The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh Read online

  In the heyday of the 1850s California Gold Rush, steamships and clipper ships sailed to Northern California from all over the world. New Englanders financed trips down the East Coast, through the Isthmus of León in Panama, then up the Pacific Coast via the Pacific Coast Railway, to search for their fortunes. Next to the determined Yanks were the Australians, who sent numerous ships across the Pacific via the Sandwich Islands and Tahiti. An Australian Clipper, the Sally Mae, was one of the largest and most beautiful ships of its kind.

  Having already made three successful round-trip voyages from 1855 to 1857, the Sally Mae set sail from San Francisco’s Golden Gate on August 22, 1857, for the return voyage to Perth. Aboard were 300 passengers and an estimated $1.2 million in gold ingots and coins. The skies were clear and the sea as calm as a lake. A day’s journey southwest, however, disaster struck. A storm of unheralded magnitude barreled toward the southern coast of California on August 23, 1857. The Sally Mae was tragically sunk. Most of the passengers survived and found their way in lifeboats to the area currently known as Baja, California. However, the ship and all the gold aboard disappeared in the deep. Numerous attempts were made in the early twentieth century to find and salvage the Sally Mae, but the shipwreck eluded discovery, though eyewitnesses’ reports had narrowed the possible location of the wreck to an area roughly ten miles west of the Southern Californian town of La Toya.

  After World War I, interest in the Sally Mae all but disappeared. Then in 1989, the ocean engineer Tommy Thompson successfully recovered gold with an estimated worth of over $1 billion aboard the S.S. Central America, a Gold Rush steamship sunk off the South Carolina coast. Like the bounty found on the S.S. Central America, the gold aboard the Sally Mae is estimated to have a value today of more than $1 billion.

  This caused a resurgence of interest in finding the Sally Mae using newer deep-diving technology. The Australian government financed a series of expeditions, but they were unsuccessful. Experts believe the Sally Mae rests somewhere deeper and farther offshore than previously imagined, somewhere potentially impossible to reach.

  “Gold?” Grace squeaked.

  “Yeah, mondo gold,” Alfie replied.

  “What’s an ingot?” Grace asked.

  “It’s a solid bar of gold,” Alfie explained. “Like a brick of money. Cool, huh?”

  “Wow. Cool.” Grace felt as if she had suddenly discovered that her favorite aunt was actually the President of the United States, or that Santa Claus not only was real, but had superpowers like a Marvel hero as well. Grace tried to remember the rooms she had seen in the Sally Mae. She certainly hadn’t seen any gold, but she had only looked in the windows and there was still a lot of ship she hadn’t explored. “Does it say anything in your book about a fire on the Sally Mae?”

  “No,” Alfie said, startled. “That’s a weird question. Why do you ask?”

  Grace shrugged. “I dunno. It just seemed like the kind of thing that might sink a ship in a storm.”

  “Well, usually torrential rain, wind, and surging seas sink ships in storms.”

  Grace forced a laugh. “Yeah. What do I know? You’re the shipwreck guy.”

  Alfie sighed. “My dad used to say that someday we would find the Sally Mae together, and he’d never have to work again because the gold would be ours. He’d say, ‘We’ll spend the rest of our days happy, lazy, fat, and rich.’” Alfie’s eyes filled with sudden tears, and he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “That was before my mom left us for her ‘new and improved’ life in New York. After she left, Dad started working all the time and never talked about the Sally Mae again.”

  Grace scooted closer to Alfie on the bed, putting her arm around his shoulders. “I’m really sorry about your mom, Alf. Do you ever get to see her?”

  “She flies out every couple of weeks, and I go to New York every summer and most school vacations, but I hate it there.”

  “Why?”

  “My mom has this whole new family. I’ve got two little half-sisters who are real brats. Milo, my jerky-jock of a stepfather—I call him Coach—spoils them rotten. When I visit, Coach tries to get me to do all this sports stuff with him. You know how I feel about sports. I suck at them.” Alfie lifted his glasses and wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.

  “Maybe you should say something to somebody,” offered Grace.

  “Nah. I don’t wanna hurt my mom’s feelings, and if I say anything to my dad, he’ll start World War III with her and I’ll never see her again.” Alfie’s mouth trembled, and he looked down at Seafaring Legends of California, open in his lap to the painting of the Sally Mae under sail.

