Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) by Wayne Stinnett Page A

this is a riddle, all right,” Tony said. “And Jimmy was right—this is Castilian Spanish, but written in sort of a medieval way, maybe. I think it says, ‘After the mist, the diffident tempest traversed the isthmus and surrounded us and now the restless woman now sleeps. Her consignment suppressed outside the prodigious mainstay eighty forceful advances absent from trade. September twenty-third, 1566.’”
    “No,” Chyrel said. “The computer says descansa means rests, not sleeps.”
    “You sure?” Tony asked. “Not really much difference.”
    “In a riddle,” Charlie said as she came across the clearing, “a subtle difference in wording is huge. Rests means to cease being active, but sleep is the suspension of consciousness. Mind if I have a look?”
    “I’m lousy at riddles,” I said and handed Charlie the translation.
    “Hmmm,” she muttered. “Did you notice that the two words near the end of the first sentence in the Spanish text start with uppercase letters, while the rest of it is normal?”
    “Huh,” Tony and Chyrel said in unison.
    “Is that important?” Tony asked.
    “It does if it’s intentional. The writer of a riddle usually does everything intentionally. Makes me think that the M and I might be initials, or Mujer Inquieta is a title, or maybe a name, not just an adjective and noun.”
    “Chyrel,” Doc said. “Do you think you can find—”
    Chyrel interrupted him, saying, “A list of possible Spanish shipwreck locations in September, 1566?”
    Doc grinned. “You don’t think they kept really accurate GPS records back then? No, I was thinking a list of names of ships that never arrived in Spain? Maybe one about this time with the initials M I?”
    “No,” she replied, smiling. “No GPS back then. But they kept very accurate lists of ship departures and arrivals. Most Spanish ships going up through the Windward Passage, which we now call the Gulf Stream, were treasure ships headed to Spain. Coming from Spain they used the equatorial route following the trade winds and carried commercial goods to their outposts in the Caribbean.”
    “Trade?” I asked. “Absent from trade?”
    “Hah!” Charlie exclaimed. “He used synonyms. Absent could be away from. As in the opposite way of the trade winds.”
    I gave that a thought. “The trade winds for the northern route to Spain obviously blow toward the east, so he meant west?”
    “How long would it take a Spanish treasure galleon to sail from Havana to wherever the coconut was found?” Chyrel asked.
    “It was found on Elbow Cay, in the Abacos,” Doc said.
    “Ships in those days followed landmarks as much as they could, staying close to shore,” I said. “They’d stay in deeper water once out of sight of land, and they probably didn’t travel more than a hundred miles a day. Chyrel, calculate the distance from Havana to Key West, then along the Keys and east coast up to the northern Bahamas. That could give us a departure date.”
    She headed back inside to her computer. “Okay,” I said. “What’s that give us?”
    Charlie pondered the translation. “After the mist, the diffident tempest traversed the isthmus and surrounded us.” She thought it over then said, “Mist could be fog. A diffident tempest, maybe a backward storm?”
    “A backward storm?” I asked. “No storm in the northern hemisphere circulates backward.”
    “No,” Doc said, getting excited. “But sometimes a hurricane will move east instead of west. Usually in September hurricanes form in the eastern Atlantic, but now and then one will form in the Gulf of Mexico and cross Florida into the Atlantic.”
    “Traversed the isthmus!” Charlie said. “Crossed Florida.”
    “Okay,” I said. “So, after a fog, a hurricane crossed Florida and passed them. Probably to the north, which caused them to sail south to get away from it. That would make sense as to why they wrecked in the Bahamas. If it circled them, it could have caught them in open