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

the point in the diagram where the actual bow frames had been found. She had drawn the ship’s hull parallel to a line constructed direct from those bow artifacts. The line ran back to the riverbank, almost perpendicular to the river, and with the proposed stern of the wreck about thirty yards from the water.
    “What’s the small x mark to the right between the bow section and the farmhouse?” Frank asked.
    “I thought that would be a good spot for the sifting screen and the excavated soil pile.”
    “OK by me. That will probably become a pretty good sized hill before we’re through.”
    She had drawn a grid precisely over the hull. The hull itself was an oval with three large black dots for the suggested mast locations. Placed on the grid were a series of proposed test pit locations measured out from the datum point marked in the center of the outline. These suggested pits corresponded to Maggie’s stakes in the actual site.
    “I’ll run you through it,” she said. “There are twenty-six test pits in my plan. They are located three across at different sections running down the hull and I have placed them ten feet apart going across and ten feet apart going lengthwise. There is a letter code identifying each one, so the first is A and the last is Z. The letter codes start A at near the top of the grid at the bow area and end up Z near the bottom of the grid at the stern area. I surmised three mast locations and labeled their test pits H for the foremast, N for the mainmast and T for the mizzenmast. So,” she said, “you start at the port side of the bow with a test pit marked A, then go to the right ten feet. That is test pit B, the original discovery location, right where Mr. Spyder destroyed that piece of stem wood. Go ten feet to the right of that and that is test pit C. You can see how the letters run down the wreck, for example, the crew area begins near test pits D to F, the cargo area runs G to I and down the ship to S to V.”
    “The whole center of the ship,” said the Pastor.
    “Yes,” she answered, “and the Captain’s quarters in the stern near the river would be S across to U and back down to test pit Z.”
    She pointed out to the site, “Each stake out here corresponds to the center of the test pit location on the grid.”
    “Looks like a good search pattern,” said Frank. “The ship’s beam could be anywhere from twenty to thirty feet at her widest points of sheer and chines. You’ve set the centers of the pits at ten feet. The pits themselves will be staked in their corners and could go out further to allow for collapse of the old hull sides outward. You’re assuming that there will be artifact scatter outward from the hull.”
    She nodded.
    “Which pit do we search first?” asked the Pastor.
    Maggie looked at Frank hesitatingly.
    “Come on, Maggie. You call it. You’ve studied the site,” said Frank.
    “OK. We only have a short time.”
    “Jake Terment is talking two days,” said Frank.
    Maggie looked at him. “Do you really think we can do a good job in two days?”
    “We can try,” said Frank.
    The Pastor raised his hand. “Let me understand,” he said. “We search this site for two days. Then you decide whether they can pour concrete on it and destroy it forever?”
    “That’s about it,” said Frank. “If we decide that they should hold up the construction any further we better have some good arguments. There’s usually a lot of jobs and money at stake. People have to be convinced that there’s something here worth all the fuss.”
    “Terment Company made a deal with my office and the other state officials when this artifact was discovered. They agreed that to leave the decision to an independent consultant, that’s you, Doctor Light. Doctor Light does his reconnaissance, tests a few pits, makes a decision what’s here or isn’t here and makes a recommendation. What Jake Terment wants is a recommendation from Doctor Light that there is nothing here worth