  “It would be awesome if I could find the Sally Mae,” he said wistfully. “Even if I didn’t get to keep the gold, I bet they’d put my picture in the paper and give me some kind of reward. My parents would be so impressed, and Coach might stop thinking I’m a total loser.” Alfie sniffed. “But who am I kidding? I have as much chance of discovering the Sally Mae as a warthog has of winning a beauty contest.”

  Grace couldn’t stand to see her new friend so unhappy. “Hey, what else is in that book?” she asked, trying to distract him. “Any other cool boats?”

  “Nothing as cool as the Sally Mae.” Alfie closed the book and put it on his bedside table. “Grace, I’m sorry, but I’m feeling kinda tired. Maybe you should go home.”

  “You promised to show me your collection of decomposing beetle carcasses, remember?” Grace coaxed, hoping she might be able to cheer him up.

  “Maybe some other time,” Alfie muttered. “I think I’m going to lie down for a while, if that’s okay.”

  “Um, sure,” Grace replied. “No problem.” She slid off the bed and grabbed her backpack. When she turned to say goodbye, Alfie had already curled up on his side, his arms hugging his body, and his eyes tightly shut. His glasses rested on top of the discarded Seafaring Legends of California.

  Grace tied her sweatshirt around her waist and hoisted her backpack on her shoulders. “See ya tomorrow,” she whispered.

  No response. Alfie was definitely in a deep stew.

  Why couldn’t grown-ups stay happily together forever after, like they promised when they got married? Grace wondered as she walked home. Her own parents seemed to be getting testier and testier by the day. They had always bickered about silly stuff, like what to have for dinner, who was going to fold the laundry, and why the oil hadn’t been changed in the car, but now it felt like there was some other secret, some off-limits grown-up reason that was causing her parents to be even more disagreeable with each other than usual. Still, Grace couldn’t imagine them ever splitting up.

  Life sort of sucks for Alfie right now, she thought. Grace felt a twinge of guilt for not telling Alfie about the wreck, which had become a regular destination in her predawn swims. She’d made almost-friends with Ollie Octopus, and make-believe friends with the mermaid figure on the front of the ship. But mostly she liked going to the Sally Mae to examine her beautiful mer-self in the full-length mirror. No, there was no way to tell Alfie about the wreck without revealing her mermaid-hood, and despite Mrs. S.’s words about Alfie accepting Grace “fish scales and all,” it still felt like too bizarre a thing to share even with her new best friend.

  Chapter Eighteen: Operation Sally Mae

  Worried for Alfie, Grace was distracted during dinner and gobbled her lasagna at warp-speed, while her father gabbed on and on about a new hobby. Every so often, between musings of how she might cheer Alfie up, Grace caught snippets of her family’s conversation.

  “So I’ve got all the gear,” said Walter. “Now I just have to start the lessons and get certified.”

  “I just hope you get over your skittishness once you start,” Minerva muttered under her breath.

  “Will you be able to touch fishies, Daddy?” asked Stuey brightly.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Grace asked, suddenly alert
.

  “I’ve decided to take up scuba-diving, Gracie,” declared Walter. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve just been saying? Our trip to the DIP got my juices running. I bought all the apparatus today. The mask, the tanks, the flippers, wetsuit—the whole works. I’ve signed up for an eight-week course with Sasha at Scuba Safari.”

  “Might’ve been smarter to rent,” Minerva muttered again. “All that stuff costs a fortune.”

  Grace’s jaw dropped open. “You’re kidding, Dad,” she gasped. “You? Scuba diving?”

  “What’s so surprising about my learning how to scuba dive?” Walter asked.

  “For one, you hate to swim,” said Grace.

  “Exactly,” sighed Minerva.

  Walter shot Minerva a look and then said to Grace, “Well, granted, swimming hasn’t been my favorite activity, but it’s ridiculous to have that beautiful ocean at my doorstep and not explore it. So I’ve decided to face my aquatic fears and take the plunge.”

  It was bad enough worrying about encountering a beach-jogging mother when sneaking out for her early morning swims; now Grace had to worry about Jacques Cous-dad.

