy began leafing through them one by one.
“Look at this,” Nancy said, pulling out a faded pamphlet that had been wedged inside the cover of one of the notebooks. “This is the diary of the Henrietta Lee ’s first mate, Jack Benbow. I saw it in Deke’s bag on board the Seafarer, but I didn’t know what it was then.”
George leaned closer as Nancy opened the pamphlet and started skimming the pages. Most of the entries provided simple information—how far the ship traveled every day, what the weather was, any special sightings made by the crew.
“Wait a minute,” Nancy murmured, staring at a page near the end. “I’m sure this entry wasn’t in the photocopy of this diary that I read at the library.”
She took a deep breath and began reading aloud: “ ‘I have done a terrible thing. After three days of gale winds, a bolt of lightning struck the aft mast. The ship was lost.’ ”
A puzzled look came over George’s face. “I don’t get it. I thought Captain Preston was the only one to survive the shipwreck. Jack Benbow must have lived through it, too, if he was able to write that. What was the terrible thing he did?”
“Benbow writes about that next,” Nancy told her friend. “ ‘Captain Preston convinced me that it was our duty to save the chest of gold coins,’ ” Nancy read. “ ‘Ha! I know now that duty had nothing to do with it. We gave in to our greed. There was but one lifeboat, and Captain Preston and I used it to make away with the coins and our most treasured belongings. We left the crew to perish...’ ”
“Oh, no! So Captain Preston wasn’t a hero—he was a complete jerk!” George exclaimed, looking outraged. “And so was that Benbow guy.”
Nancy skimmed ahead. “It looks as if Jack Benbow really regretted what he did, though. Listen: ‘I am overcome by guilt. If I could exchange the gold coins for the lives of the crew, I would happily do it. It has been only a day since the wreck. We landed on an island late last night, and we are both sick with fever and chills. I don’t know where we are, but I do not feel safe. Captain Preston has... changed. He shows no regret at having deserted his men.
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“ ‘This morning I noticed that the forward half of the Henrietta Lee has lodged in the rocks just off this island. I cry every time I look at the wreck, but the captain shows no emotion. He speaks of nothing but his newfound wealth. The greedy look in his eyes tells me that he means to share it with no one—not even me. I know now that I must get away from him quickly.’ ”
Nancy looked up at George. “That’s the last line.”
“Do you think Captain Preston killed him?” George asked, her brown eyes wide.
“Or maybe he died from his illness. We may never know for sure,” Nancy replied, frowning. “All we do know is that no one ever saw Jack Benbow again. And even though Captain Preston survived, he certainly never told anyone about deserting his ship or taking the gold.”
“He probably told everyone how he did his best to save the crew,” George said, sounding disgusted. “That’s what it said in those books Claire had, right?”
“I guess Captain Preston never made it back to get the treasure for some reason,” Nancy added. “If he was sick, maybe he made the map and wrote the sea chanty so that his wife could go back and get the treasure if he died.”
George frowned. “He must have hidden the map halves in the part of the ship that washed up on the island. But I don’t see how he could make sure that his wife or anyone else would ever find the map, even if they found the song.”
“If he was anything like Deke, maybe he wanted to make it really hard to find the map halves,” Nancy said. “Maybe he thought that if he couldn’t keep the treasure, he wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone else to have it, either.”
“There’s still something I don’t understand,” George said. “I mean, if Deke is looking for the treasure himself, why would he protect Claire, the way he did in the rigging loft?”
Nancy shrugged. “Beats me, but I bet we’ll find out soon enough,” she said. “Once we show this stuff to Mrs. Newcomb, Deke is going to have an awful lot of questions to answer.”
She slipped Jack Benbow’s diary into the pocket of her jeans, along with the shred of parchment.
Being careful to leave everything as they had found it, Nancy and George left the house and replaced the front door key in the plant. Then they hurried back to Nancy’s student house. Back in her room, Nancy went over to her desk.
Pulling open her bottom desk drawer, she took out her copy of Moby Dick and opened it, looking for the page where she had left the map halves. But when she flipped through the book, she didn’t see anything.
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Glancing at her desktop, Nancy realized that her books and papers were in a messy jumble, even though she’d left them in a neat pile. A feeling of dread welled up inside her as she searched through Moby Dick again.
“Oh, no!” she cried, staring at George. “Someone’s taken the map halves!”
