Atlantis Gold

Chapter 37

Hunt had torn away part of his T-shirt to wrap around his hands in order to prevent blisters from pumping the cart. Jayden had done the same thing, except using paracord. In the front of the rail car, Maddy used what was left the single remaining torch — the one Hunt had used had burned all the way down hours ago — to eyeball the tracks ahead in case she needed to tell them to slow down because of a broken rail section or some other obstacle. So far, they had come across no such inconveniences, but she knew they couldn’t afford to take chances by assuming that everything would be perfect the whole way. After hours of this activity, her eyes were strained and tearing up, and yet, like a ship’s crewmember on night watch, she knew she had to stay alert to let Hunt and Jayden know what might lie ahead. They were physically exhausted from powering the cart, while she was mentally fatigued.

That’s why she thought she might be hallucinating when she saw the track coming to an end up ahead. A rock wall blocked the way and the track ended without ceremony; it simply butted up to the limestone wall and ended there. She held a hand up behind her and said, “Stop the cart!”

The rail car had no actual brake, but whether by design or accident, the slope of the tracks inclined for the last hundred feet or so, acting as a natural gravity-powered break, like an incline road at the bottom of a long highway slope for runaway trucks. Hunt and Jayden were all too happy to let go of the cart pump. They moved to the front of the car alongside Maddy, who showed them the fast-approaching dead-end.

“End of the line,” Jayden called out as they began rolling uphill.

“Don’t say that,” Maddy said.

“I mean for the tracks, not for us, geez!”

“Still freaks me out.”

“Let’s jump out before it starts rolling back downhill, okay?” Hunt said. As the cart slowed, they jumped up onto the edge, Hunt taking the single remaining torch. They paused until the cart stopped at the apex of its uphill coast, and then jumped off onto the limestone ground. The cart rolled away from them back downhill, slowly at first, but then gathering more momentum until it coasted away on the flat track.

“Here we are,” Hunt said, looking around. “Looks like there’s only one way to go.” Indeed, a small vestibule area lay in front of them.

“I sure hope it goes somewhere,” Jayden said,” because I’m sure not looking forward to pumping that thing all the way back to where we came from.”

Hunt walked forward while holding his torch out in front of him. “Let’s see…” He entered the small-looking area and immediately saw faint light coming from the right. Looking in that direction, he saw another small room, but this one was flooded with…

“Daylight! Not a whole lot, but I definitely see daylight!”

While Maddy and Jayden’s excited footsteps caught up with him, Hunt examined his new surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. It was a small enclosed space with a coral floor. So he looked up to where rays of filtered light came from, and saw a now familiar sight: a vertical chute with holds chiseled out of the wall on one side.

“It’s another ladder chute! We’re getting out of here.”

Maddy and Jayden’s celebratory hollering reverberated around the chamber while Hunt continued to assess their way out. “It’s high, though, maybe a hundred feet.”

“I’d climb a ten story building to get out of here right about now,” Jayden said, entering the vertical chute room.

Hunt dropped his torch, which had burned ninety percent away, on the floor, leaving it to burn out since they now had enough daylight streaming in from above. Barely enough, but it was sufficient and was better than climbing with the torch which was on its last legs.

Without further adieu, Hunt positioned his hands and feet in the hewn rungs and started to climb for the outside world. Soon Maddy, and then Jayden, joined him on the upward journey. Aside from being extra-careful with their footing and handholds once they were higher up than they’d like to fall, there wasn’t much to think about, except for…

I wonder what’s up there?

Hunt stopped climbing a few feet below the edge of the chute. He could see now why only scant rays of light made it down to the bottom: the top of the vertical space was set so that it angled slightly up and away from the main chute, and the opening was narrow, barely big enough to fit his body through. The top of this was grown over with vegetation. He listened for clues as to the new environment they were about to enter. He could hear seagulls calling, and a breeze blowing. His leg was shaking with the effort of the climb without having eaten much, and he knew it must be even harder on Maddy, so he didn’t linger quite as long as he would have liked.