  “How about beginning with lessons in a pool?” Grace asked. “Isn’t going right into the Pacific a bit extreme for someone who can barely dog-paddle?”

  “I’m not that bad, Grace. I just haven’t done much swimming in a long, long time. Sasha says I’ll be swimming comfortably in two weeks, and I’ll be underwater by the end of next month.”

  Next month. At least Grace wouldn’t have to worry about running into her dad underwater for a little while.

  After dinner, Grace’s thoughts returned again to Alfie. There just had to be a way to get Alfie to the Sally Mae. In the meantime, she had to at least offer him some hope. He answered on the tenth ring.

  “Hi, Alfie,” Grace said. “What would you say if I told you I had an idea about where the Sally Mae was?”

  “Grace, you don’t have to play fantasy games with me,” Alfie replied with a sigh. “I know the only place I’m ever gonna see the Sally Mae is in my book.”

  “Honest, Alfie, what if I could take you right to the shipwreck of the Sally Mae?”

  There was a long pause before Alfie whispered, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “Alf, I wouldn’t kid you about something like this.”

  “But how could we find it? The entire oceanography department of the university hasn’t found it. The coast guard hasn’t found it. The navy hasn’t found it. Even that guy, Tommy Thompson, who found the S.S. Central America couldn’t find it. How can a couple of sixth graders find it?”

  They can find it if one of them is a mermaid, Grace thought. “I was on this boat the other day with my father and one of his friends,” she lied. “A marine biologist from the university.”

  “So?” said Alfie.

  “Well, I saw this piece of wood floating on the water, and it had the name Sally painted on it. I didn’t think anything of it until you showed me that picture in your book this afternoon.”

  There was complete silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Alf? Are you there?” Grace asked.

  “Where was this bit of wood?” he asked at last.

  “About ten miles out. My dad and his friend were busy looking at a barnacle or something, so I grabbed it. I have it in my room. I can show it to you on Monday and you can see what you think.”

  “Whoa. This is heavy,” Alfie murmured.

  “So that’s why I have a hunch about the Sally Mae, and when I get a hunch I’m usually dead on. I think we should go for it! What do you say, Alfie?”

  “Okay. You’re on!” Alfie said, excited.

  Whoa, thought Grace. Careful what you wish for. She didn’t know whether to scream in despair or jump for joy when Alfie agreed. “Okay, then,” she said, thinking quickly. “I’m...ah…gonna need some time over the weekend to figure this out, so don’t get too amped up yet.”

  “Whatever you say, oh fearless leader. Your wish is my command.”

  “Seriously, Alfie, we’ve got to keep this top-secret. You tell anyone about it, you’re in deep doo-doo,” Grace said sternly.

  “You’re the boss. See you Monday, mon capitan!” Alfie shouted.

  Grace could hear the sound of bedsprings squeaking on the other end of the line. She smiled, imagining her buddy jumping up and down on his bed like an overjoyed orangutan. Now there was no choice. Operation Sally Mae had just begun.

  Chapter Nineteen: Yo-ho-ho?

  Grace felt queasy and exhausted after a fitful night of sleep, filled with dreams she couldn’t quite remember. Being Saturday, everyone would be sleeping late, which would give Grace time to explore the Sally Mae and retrieve something to show Alfie. Then they could plan Alfie’s long-awaited quest for shipwreck-and-sunken-treasure glory. In spite of her groggy, foggy head, Grace dragged herself out of bed. As she tiptoed through the living room, she heard the distinct sound of snoring. Peeking over the top of the red velvet sofa, she found her father sleeping in a twisted and excruciatingly uncomfortable-looking position. Walter only ever slept on the couch when Minerva had a head cold and kept him awake with her hacking cough. But Minerva had been perfectly healthy. So why was Walter sleeping on the couch?

  I can’t worry about what’s going on with my parents now, she decided. Right now, she had to get to the Sally Mae.

