Teetoncey and Ben O'Neal (8 page)

"Teetoncey or the
Malta Empress
?" I asked.

"The bark," Kilbie said. "If you know just about where she smacked on that shoal, then we can go right to the spot."

I didn't know.

"Well, where did you find the girl?"

I walked a ways and then looked around. "Right about here."

Kilbie took a piece of driftwood and stuck it up in the bank just about opposite where I was standing. The current had been setting south that night so it meant that the
Empress
had been three or four hundred yards up from this spot.

I paced off three hundred fifty giant steps and then said, "She should have hit about straight out from here." It was only a guess.

Frank marked that spot with another piece of driftwood and we sat down to wait for the tide to expose the shoal. There wasn't much surf that day and we'd soon be able to take a good look at the bar, for what it was worth.

Scanning out, I said, "It's a shame that not one measly piece of that keel nor a length of ribbing got stuck out there. Then we'd know exactly where to look."

Kilbie had been quiet and thoughtful for a few minutes. Finally he said, "It might be impossible. Those chests could have worked themselves ten feet down into sand."

While Kilbie was running all sorts of negative problems through his mind, Frank and I just had blind faith we'd find the chests. Faith of any kind is what counts.

About twenty minutes later, the water fell to maybe an inch on the shoal, which was about a quarter mile long and varied in width from thirty to forty feet, a mound of sand that dropped off sharp on the east edge, leaving westerly water about two fathoms deep all the way to the surf line, then shallowing out at a fathom and sloping, finally, to the beach.

From where we sat there was nothing to be seen on top of that shoal—not that I hadn't already looked at it numerous times in previous passings. But there was always the possibility that a nub of something would be washed clean of sand overnight, bob up like a surfacing whale. After a storm, pieces of ancient wrecks sometimes come to light as if they'd made a voyage through sand to the bottom of the earth and returned.

I said, "We'll just take my boat, go out there, and probe around." But I now believed it was silly to think Fid could pull those chests out with a line from shore. I'd thought about taking him out in the small boat with us but felt that might end up in a mess.

Kilbie disencouraged any miracles. He said solemnly, "Only chance we got is to figure ever-thin' an' map it all out. Ben, you pick a date but watch out for the tide. Frank—we'll need some line and buoys." It never failed. Kilbie somehow always got himself into command.

By now, the bar was out of water enough to accommodate a flight of pecking, prancing gulls, and we couldn't even see a shattered rail stub out there.

Frank and I went on to Chicky village. I had to work and Frank was going to hang around the store until his papa docked about four o'clock with a catch.

Just before supper, I told Teetoncey what we'd done during the day; that Kilbie was going to start paperwork, which he dearly loved. She wanted to know if she could help.

Later, I said.

I wasn't at all sure what she could do. Salvage work, of which there is no meaner, is not for women.

Weather conditions willing, it seemed to me that January 16 would be the ideal date to do a little secret probing on Heron Head Shoal. The almanac calculated we'd have a full moon that night, with a high tide at 8:06
P.M.
Go back six hours and we should be in position on that bar at 1
P.M.
and wait for the tide to go to its lowest some sixty minutes later.

I wondered how low the water would be at that time of year, and not knowing very much about tides, except that they went up and down, I took a trip to the Lifesaving Station on the following day to contact Mark Jennette. While Jabez had more beach experience than Mark, he was not very scholarly. Jennette had passed his exams as a mate and had sailed awhile on a couple of schooners.

I found him on duty in the lookout cupola, with UDT, his big gray cat. That was a strange name for a cat, just three initials, and Mark said it meant
Underwater Delirium Tremens,
or the "three fathom shakes." But everyone thought it had a deeper meaning.

"What do you know about tides?" I asked.

Mark, stroking his brownish-red mustache, replied, "Well, they rise and fall."

I knew that. "How long do they stay slack, when they're not rising and falling?"

"That depends," Mark said.

That's a rotten word. "On what?"

