Money Island

by Andrew Jackson Howell

But Jamesby was still incredulous. So I turned the conversation to my fowls; and he was very ready to admit that I had told the genuine thing in describing to him some of the excellent points of my prize birds. There was no doubt that I could exhibit several specimens which any fancier would be proud of.

Jamesby remained to tea, so that we could go to the lodge together, and I enjoyed the quiet stroll down town with him. We had hardly entered the hall, though, before the historian of the town, who is also a leading Mason, approached me regarding my Money Island revelations. "Sir," he said, "I regard it throughout as a most interesting and plausible narrative; and I am glad we have been favored by being allowed to read it. I have made a study of the pirates who infested our coast in the early colonial days, and I know that this section, particularly the lower region of the Cape Fear, was a favorite rendezvous for them. It is known upon most reliable information that there are immense quantities of captured treasure secreted along the coast, and the wonder is that there have not been some really serious efforts to find it."

Another gentleman added, "Yes, and they also buried treasure further down South; for at my old home (and I speak the honest trath) I have stood in the hole from which my friend, Mr. Coachman, unearthed accidentally a small fortune, which gave him a very comfortable start in life."

The conversation lingered in this absorbing vein until the meeting was opened, much to my relief; for I had been surfeited with the subject of money finding for that day, at least. But that was not all; for, during the solemnity of the opening exercises, I heard some one telling, in an undertone, of a negro who had found a roll of old bank notes in a log which had been hauled to a saw mill to be cut.

The next day I was still aware that I possessed an unusual attraction; and I resigned myself patiently to the service of all my inquiring friends. Jamesby actually stopped by my office to walk up with me at lunch time. He was willing to move along slowly with me, for now in my old age I find I have to walk slowly. I knew it would have been more natural for him to have gone on briskly; but he was polite and assured me that the pleasure of my company was better than too much time spent at his meal.

We stopped on the way at a newspaper office. The editor and proprietor had observed our approach and they were awaiting us with looks of amused interest. "Hello!" the proprietor said cheerily, "you have really stimulated the enterprise of the town. Why have you kept so reticent on that subject all these years?"

Of course, I knew what subject was referred to; for I had been living for those two days in an atmosphere filled with the phantoms of hidden gold, buried treasure, marvelous discoveries, pirates and other engaging topics of thought; and I now looked for nothing else.

"In my opinion," he continued, "it was a very good story. Of course, it goes without saying that it is true. I tell you, sir, that it is my judgment that this whole section of coast line is rich in gold. Not only did those pirates bury gold here, but, during the Civil War, the Confederate blockade runners, when fearing capture, were known repeatedly to throw gold into the sea along the beach, sometimes by the keg full; and not one dollar's worth of it has ever yet been recovered, so far as I can learn. It is all right there where they dropped it. And besides that, at least on one occasion, it is a well proven fact that a chest of gold was buried by the commander of one of the blockade runners in the marsh grass on the shore not far below Wilmington; and there is no evidence that it has ever yet been unearthed. In fact, all knowledge of the exact spot has been lost, I understand."

"Yes," interposed the editor, "it is all quite reasonable; and, as something germain to the subject, I can cite an interesting instance. When, soon after the War our old Confederate naval captain bought his home on Greenville Sound and was preparing to build his residence, he had the old house which stood upon the site torn down, and, upon the carpenters coming one morning to begin the erection of the new building, they found an immense excavation right where the old house stood. Now, that old building was in former years used by a Portuguese as an inn for the entertainment of sailors from the vessels in the port of Wilmington; and, there being certain traditions in regard to some money having been buried beneath it, it was natural to conclude that the excavation resulted from an energetic effort to find the money. The hole was made at night, but by whom it has never been found out. The incident was shrouded in a mystery which has never been cleared."

We talked still further along that vein, the editor emphatically asserting his assured belief in the possibility of recovering quantities of gold from the seashore below Wilmington, and from the decaying hulks of blockade runners that rise a little here and there above the waves, where they met a disastrous check to their efforts to slip into the harbor.