George’s mouth fell open. “But how—?”
“We can’t worry about that now,” Nancy said urgently. Her mind flashed on the orange figure she had seen that morning by the figurehead exhibit. “I saw someone right after I found the second map half. It must have been Deke. He must have followed me back here...”
“And then waited until we left to sneak in here and take it,” George finished. A look of horror crossed her face. “I’ll bet he’s going after the treasure right now!”
“We have to stop him,” Nancy said, grabbing the nautical chart from her desk. “We can use this to get to Hawk’s Isle. I think I can remember the markers that we have to follow once we get there.”
It took only a few seconds to remove the chart from its frame. Nancy rolled it up and stuck it in the pocket of her slicker. Then she turned to George. “Let’s go!”
• • •
“It looks as if Deke got a head start,” George said as she and Nancy ran up to the Student Training Building five minutes later.
Nancy glanced at the row of sailboats outside the building. There was an empty space between two of the boats. “Maybe we can catch up to him before he gets to Hawk’s Isle,” she said, sprinting for the closest sailboat.
She and George hurried to place the boat in the water. Nancy glanced at the choppy gray sea. The wind had lifted the fog, but now she could see a bank of dark clouds moving in from the north.
“I hope we can make it,” Nancy said. “That islet isn’t far from the mouth of the Arcadia River. If we’re fast, we can probably beat that storm. Besides, if we wait, Deke might get away with the treasure!”
Within a few minutes the girls had started down the Arcadia River, with Nancy steering and George holding the lines that controlled the mainsail and jib. A stiff wind from the north filled the sails and whipped the girls’ hair around their faces.
As the girls continued down the river, Nancy kept looking over her shoulder at the bank of clouds to the north. Just hold back long enough for us to get to Hawk’s Isle, she silently begged. Still, every time she looked over her shoulder, the dark clouds were a little closer.
A half hour later she and George approached the mouth of the Arcadia River. The waves were even higher and choppier at the mouth, where the river met the Atlantic Ocean. The wind had grown stronger, too. It whipped the water into a frenzy of churning swells and whitecaps.
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“Uh-oh.” George frowned as the boat dipped sharply and a spray of water splashed across her face. “Looks like we’re in for a bumpy ride!”
Nancy was too busy scanning the horizon to answer. Three gray shapes were visible—they had to be islands. Pulling the nautical chart from her slicker pocket, Nancy quickly consulted it, then gazed toward the horizon again.
“I’m pretty sure Hawk’s Isle is that one,” she said, pointing to the gray shape in the middle.
As Nancy steered toward the island, water splashed over the sides of the boat. Soon, she and George were both soaked. It took all of the girls’ strength to keep the vessel from capsizing.
Nancy wasn’t sure how they managed it, but forty-five minutes later they approached the small islet. From the sailboats it looked uninhabited. All Nancy could see was a small, rocky shoreline that gave way to a dense growth of trees, grass, and vines.
“Phew! I’m glad we’re here. I don’t know how much more torture these sails could take!” George called back to Nancy, speaking loudly to be heard above the whistling wind.
Nancy nodded her agreement. “I don’t know how we’re going to get back, but I guess we’ll worry about that later.”
When they were within a dozen feet of the craggy shoreline, Nancy pulled up the boat’s rudder and George lowered the sails. Then the two girls jumped in and waded ashore, pulling the sail- boat by its mooring line.
A huge boulder towered above the sand to the right, and Nancy saw a protected area behind it. She and George carefully carried the sailboat there, resting it gently in the sand. As Nancy straightened up, dusting sand from her hands, she noticed something sticking out from a thicket of bushes behind the boulder. It was the back of a sailboat hull.
“Looks like Deke is here, all right,” she told George, nodding toward the other boat.
“At least he didn’t leave yet,” George said, scanning the dense woods. “Do you have any idea which way to go?”
Nancy gazed up at the towering boulder. “We landed at the right spot,” she said. “I remember that the dotted line started at a huge rock. Now, what was it?” She closed her eyes and tried to visualize the map halves in her mind. “Twenty-five paces south, then left at a rock shaped like a tortoise,” she said.
As the girls started into the dense woods, it was easy to see the tracks that Deke had left behind. The grass had been trampled down, and branches had broken off the nearby bushes.
“There,” George said, pointing up ahead after about twenty steps. “That rock looks kind of like a tortoise.”