"Moon, sun, atmospheric pressure; onshore wind, offshore wind..." Mark saw me frowning and said, "Keep watch for me." There was a steamer going north; a barkentine headed south. Sea, calm; wind in its usual prevail, west of south. There wasn't much to "lookout" from that tower.

Mark went down the ladder and soon came back with a thick tan book. "This is the greatest book ever written," he said. (Mama would argue the point and stick with the Holy Bible.) "It's by Nathaniel Bowditch."

He read, "The cause of the tides is the periodic disturbance of the ocean from its position of equilibrium brought about through the periodic differences of attraction upon water particles of the earth by the moon, and to a lesser degree by the sun..."

More or less, I knew that. He read on and finally got to the part which confirmed my January 16 date. "...at times of new and full moon, the highest high tides and the lowest low tides are experienced..."

That was it. "Is January better than February or March?" I asked.

He read again. "Tides will be increased by the sun's action when the earth is near its perihelion, about January 1..."

"Peri what?" I asked.

"Perihelion. I'm not sure what it is but it appears that tides are lower and higher in January than in July."

That was perfect. Tee would be long gone by July.

I asked again: "How long do they stay slack?" A very important question so far as Heron bar was concerned.

Mark laughed. "That depends. Jabez says they stay slack long enough for a gull to digest a perch an' clean his wings. That's about right."

Stroking his cat, Mark asked, "Ben, why do you want to know all this information?" The cat's big yellowish eyes were boring in on me.

I said, "So I can discuss it with Teetoncey."

I thanked Mark and wound down through the messroom. Filene was sitting at the crew's table, specs on nose, reading a copy of the Norfolk
Virginian-Pilot.
He glanced up and gave me a look that was enough to close my windpipe but didn't say anything. I went on my way to Kilbie's house to report what I'd learned.

The year came to a close.

New Christmas, December 25, which all the mainlanders seemed to celebrate, was filtering very slowly to the Outer Banks but we paid more attention to the eve of January 6, Old Christmas, which was the traditional celebration for as long as anyone knew. Let the mainlanders play with sacred dates. Busybodies, they were ruining our post office names but had to let Christmas alone. It was now the Year of Our Lord, 1899.

On Christmas Eve afternoon, Mama, Tee, Fid, Boo Dog, and myself went to Chicky village to watch Kilbie and his brother, Everett, run around in cow heads and hide draped to their waist. They were pretending to be Old Buck, the wild bull of Trent Woods. The program did not vary from year to year. Tee seemed to be baffled by the whole thing, which surprised me, since we had inherited our Christmas from England. Then we went home and had a festive evening.

Every few days, while waiting for the calendar to tick off January 16, we were meeting in the hulk of the
Hettie Carmichael,
sheltered from the wind, to discuss the silver salvage. Of course, we were also sheltered from snooping eyes.

On this particular day, Kilbie had brought a sketch along. It showed the sandbar and had a pair of straight lines penciled across to mark the area where we thought the
Empress
had piled up.

Kilbie showed it to Tee and asked, "Where did your papa keep the chests?"

"In the cabin with us. They're extraordinarily heavy, Kilbie. It took four men with ropes and planks to get them down the ladder."

Kilbie nodded and drew the outline of a vessel in the sand. "Now show me where the cabin was."

Tee stuck her finger down. It appeared to be a bit forward of midships. Kilbie studied it a moment and then drew an X on his sketch. "That's where the chests are," he said confidently.

I said, "Kilbie, how do you know that the
Empress
didn't slew around after she hit?" I'd seen a half dozen ships that rammed a sandbar head-on and then went sideways when the seas caught them. They never stayed head on.

"All right," he said. "If we don't find them here we take the X and move it forty feet in this direction or forty feet in that direction."

It was very hard to beat Kilbie.

We then began to gather equipment. Frank stole some line from his papa and made three buoys out of gallon glass jugs that had good stoppers in them. He also took an old boat hook and hacksawed the prong off, leaving the metal tip so we'd have something to probe with. There is a different feel when you hit soggy wood underwater than when you hit metal. Frank then found a long, thin pole and remounted the altered boat hook.

