LITMIR.BIZ

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and slowly the door started to open. I lay there watching, petrified with fear, trying to think of something clever, but nothing came. Oh, if only we had a gun under the pillow, I thought. Now the door was open.

      In a flash of inspiration I decided I might be able to frighten the intruder away. I waited, holding my breath. Then, as he stepped quietly inside, I jabbed Bob hard with my elbow and at the same time screeched at the top of my voice. Startled, Bob grabbed the flashlight we kept by the bed, swung the beam over to the door, and there, leaning against the doorpost, white-faced and shaking, was … Bobby, just returning after having had to answer Nature’s Call.

      For days after this little episode, whenever I thought of it I had a fit of the giggles, but my son refused to see the humour of it, grumbling about how he nearly “got shot.”

      Towards the middle of November it started to rain. It teemed for three and four days at a stretch for nearly a month. This is when we found out how cramped we were for living space. After putting in a double and single bed, then space for cooking, shelves for food, also the heater, there wasn’t enough room left for us all to be standing at the same time. To make matters worse, my two men tried to work, regardless of the weather. It was quite warm so they didn’t mind getting wet. I managed to dry some of their clothes during the dry spells, but most of the time their things were hung inside the shack near the ceiling to dry. The saturated, dripping ones were hung over where there was a little floor space, and the ones that were just damp hung over the beds. Sometimes the humidity was more than we could stand, so we would leave the door open and the heater on full blast. I got very tired of pawing my way through wet clothes to do my work. And mold invaded all our books and papers.

      The coast of Nova Scotia is very rugged. Boulders, large and small, line the coast, with sandy beaches dotted here and there. It was the same on the island, so one either left his boat moored out in deep water or made a skid to drag the boat up beyond high tide. I often worried about our boat being moored out, especially at night when while lying in bed I could clearly hear the wind and waves. But Smith’s Cove is fairly well sheltered from the storms, except when one is blowing from the southeast, off the Atlantic.

      A strong wind brought in big rollers at the cove one day. In what seemed only minutes, there was a roaring wind with teeming rain and huge waves pounding on the beach. Before long the mooring started to shift from the pull of the boat and the stern was getting closer to the rocks at the end of our wharf. The men tried to pull the boat in, but the lines were tangled and the boat remained fast to the mooring. The tide was falling and soon the boat would be smacking down hard on the rocks, so there was nothing else to do but to go into the water and cut the lines.

      Bob went in, stumbling and slipping over the rocks, he pushed the back end of the boat out then worked his way to the nose and cut the lines. It seemed like hours before he was able to guide the boat around the end of the wharf and heading for shore. Time and time again the boat slammed down onto the water, just missing him by inches. With Bobby in up to his waist, hauling on the painter, and Bob pushing at the rear, they brought the boat close to the shore. The transom was full of water, and the boat grounded. I was assigned the job of bailing it out while they heaved and shoved, inching it out of the water. Every wave that came along helped to bring the boat in a little, at the same time pouring more water into the transom. We yelled instructions to each other, but they were ignored, for none of us could hear above that howling wind. Finally we got the boat out of the water and pushed it up the beach, rolling it along logs. This was backbreaking work and we were all exhausted and looked like drowned rats by the time the boat was safe and secure, high on the beach.

      Ever after that, we always brought the boat right out of the water. We never left it moored out again.

      One day, late in November the owner of the Island came to visit just to see how we were getting on. As we all sat in the shack, huddled around the heater, he told us of the many people who were interested in Oak Island, and how anxious they were to get permission to work on the island. We felt very lucky indeed to be the chosen ones. Without mentioning names, he also told us that a party from the West Coast was very eager to come treasure hunting, but the trouble was, this group wanted a three-year contract and that was not acceptable to Mr. Chappell. Silently, we were thankful.

      The lobster season opened December 1st. We hadn’t seen any boats around for a long time because of the bad weather. Now everything was calm and clear as if the weather were behaving itself to give the fishermen a break. December 1st came on Sunday that year, so the season couldn’t open until Monday. The official opening time was set for 10:00 a.m. It was just as if a gun had been fired. Precisely at 10:00 on the dot, boats scooted out from the mainland in all directions — big boats, little boats, all piled high with lobster pots. They raced one another for locations, and jockeyed for position along the way. Some dropped their pots around the islands near shore and some on the shoals in between, while others headed further out to sea. One fellow we knew screamed and waved “Hello” as he shot by, while we stood on the beach, amazed by all the commotion.

      For a few days activity was hectic. Boats were chugging around the bay from early morning to sunset, and sometimes in the middle of the night. We often speculated about those midnight runs, wondering Who was taking Who’s lobsters. By the end of the first week the new enthusiasts had dropped out and only the regular fishermen remained. It was again raw and wet, and lobstering is a cold, miserable job.

      It was getting close to Christmas and I was anxious to get home to our other son, Ricky. On this initial move to the island, we had left him with my daughter and her family so that he wouldn’t miss school. I was also homesick for people, lights, noise, anything but this deadly quiet. I tried to talk the others into leaving with me and coming back in the spring, figuring that once I got them off the island, that would be the end of this idiotic business, but they wouldn’t hear of it. We knew that we couldn’t leave our possessions on the island for there wouldn’t be a thing left when we got back. We already had a hoist and motors set up at the pit head. They would be extremely attractive to looters. The shack was livable, so Bob decided that he and Bobby could manage on the island for the winter and get some work done. [In December 1959, Chappell wrote Dad advising that he would extend Dad’s original three-month contract on the island for all of 1960.]

      So it was settled. My husband would take me back home and Bobby would stay behind to look after things until his dad returned. Our eighteen-year-old son lived alone on the island for five weeks.

      Back in Hamilton, Bob collected more equipment and left for Nova Scotia at the end of January. I wondered how long it would be before they would miss me. Who would do the dishes, make the beds, do the cooking? How long before the loneliness would get on their nerves? I think I was the one who was lonely. I heard over the radio of the terrible winter Nova Scotia was having and I expected to hear any day that they were on their way home. But still they stayed. By the end of March I knew that they were determined to carry on with their treasure hunt.

      Adjusting to life on an island wasn’t difficult only for Mom; it presented challenges for Dad and Bobby too. Almost everything that had to be done was done by them. They built, maintained, and repaired equipment. They dug, they chopped, they heaved, and they hauled, side by side.

      For Dad, there was much more to Oak Island than recovering gold or jewels. Of equal importance to him was discovering precisely how the treasure had been put down and how those who buried it had planned to bring it up. Dad and Bobby were determined to recover the treasure in such a way as to preserve the magnificent underground systems that for so long had confounded every recovery effort. After all, how could Oak Island become the Eighth Wonder of the World if evidence of this extraordinary engineering feat was destroyed in the lust for gold?

      Before they’d arrived on the island, Dad had read countless articles and books on Oak Island. He knew the Money Pit as it would have been before anyone dug into it and discovered its first secrets. He also knew that little of the original work remained. Many years before, each layer of earth and logs in the Money Pit had been removed to see what lay beneath. Now the island was riddled with shafts, holes, and tunnels created not only by those who buried the treasure but also by the succession of treasure hunters who had sought to recover it.

      In October, when Bobby and Dad set to work, there

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