Sure enough, it was oval, with a rocky knob sticking out at one end, like a tortoise’s head. Nancy shot George an excited glance as they turned left. “Now we go until we see a split oak tree.”
Deke had also turned left. As they followed the trampled-down path he’d left, Nancy gestured for George to keep silent. She didn’t want to give Deke a chance to get away.
A few minutes later George stopped and pointed ahead. “I think that’s it,” she whispered.
Peering into the woods, Nancy saw a wide oak tree whose trunk split into two arching branches and a canopy of smaller branches and leaves. It was an impressive tree, but she wasn’t sure it looked old enough to have been alive over a hundred and fifty years ago.
She was about to say as much to George, when a noise coming from the woods to the right of the tree caught her attention. “That sounds like digging,” she whispered to George.
The two girls moved as silently as they could toward the noise. As the steady, rhythmic sound of metal scraping against dirt grew louder and louder, Nancy felt her pulse begin to race. They were in luck! Deke hadn’t found the treasure yet.
Nancy held her breath as she and George rounded a thick clump of vine-covered bushes. A moment later a bright orange rain slicker came into view. The person was hunched over a deep hole. Nancy did a double-take when she caught sight of the person’s curly black hair.
“Claire!” she exclaimed, stepping forward. “What are you doing here?”
Treasure Hunt
“Oh, no!” Claire gasped when she saw Nancy. She dropped her shovel and stepped back uncertainly from the hole she’d been digging, a look of horror in her blue eyes.
George stepped up beside Nancy. “Unless Deke is into very clever disguises, I take it this isn’t him?” she asked, eyeing Claire curiously.
Nancy was too surprised at seeing Claire to answer George’s question. “So you’re the person I saw when I found the second map half this morning,” Nancy said to her roommate. Several students on the program had orange slickers, including Deke. Nancy hadn’t made the connection that it might be Claire.
Claire nodded sheepishly. “I know I promised to stop looking for the treasure—and I meant to, honest,” she began. “It’s just that when I saw that you’d found the other map half... well, I couldn’t resist.”
“So you followed Nancy,” George put in. “And when she and I went to search Deke’s house, you went up to her room and stole the other half of the map.”
Claire’s eyes flashed indignantly. “I’m the one who found out about this treasure in the first place,” she said. “I deserve to be the one who gets the credit for discovering it! Who are you, anyway?” she added, frowning at George.
“She’s a friend of mine who’s helping me investigate at the seaport,” Nancy replied.
The weather had worsened, she realized, glancing over her shoulder. Rain had begun pelting down, and the wind whistled loudly through the trees and bushes. “Claire, we don’t have much time,” Nancy added. “Are you sure this is where the treasure is buried?”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Of course I’m sure.” She reached into her slicker pocket and pulled out the two map halves—one of parchment and the other the drawing she had copied from the map half that Deke had stolen. Taking the pieces, Nancy and George looked at them eagerly.
“Left at Tortoise Rock... right at the split oak...” George murmured, reading the flowery, faded script on the parchment map half. “Fifteen paces, and there’s the X. ” She looked at Nancy. “I think she’s got it, Nan.”
“I don’t know. You’ve already dug down over five feet,” Nancy said, gesturing toward the deep hole. “Besides, I’m not sure that the oak tree we saw is the right one.”
Claire looked at her doubtfully. “What do you mean?”
“It just doesn’t seem like it could be a hundred and fifty years old,” Nancy said.
“Now that you mention it, you could be right,” George agreed. She gazed back in the direction of the oak tree. “Do you think we’ll even be able to find the real one? I mean, a tree that old could have been totally destroyed by now.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Nancy replied. Picking up the shovel that Claire had dropped, she led the way back to the oak tree. Then she moved past it in a line that continued the path they’d made earlier, from the tortoise-shaped rock.
Claire peered dubiously into the dense undergrowth. “It doesn’t look as if there are any other big trees near here.” She let out a frustrated sigh, then burst out, “I’ll just die if we don’t find that treasure!”
Nancy was too busy concentrating on her surroundings to respond. As she walked, she looked from side to side, her eyes sweeping the rain-soaked bushes and trees they passed. Suddenly she stopped. “You guys—over there,” she said, pointing up ahead.
George and Claire gazed at the raised, lumpy patch of ground about six feet in front of them. It was completely covered with ivy that rustled in the stiff, wet wind. “What’s so special about a clump of ivy?” Claire asked.