  By five a.m. Grace was deep in the belly of the Sally Mae, scouring the place for something definitively Sally Mae-ish. Broken beams and buttresses, dripping with algae beards, lined the halls. The splintered portholes and rotted floorboards were speckled with tiny barnacles, sea urchins, and little pecking shrimp. Grace swam through the galley where hanging pots were coated with layers of fuzzy slime. She swam through three other rooms off the central passageway, opening desks and cabinet doors that disintegrated the moment she touched them. In a long narrow room—which must have been the crew’s quarters—she edged her way among shredded hammocks, which turned to powder when she brushed up against them. In staterooms she searched under beds, dressers, and desks, behind old corroded machinery parts, and beneath fallen doors. Finally, in a cabinet she came across a small, broken box stamped with the letters S LLY E amid a crowd of limpets.

  “Better than nothing,” Grace sighed as she plucked the limpets off and laid them on another piece of wood. “Sorry, guys. But here’s a nice new home for you. I’m sure you’ll be very happy.”

  Grace held the box under one arm as she searched for the bigger prize—the gold. In one room, she found a hatch in the floor. Yanking the hatch open, she peered through water that was as dark as a vat of black ink. She couldn’t see a thing and didn’t feel terribly enthusiastic about swimming down into the dark, but how else was she to find the gold? And certainly, if the ship still contained gold bars, they must have been kept deep in the belly of the ship. Steeling her nerves, Grace deposited the box carefully on the floorboards beside the open hatch, flipped her tail, and plunged downward.

  After a few seconds, Grace’s vision adjusted slightly, and she could see a storage room with huge wooden chests heaped in piles. Eureka! The gold! she thought.

  Her heart racing with excitement, Grace examined each and every wrecked and battered chest. There were plenty of chests, but there wasn’t plenty of gold. In fact, there was no gold. Not a single coin or ingot in sight. Maybe the chests had been torn apart during the storm that sank the Sally Mae in 1857. But what had happened to the missing gold, Grace wondered as she swam back through the hatch to the upper floor. Could gold rust away like the old mattress springs left underwater too long? Or did someone steal it? And when over the last hundred-plus years could it have been taken? Could that much gold be moved, with nobody knowing a thing about it?

  Grace swam back to the bedroom, placed the S LLY E box on the desk, and settled in front of the mirror.

&n
bsp; “Okay, me,” she said to her reflection. “Since I have no one else to brainstorm with, you’re the stand-in. And since I’m not really used to looking like you, I can pretend you’re someone else, or maybe a better, smarter version of myself.”

  Okay, I’m officially crazy, thought Grace. But who cares? “So, mermaid-self, is Alfie still gonna be interested in the Sally Mae now that there’s no treasure? And if he is, how do I get him down here without showing him...you?”

  Grace’s reflection stared back at her in all its pop-eyed, gill-necked, fishtailed glory.

  “Yeah.” Grace nodded at herself in the mirror. “I’m talking about you, you fishy freak.”

  Grace swam down the hallway, absently running her fingers across the barnacle-ridged paneling. She thought and thought and thought some more, until a few ideas began to percolate in her stressed-out, frustrated brain. Returning to the cabin mirror, she resumed her conversation with her reflection.

  “Alfie and I will come out here in some kind of boat. He’ll stay up top. I’ll dive alone and bring Sally Mae artifacts up for Alfie to go crazy over. I can use Dad’s new scuba equipment…Well, pretend to use it, actually. I’ll take the stuff off as soon as I’m out of Alfie’s sight and then book it down here in mermaid-mode. Alfie’s gonna have to stay in the boat, and if he’s not cool with that, then the whole operation is off. Finito. End of story.”

  Grace paused and watched herself think.

  “Okay, so I still need a boat, and a way to borrow the equipment from Dad. Without telling him.”

  It wasn’t exactly a stellar plan, but it was a start. Grace picked up the S LLY E box and caught a glance of herself in the mirror—caught in the act of artifact stealing! Grace imagined a camera clicking. Snap. Her very own underwater mug shot.

  “Grace Minnaugh, mer-felon,” she sighed. “Sentenced to a life of weirdness and deception.”

  Chapter Twenty: Worm Wars

  Monday morning couldn’t arrive soon enough. After a weekend of hard thinking and much worrying about Operation Sally Mae, Grace was bone-tired. She wanted nothing more than to just sit at her school desk and blindly follow instructions, at least until she and Alfie talked about the shipwreck over lunch. Luckily, her school day began with science class, which fit nicely with her save-the-best-for-first rule.