“Going up and out,” Hunt called down to Jayden and Maddy. Then he wriggled through the angled portion of the chute and pulled himself out of the ground into the daylight outside. Looking back at where he had just climbed out of, he was amazed that he would never have known it was there, so grown over with plant life the narrow opening was.

His first reaction was one of disappointment, as he dropped onto yet another low-lying, hardscrabble, sunbaked piece of piece of coral that was little more than a glorified sandbar. There was nothing here. He stepped away from the chute exit to make way for Maddy and Jayden, and then took a short walk around. But there was little need for exploring. The island itself was featureless and flat, and not very large. But it was what lay beyond it that attracted Hunt’s attention.

Another island, a short distance away. Except that this one was not a deserted little clump of coral. Hunt caught his breath as he watched a massive ferry boat dock at a long pier where crowds of people waited to board. Looking closer at the island itself, Hunt could make out a large structure made of brown brick that extended along the island’s perimeter for a long ways.

Jayden and Maddy walked up next to him, still winded from the climb out of the chute.

“Looks like some kind of tourist site,” Jayden said.

“Where are we?” Maddy asked, getting right to the point.

“I’m not exactly sure yet.” Hunt tried to make out the lettering on the ferry but found it a little too far away to read. “But wherever it is, we need to get over there, and that means a swim.”

Maddy groaned at the thought of having to exert herself yet again in order to get out of a jam.

“Come on,” Jayden said, walking toward the water, “you know they’ve got a bar on that ferry.”

“I guess one more swim won’t kill me,” Maddy said.

“Not if I can help it,” Hunt returned. Then he cautioned Maddy and Jayden, “Let’s stay out of the ferry line, and try to swim up away from all the people so we don’t get too many questions. Then we’ll try to blend in and figure out where we are.”

The weary trio of explorers ventured into the sea once more, this time not even knowing for certain what sea it was. The water was still warm, Hunt noticed, perhaps a touch cooler than it had been in Cuba. They waded in until they were waist deep and then began to swim toward the other island. Fortunately, the ocean was calm and currents were mild, enabling them to make relatively good time. At one point, Hunt felt a sharp stinging sensation on his calf. He lifted it out of the water to get a look at it and saw that it was covered in red, striped welts.

“Jellyfish!” he warned the others, but it was too late — they had wandered into a swarm of them. Treading water, Hunt looked around and saw hundreds of the clear, gelatinous forms drifting around. He knew there was nothing they could do but to keep swimming and hope that they would emerge from the swarm. Jayden sustained a sting also, but then they were in clear waters once more.

And closer to the island, too, Hunt noticed, hearing the ferry’s loudspeaker announcing that it was now time to board for the return trip to Key West.

Key West, Florida! Suddenly Hunt knew where they were. The brown brick building on the island — he could see now that it was built as a polygonal ring that bordered the entire island — was an old Civil War era fort, Fort Jefferson, which was located in islands about seventy miles south of Key West known as the Dry Tortugas.

“Welcome to the Dry Tortugas, guys! Let’s get to shore.”

“Sweet, we’re going to Key West! Duval Street pub crawl, here I come!” Jayden started to swim for the island with renewed vigor. Hunt and Maddy moved along after him, and once again, they settled into a rhythm.

The sound of the ferry’s loudspeaker with a crewmember announcing last boarding call reached Hunt’s ears as he, Jayden and Maddy trotted up onto the white sandy beach. They rejoiced in the feel of the hot sand beneath their feet. Dry land again!

“What do you say we try to get on that ferry,” Hunt suggested, but Jayden and Maddy were already walking up the beach toward the ferry dock. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Hunt said, jogging across the sand to catch up with them. They walked on the beach until it ended at a grassy field where many tourists were enjoying a picnic lunch. The ferry began blasting its horn, a signal that it was leaving.