“I get it,” George said, hurrying over to the raised area. “If an old tree fell down, and then ivy grew over it, it might look like this.”
The three girls began tugging at the thick tendrils of ivy. “It is a tree!” Claire exclaimed, exposing a section of old, cracked wood.
“The question is, is it the right tree?” Nancy put in. She went to one end of the raised area and quickly pushed aside the ivy there. “This looks as if it was the trunk,” she decided, staring down at the huge circle of decaying wood.
“So the part where the tree split would have to be up here somewhere,” George added, stepping farther along the lumpy, ivy-covered area.
The three girls moved up the tree, clearing the wet ivy from it as they went. Nancy felt her excitement build with every inch they uncovered. All her instincts told her that this was the tree, but she had to see the split to be sure...
“Aha!” Claire crowed. She pointed down at the section of the tree that she’d just uncovered. The trunk of the old, fallen tree separated into two large, distinct branches. “This is it!”
“Wow, I don’t believe it,” George murmured, staring down at the tree. “So now we go right—how many paces?” she asked, looking at Nancy.
Nancy consulted the map halves. “Fifteen,” she replied.
The air buzzed with anticipation as the three girls paced off the steps. “Okay, let’s start digging,” Claire urged eagerly.
Claire took the shovel from Nancy and used it to clear the grass and ivy from the area. Then she plunged the shovel into the ground and tossed aside a huge clump of earth.
“I know it’s a long shot that the treasure’s still here after all this time, but this is really exciting,” George said, her brown eyes gleaming.
Nancy had to agree. The three girls took turns digging the hole, which grew deeper and deeper. The rain continued to stream down, but they barely noticed it.
“I don’t know,” Claire said an hour later as she took over the shovel from George. “We’ve dug over four feet down, and we still haven’t found the treasure.”
“Maybe we got the directions wrong again,” George said, brushing a wet strand of hair from her forehead.
“We can’t give up yet,” Nancy said. “Let’s give it another ten minutes before we—”
Clank!
All three girls heard the metallic noise as Claire’s shovel struck something hard. “I’ve hit something!” she cried. Dropping to her knees, she used her hands to brush the dirt from the top of the object. Nancy and George jumped down into the hole to help her.
Within moments they had uncovered the top of an oblong wooden trunk with worn leather straps.
“Wow!” Claire exclaimed. “We found it. We actually found the treasure!”
Nancy, too, was captivated by the sight of the old trunk. Could it really be the same treasure that had been mentioned in the sea chanty about the Henrietta Lee and in Jack Benbow’s diary?
The girls went to work with renewed vigor, clearing the dirt from around the sides of the small trunk. It was extraordinarily heavy, but somehow they managed to drag it to the top of the hole and set it in the dirt there.
The three girls examined the trunk. Its leather straps were so worn that they fell apart at the slightest touch. Nancy saw that there was also a metal lock that had rusted shut. She grabbed a rock and banged it against the lock. Before long it, too, fell away.
“Here goes,” Nancy said, shooting Claire and George an excited glance.
Together, the girls grabbed the lid of the trunk and tugged. At first it resisted. Finally the wooden lid creaked open with a loud groan. Nancy, George, and Claire all gasped at the same time.
Nancy had never seen such a brilliant sight. The trunk was filled to the brim with gold coins. They were all different sizes and shapes, and they gleamed so brightly that she almost had to shield her eyes from the glare. For a long moment all she could do was stare at the coins, mesmerized. The only sounds came from the wind and rain.
“Amazing!” George finally exclaimed.
Just then a boy’s voice spoke up from behind the girls, startling them.
“You three have done a great job.”
“Deke!” Claire exclaimed, whirling around.
When Nancy turned, she saw that Deke Ryan had emerged from a thick clump of bushes a few yards away. As he walked toward the group, he stared at the gold coins with greedy eyes. She felt a cold stab of fear when she saw what he was holding.
It was a knife, and it was pointed right at her, George, and Claire!
A Deadly Surprise
Nancy tried to ignore the wave of dread that washed over her. George and Claire were both frozen beside her, their gazes focused on Deke’s sharp knife.
“What are you doing here, Deke?” Claire finally spoke up.
Deke let out a short laugh. “I think the answer’s obvious,” he said. “I was waiting for you to find the treasure for me, of course.”