I worked on the
Me and the John O'Neal.
I unstepped the mast and made sure all the oakum caulking in the seams was secure; checked the oar pins and rounded up all the spare line I could find; checked my anchor. Kilbie's plan was to buoy the chests and then come back on the next low tide, raise them up and then float them ashore under some barrels. Kilbie seemed to have learned something about salvage already.

Teetoncey asked what she could do. "You're in charge of the food," I said. I couldn't think of any other assignment for her. We'd have to be on the beach by midmorning, eat something, and then be ready to row out to Heron Head about one o'clock.

Meanwhile, as time hastened on, I kept checking the barometer. The weather was pretty stable that second week of January, just as the almanac had predicted. I bet I read that almanac fifty-times between Old Christmas and January 15, a Sunday.

 

January, 1899—1st to 3rd. Storm period generally. Storms out of southwest move across southland. 4th to 7th—Cold spell. Storms clear in North Atlantic states. Light snow in Rockies to Kansas-Nebraska. Showers on Pacific coast. Some snow on south plateau to west Texas. 8th to 11th—Unsettled time. Showers along the Gulf coast up through Maryland. Mostly fair in California. 11th to 15 th—Stormy from Pacific states to Great Lakes but generally fair and mild in mid-Atlantic states. 16th to 19th—Heavy snow New England states but mild in mid-Atlantic states...

 

Mid-Atlantic was us. I did not know how the rest of the country was faring but it was sure fine along the Hatteras Banks, almost like May weather. Whoever does the forecasting for the almanac is an expert.

I think it is true that a maternal instinct exists because Mama asked me several times, when she caught me studying the almanac or checking the barometer, if something was going on. On the 15th, she said, "Ben, I do deceive that you an' Tee are goin behind my back. I feel it an' I smell it." There was no way to smell what we were doing, even with her big nose, but feeling was possible.

I went so far as saying, "Mama, we're working on something that's going to give you a life of ease. By Groundhog Day, you'll have a crank washing machine right in this kitchen."

Mama said frankly, "I'd a sight rather have you in high school in Manteo," and then went on about her business, but worriedly, I think.

That same nice night Tee and I went out on the porch and looked at the moon just after it rose. While I knew a lot about the moon I did not know enough to judge when it was absolutely chock o' block full. But it looked like that last sliver was already in place. If so, that would mean another million gallons of water would drain off Heron Head Shoal on the morrow.

Tee laughed when I addressed the moon: "Suck every drop off that sandbar."

She was impressed with my knowledge of the moon, courtesy Reuben, that it took seven days to go from first quarter to full; two weeks to shrink from full to new; that
perigee
was when it was closest to the earth and
apogee
made it far out. But there is much about the moon that none of us know.

There were seven hundred bushels of stars out that night and aside from admiring them I found out she'd never thought much about them. It was dim but I showed her Job's Coffin; then Aldebaran and old Betelgeuse, or as Reuben says, "Ol' Beetlejuice."

Then we went to bed but neither of us really slept soundly.

I
N THE MORNING
, Kilbie and Frank came down to the house but kept out of sight, meeting Tee and me down at the dock. Checking back to see if Mama was prying around near the windows, we quickly loaded the boat on the pony cart, then got the buoys, probe, and line that they'd stashed away nearby. Tee had stealthily made some food the previous night and we stuck that on the seat, then got under way for Heron Head, Boo Dog padding along behind to continue his wooing of the castaway girl.

Arriving at the beach, we were relieved to find that there wasn't a soul around. With the fine weather, no lifesaving patrols were out and it wasn't likely any would come along. Most of the traffic this time of year went inside on the trails along the sound. With luck, we could go about our work undisturbed.

We unloaded the boat and carried it down to the beach opposite where Frank had driven the piece of driftwood into the sand. Then Kilbie scanned his sketch. It appeared we were in the correct position to reach his first
X
mark but the bar was still covered with water. Tide was ebbing fast but it would be another two hours before we launched.

I was glad to see that there wasn't much surf. Maybe two feet rolling in gently from the Atlantic. It couldn't have been a better day, cloudless except for a few fluffs on the far horizon.