Slave Graves (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 1) by Thomas Hollyday Read Free Book Online Page A

traders found in the Chesapeake Bay. It would be a wonderful find.”
    He looked at them. “Remember that Jake said it was just an old wheat schooner, beached up here in the marsh, left to rot. Let’s not get too excited yet. According to him, she sank and disappeared, maybe less than a hundred years ago. He’s probably right because it’s his land. He would likely have heard any stories or legends of any shipwreck being here any earlier. I mean, his family settled this farm, didn’t they, back in the colonial period?”
    “Yes, but he wants us out of here too. I wouldn’t rely on him being too truthful,” said Maggie.
    “Did you find any written records?”
    “I did a quick search at the library here in River Sunday and in Baltimore. There’s nothing that I could find concerning any wrecks on this part of the river. There’s mention of a tobacco dock here in the early days but the loading place was moved to the Terment family plantation on the other side of Allingham Island. The loading areas were changed often in these rivers because of the silting. The rivers became too shallow to navigate.”
    Frank drew with his finger in the earth. “Whatever her date, early or late, her bowsprit or any bow timbers will be out here beyond the stem that the bulldozer unearthed.”
    He put in the lines. “Here. The stem and the bowsprit.” He looked toward the river. “We have to figure out how long she was. Maggie, what was the size of hull you used for your grid?”
    “I estimated eighty feet, figured a line perpendicular to the riverbank and set my datum mark, my center measure, at forty feet from here toward the river.”
    “That’s a good approach. At eighty feet she could have been either a large local schooner, built in the last century, or a three-masted colonial trader.”
    Maggie continued, “Then I set up the rest of my measurements from that datum point. I thought it made the most sense to do all my measurements to the points where I guessed parts of the ship might be buried. I used a benchmark from the bridge construction for my elevations and marked the stakes.”
    “OK.”
    “I set up pit locations for excavation just like in your book, Doctor Light. Just like we did in the summer school. I like your system for a job like this. We can move from part to part of the ship if we begin to get some clues or find anything. I started two probes and then I had to worry about the surface water. When you folks drove up, the Pastor and I were getting the pump going.”
    “Wait a minute.” She stood up and walked over to the edge of the cleared section and picked up a large notebook which was resting against a clump of marsh grass. As she walked back toward him, Frank smiled at the light bounce to her step.
    “You always found things faster than any of the other students, Maggie. I figured you worked smarter than the others with a little luck thrown in.” He noticed the small gold Christian cross jouncing on the front of her tee shirt.
    “Still got the cross. Maybe that was it. The source of your luck.”
    “Maybe,” she said, her blue eyes cheerful in the sunlight. “I used to think it was. Some days I still do. You found more than any of us and you didn’t wear any cross. You just had that old hat.” She sat down cross legged in front of him and the Pastor, her bare legs spotted with dried dirt.
    “Here’s the plan I drew up.” In front of them she spread a diagram of the site itself. It was a drawing of a twenty by eighty foot rectangle surrounded on its four sides by the farm property. On the top was the entrance lane and the large cornfield. To the right was the farm house with its outbuildings and the old box gardens. On the bottom of the diagram was the riverbank and the Nanticoke River. To the left was the large hedgerow, the county road and the entrance to the old bridge. In the center, within the rectangle, she had sketched the deck plan of an early trading ship. The ship lines converged on