“He must have followed us here, Claire,” Nancy realized. She glared at Deke. “You’ve made a habit of that, haven’t you? I know you’re the one who followed Claire around and let her do your dirty work for you.”
Deke didn’t seem at all insulted by Nancy’s accusation. “So what if I did?” he countered. “Why risk getting in trouble myself when Claire could do it for me?”
“You were the one in the rigging loft last night!” Claire exclaimed. “So you must have wrecked the whaling display and the captain’s writing desk, too.”
“Not to mention almost killing me by cutting the netting on the Benjamin W. Hinton so that I came close to falling on the whaling hook,” Nancy added. “And shoving George into the river this morning.”
When Deke didn’t deny the accusations, Claire looked at him with a perplexed expression. “But why, Deke? If you wanted me to find the map halves, why did you ruin those beautiful things?”
Deke shrugged. “At first I wanted to find the map myself,” he began. “My great-great-grandfather wrote that sea chanty about the Henrietta Lee. His wife, Mary Preston, found it in his writing desk after he died, not long after the Henrietta Lee’ s shipwreck. He never did recover from the pneumonia he caught when the ship went down.”
“Mary’s the woman in the song,” George recalled. “She was Captain Preston’s wife?”
“Yeah,” Deke replied. “You see, my great-great-grandfather owned the Henrietta Lee, so everything that was salvaged from the wreck was returned to Mary.” He shook his head angrily. “Too bad my mother donated the clock and all those other things to Bridgehaven Seaport. If she’d kept them, I never would have had to come here in the first place.”
Claire shot Deke an angry glare. “You don’t care about the seaport at all,” she accused. “Even if you just came to find the treasure, you didn’t have to go wrecking everything!”
“I didn’t plan to, but I was really mad when you beat me to the ship’s clock, Claire,” Deke explained. “That’s why I wrecked the display you took it from. I couldn’t believe it when you got to the captain’s writing desk before me, too.”
“So you wrecked it and then hid the tool you used behind the lockers at the shipyard,” Nancy finished for him.
He nodded, turning his gaze back to the gold coins in front of the girls. “Then I got smart. I knew the only thing that really mattered was making sure I was around when you found the treasure, Claire. Which, as you can see, I’ve managed quite nicely.”
Claire gasped. “Deke, you can’t take this! It’s not yours!”
“It belongs to anyone who finds it,” he insisted. “Besides, it was originally my great-great-grandfather’s, so rightfully it should be mine. It’s my inheritance!”
“Your great-great-grandfather stole the treasure,” George said indignantly. “He left his whole crew to die in that storm just because he was greedy. That’s disgusting!”
In response to Deke’s look of surprise, Nancy explained, “We found Jack Benbow’s diary—the real one, not the photocopy from the seaport library. We read the last entries, where Jack Ben- bow reveals how he and Decatur Preston betrayed their crew in the storm that sank the Henrietta Lee. And I bet that once the treasure was safely here, Captain Preston killed Jack Benbow.”
“Don’t talk about my ancestor that way!” Deke snapped, spots of anger rising to his cheeks. “He was a great man—all the historians say so.”
“But you know that’s not the truth,” Nancy said.
For a brief moment Deke looked uneasily from Nancy to George to Claire. “My mom couldn’t bear to have people know what my great-great-grandfather did,” he finally admitted. “So when she donated the diary to the seaport, she only gave a photocopy—minus the entries about him deserting his crew and taking the gold coins. She never even tried looking for the map halves mentioned in the song—she was too ashamed about what Decatur Preston had done to get the coins.”
“What about the first mate?” George wanted to know.
Deke shrugged uneasily. “My parents never learned what happened to him. All we know is that my great-great-grandfather kept Benbow’s diary after he died. Captain Preston took it to the mainland with him in the boat he and Benbow had taken from the Henrietta Lee. The boat had been damaged in the storm, and it was leaking. Not to mention that my great-great-grandfather was still really sick. He was unconscious when some people found him near the mouth of the Arcadia. I mean, he almost died. It’s not like the whole trip was a picnic for him, either,” Deke finished defensively.
While Deke spoke, Nancy had been glancing around. Even though Deke was outnumbered, he had the advantage as long as he held that knife. She couldn’t risk any of them getting hurt. If only she could find a way to disarm him!
