Decorative Hardware

 I followed the directions on the old tattered map precisely for 7 years now.  I’ve been trying to locate this particular treasure without much luck, but today was different, for I’m quite sure that I finally mastered decoding the text which was written in an effort to confuse anyone that happened to find it.  A Spanish ship carrying gold and silver bullion was sent to the New World by orders of the King about the middle of the 16th century, but was suddenly pirated and sunk when it neared the Virgin islands.  The murdering thieves managed to extract some of the ships precious cargo taking it to a nearby island before they were brought to justice and executed on the same island.

Because the island was so flat, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the pirates would have hidden the treasure as high up as possible, thus protecting it from high tides and ocean storms.  Hidden in a thick jungle on a small knob I found a very crude and worn out structure that looked like had been made of old planks from possibly a ships deck.  The exterior door had a rusty old but strong surface bolt that I managed to break after several tries.  There it was, the pirates ill-gotten treasure!  The chests were marked with a forbidding skull that was used as a warning of the consequenses to anyone that would even think of taking them.  Warning or not, they were now mine!