Free The Theta Prophecy by Chris Dietzel Page A

be buried there. Why else would anyone go to the trouble of digging such a hole?
    The fantastic tale not only continued to spread from person to person and port to port, it also found its way into a couple of newspapers around the world. Sixty years after Daniel and his friends first came upon the block and tackle attached to the tree limb, their account was mentioned in an English paper. Other accounts would be published in Canadian, American, and French papers. Never before had treasure been so clearly marked but also so elusive.
    As news of the pit continued to spread, more ambitious people came to the island, determined to finish what Daniel and his friends had started and recover the promised wealth buried beneath them.
    The initial response was always the same. A forty year-old fur trader, who was used to seeing fortunes made and lost, looked down at the thirty-foot pit, turned to the nearest man, and said, “Four boys did this?” A thirty-three-year-old shoemaker—not rich by some standards, but wealthy enough to bring a team of six men with him to the island—took one look at how far four boys had dug and said, “I think I have vastly underestimated the job.” None of the attempts made by these men lasted very long.
    It wasn’t until Reginald Owen read an account of Oak Island that another serious effort was undertaken. Owen, the owner of a spice company in central Nova Scotia, sent a ship filled with men and equipment to uncover the buried treasure.
    “I’m surprised they got that far,” the foreman said upon arriving to the island and seeing how far the four boys had managed to dig. “Further than I would have gotten with some shovels, buckets, and a couple friends.”
    The first thing the new foreman did was have his men build a system of ropes and pulleys. Although the existing block and tackle the boys found still worked, it was old and could fail at any time. The new system allowed multiple buckets to be raised and lowered at the same time, making progress quicker than it had been before. Next, the foreman had a system of reinforced walls and ladders installed. This let the men climb up and down more easily, without having to rely on the ropes that would be needed to keep a continuous flow of dirt moving out of the hole. And lastly, he installed a set of mirrors outside the hole, positioned to reflect the sun’s light into the pit so the men could more easily see what they were doing.
    All of these improvements were crucial for the quick results the new team expected to achieve.
    “We got something,” a member of the crew said at forty feet.
    The foreman went down into the hole to see for himself. After descending forty rungs of the ladder, he expected to find the thing Daniel had been searching for and that had eluded him to this point: a treasure chest filled with riches. Instead, he saw a set of the same wood planks he had been told were at depths of ten, twenty, and thirty feet.
    “This is it?” he said.
    One of the men, covered with so much sweat and dirt that he looked like a mud monster, said, “And this, sir.”
    The foreman was handed a collection of rotted leaves. He squinted at the objects in his hand as if that would tell him what was significant about them.
    “They’re from the ocean, sir,” the man said. “Whoever dug the hole brought them down here.”
    “Why?”
    Everyone shrugged. No one answered.
    “We also found these, sir.”
    The foreman looked against the pit’s wall. In addition to the chisel marks they found along the wall, where the hole’s builder had carved earth away before filling it back in, they found charcoal markings. It made as little sense to the foreman as it did to his men.
    “Pull the boards away,” he said. “This might be it.”
    But when the men pulled the wood planks away, they found only more dirt.
    On his way back up the ladder, the foreman called out, “Keep digging. We must be close.”
    After fifty feet, they found the same leafy fibers