“Come on!” Hunt jogged across the grass until he reached the boarding pier, a wooden affair that jutted out into deep enough water to support the huge ferries that transported thousands of people per year to the national park in the Dry Tortugas.

“I forgot my wallet, so I hope they don’t ask us to buy a ticket,” Jayden said, slowing back to a walk as they got further onto the crowded pier.

“I’m thinking you buy your ticket in Key West and it’s round trip only,” Hunt said. “With any luck, they won’t even check for tickets since there’s only one way to get here.”

“But we know there’s more than one way to get here,” Maddy said with a sly smile.

The trio mingled in with the other stragglers who were also boarding the ferry at the last minute. Jayden held up a finger as if he had come up with a great idea. “If they ask, we’ll just tell them we came from Atlantis. They’ll think we’re a taco short of a combination plate and transport us to the mainland immediately for evaluation. Then we can break out of the loony bin…”

“This way, let’s go, right this way…” An employee was standing at the entrance to the gangway ramp that led onto the ferry, his hand on the clip of a rope barrier that he was about to barricade across a set of poles. “You three — you together?” he asked Hunt, Jayden and Maddy, who were all equally soaked, although this wasn’t out of place since it was a beach destination.

Hunt nodded, but froze, mind already spinning with what he would say. But the man waved them through. “You’re the last ones.” Hunt, Jayden and Maddy hurried through onto the gangway, and the employee clipped the rope off behind them. Then he signaled the ferry captain that all passengers were on board. The horn blasted again, the dock lines were cast off, and the triple decker boat rumbled away from the pier, packed with tourists.

“Looks like we have a beautiful ninety minute ride back,” the captain intoned over the PA system, so feel free to move about the ship and enjoy some food and cocktails. Next stop, Key West.”

“Either of you have any money?” Jayden asked Hunt and Maddy. “Wallet went down with the seaplane, I’m afraid.”

“Mine too,” lamented Maddy. “But believe me, I’m not complaining, considering how everything could have turned out.”

Jayden raised an eyebrow and then fished around in the pocket of his wet shorts. Then he held something up to Hunt, something that glinted silver in the sunlight.

“Maybe this silver ingot will buy us some food and drinks.” He smiled mischievously. Hunt shot him a questioning glance. “You know that’s not really ours, right?”

Jayden nodded slowly. “I know it, but I also feel like the people of Atlantis owe us a debt of gratitude for re-discovering their lost city and culture, and for the work we’re about to do of making sure it gets into the right hands to be enjoyed by everyone and not only rich private collectors. Are we on the same page now, Carter?”

Hunt was taken aback by the degree to which Jayden had read him. He could only nod and add, “If it was a coin, I’d be against it, because they’re too identifiable, but that’s just a hunk of silver, so if you can open a tab with it, more power to you. If not, I’ll have to make some calls when we get to Key West in order to get some funds my way.”

“We’ll be on the upper deck, enjoying the view,” Maddy said, taking Hunt by the hand and leading him up a short flight of stairs. But Jayden had already vanished through a door into the boat’s salon where the bar service was doing a brisk business.

A few minutes later, as Maddy and Hunt stood at the rail of the upper deck, watching the Dry Tortugas fade into the distance behind the ferry’s churning wake, Jayden walked up with a tray of drinks and food.

“How does a margarita along with a cheeseburger in paradise sound?”

Maddy’s smile was one of overwhelming thanks as she took both the food and the drink, along with a cup of ice water, while Hunt shook his head. “Given what you paid for it, it sounds like the most expensive meal I’ve ever had. Not that I’m complaining at this point, mind you. But leave it to you to trade a priceless artifact for some burgers.”

Jayden handed Hunt the tray while removing a burger and drink for himself. “Oh, I think we all know it has a price, all right. And we already paid it.”

Hunt looked out across the ocean toward the little island with the hidden Atlantean tunnel entrance, and raised his drink. They clinked glasses while the ferry chugged on toward Florida.

“To Atlantis.”