“I think we’ve chatted enough,” Deke said. A deadly serious look came into his eyes. “Now you’re going to carry this trunk back to the shore,” he ordered, gesturing toward the gold coins with his knife.
“We’ll never make it to shore in this weather,” Nancy said, trying to stall him. “We’d better wait until it stops.”
Deke shook his head adamantly. “No way. In fact, the storm will be the perfect cover for what I have in mind.”
“Wh-what’s that?” Claire asked nervously.
“Oh, you’ll see,” Deke said vaguely, a mischievous smile playing over his lips. “I took a dolly from the seaport to carry the treasure. I want you three to get it, then move the trunk back to the shore. And remember—I’m right behind you.”
Nancy exchanged a grim look with George and Claire. She didn’t know how they managed it, but together they heaved the trunk onto the dolly. The load of coins seemed impossibly heavy as they rolled it back in the direction they’d come from. The wind whipped at their faces, and hidden vines seemed to pop out of nowhere to trip them. By the time they finally reached the rocky beach where they’d left their sailboats, Nancy was breathless. Every muscle in her body ached from exertion.
“Phew!” George said, wiping the rain from her face. She glanced back at Deke, who followed with his knife trained on the girls. “Deke’s certainly no gentleman,” she muttered under her breath.
Nancy was too busy scanning the water to reply. Here on the open beach, she could see the full effects of the storm. The water was a raging mass of waves now. There was hardly any visibility.
“Deke, we can’t go out in this storm,” she called to him. “It’s too dangerous!”
“Exactly,” Deke said smugly. “When the Coast Guard finds the bodies of three girls, they’ll assume it was an unfortunate sailing accident...”
Claire gasped, looking at him in horror. “Deke! You don’t re- ally mean to—”
“Oh, yes I do,” he said. “My motorboat is moored right behind that rock.” He gestured toward the boulder Nancy and George had noticed earlier. “As soon as you three are... gone, I’ll get away in a flash. No one will ever know I had anything to do with it.”
George looked nervously around. “Um, Deke, we’ll get the trunk down to the water while you get your speedboat, okay?” she said. Nancy knew her friend was stalling for time.
“Not so fast,” Deke said. “I can handle the trunk from here on. I think it’s time you three went for a sail—to the bottom of the ocean.”
Nancy fought down a wave of fear as Deke bent to pick up a large rock from the beach. What was he planning?
“Deke, you can’t just k-kill us in cold blood!” Claire pleaded, her voice a fearful wail.
Nancy shivered at the evil gleam in Deke’s blue eyes. He stepped toward them, the rock in one hand and the knife in the other. “Oh, yeah? Just watch me,” he said. “After you three are knocked out, I’ll tow you and the sailboat behind the motorboat. Then, when we’re far enough from the island, I’ll dump you overboard.”
Nancy couldn’t believe how cold and calculating Deke was. She didn’t doubt that he meant every word.
All of a sudden Nancy thought she caught a glimmer of light out on the water. Because of the storm, it was hard to tell for sure, but... Yes! There it was again. It was a boat!
A quick look at Deke told her that he hadn’t seen the light. If she could just disarm him, they could yell for help. But as Nancy’s gaze fell on the rock and knife he held, her heart sank. She didn’t see how they could jump him without running the risk of getting seriously injured.
The sudden blast of a foghorn made Nancy jump. Deke was taken by surprise, too, and he whipped his head around to stare out to sea.
In that second Nancy leapt into action. She covered the distance to Deke in two long strides, then lashed out with a judo kick that sent his knife flying.
Deke was too stunned to say anything but “Hey!”
“I’m with you, Nancy!” George called out. Before Deke could react, George caught him in a flying tackle, while Nancy retrieved the knife from the sand. Claire jumped to George’s aid. Within seconds they had Deke’s arms pinned behind his back.
“Good work, guys,” Nancy said. “Now, we’ve just got to get that boat’s attention.”
Keeping a strong hold on Deke, who was struggling and crying out, the three girls started screaming for help at the top of their lungs. A moment later they saw the boat’s strong spotlight cut through the storm toward them. Then a faint, amplified voice echoed over the water: “This is the Coast Guard...”
• • •
“I still can’t believe you guys actually found a trunk of gold coins that’s been buried for over a century and a half,” Rochelle said the following afternoon.
She, Nancy, George, Claire, and the rest of the students from the summer maritime program were gathered around a grill on the dock outside the Student Training Building. The entire seaport had been buzzing with the news of the treasure and Deke’s treachery ever since the Coast Guard had brought back Nancy, Claire, and George the day before. The weather had cleared, so Mrs. Newcomb decided that a barbecue would be the perfect way to celebrate the girls’ discovery and the end of the case. A smoky scent filled the air, making Nancy’s stomach growl.
“It is amazing,” Mrs. Newcomb added, while Rochelle brushed sauce on the fish fillets on the grill. “I’m just relieved that you all made it safely through yesterday’s storm.”
“No thanks to Deke Ryan,” Tom Chin said. He frowned down at the plate of barbecued fish and potato salad he held. “If I had known how twisted that guy was, I never would have become friends with him. I’m glad he didn’t get away with the treasure— or with hurting anyone.”
“When Cap reported that some of the boats were missing, he had a feeling something awful had happened,” Mrs. Newcomb went on. “It’s a good thing he had the sense to call the Coast Guard.”
Rochelle handed Nancy a plate of fish and salad, and she dug into it with gusto. “Deke really thought he had a right to that treasure—no matter what he had to do to get it,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “Now that he’s been arrested, he’ll have a long time to think about how wrong he was.”
“I know I’ve learned my lesson,” Claire put in. She had been standing next to water, looking out over the Arcadia River, but she joined the group in time to hear Nancy’s comment. “Mrs. Newcomb, I’m so sorry about breaking into the seaport’s displays and taking that clock. Thank you for giving me a second chance.”
After hearing Claire’s story, the seaport director had decided to let Claire off with a stern warning. “I can’t say I approve of what you did,” Mrs. Newcomb said, “but Nancy told me of your intention to turn the treasure over to the seaport. Besides, the ship’s clock from the Henrietta Lee is back in the whaling display now. And you did help to capture Deke...”
“What’s going to happen to the treasure, anyway?” Tom Chin interrupted, looking curiously at Nancy.
Mrs. Newcomb grinned at Nancy, George, and Claire. “Legally, sunken treasure belongs to the person who finds it,” the seaport director said. “Or in this case, the three people. But Nancy, George, and Claire have decided to donate the treasure to a worthy cause.”
“We voted unanimously to give the gold coins to Bridgehaven Seaport,” George explained. “After all, the treasure and the story of the Henrietta Lee are an important part of the history of this area. It seemed right that the money should go to the seaport, since Bridgehaven is totally devoted to teaching people about our sailing history.”
“The treasure map and the wooden chest the coins were found in will go on display here at the seaport, along with a few of the coins,” Mrs. Newcomb added, a pleased smile lighting up her face. “By selling the rest of the coins to dealers and collectors, we’ll be able to raise millions. We’ll have enough money to keep Bridgehaven Seaport going for a long, long time.”
As the others continued to talk about the treasure, Nancy’s gaze roamed over the dock area. She was surprised to see Cap Gregory and Vincent Silvio round the side of the training building. They were talking animatedly about something.
“How’s the design for your new boat coming along?” Mrs. Newcomb asked as the two men stepped up to the group. “Though I guess we all know that if I were designing the boat, the result would be a lot nicer,” she teased.
Silvio’s face reddened with anger. “That’s a bold-faced lie!” he exclaimed. “There’s no way I’ll discuss the plans with you. You’d just steal this design from me, too! Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until she’s built, like everyone else.”
“Good enough,” Mrs. Newcomb replied with a laugh.
“I guess the competition between those two is as strong as ever,” George whispered to Nancy.
Nancy chuckled, taking a bite of her grilled fish. “At least Mrs. Newcomb has agreed to let Cap keep the boat here at the seaport once it’s built.”
She turned as Cap came up beside her, a smile on his wrinkled face. “An old man hates to admit to making a mistake, but I guess I had you pegged all wrong, Miss Drew,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
Cap rubbed his chin before answering. “Well, when you first got here, I didn’t think you could sail a toy boat in a mud puddle,” he began. “But anyone who could make it to Hawk’s Isle in the kind of weather we had yesterday—and find a treasure to boot—is okay in my book.”
“Thanks, Cap,” Nancy said, smiling back.
“I agree,” Mrs. Newcomb added, stepping up to Nancy, George, and Cap. “You two would make a couple of fine skippers. Bridgehaven Seaport is going to miss you!”
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