BLACKBEARD'S LOOT-THE DEVIL'S HAND-BOOK TWO

The hunt is on again — and this time, its dangerous.

A year ago, four friends in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, pried open a locked wooden box carved with three letters: E.T.B. Inside was no gold — just a skeleton key, a rolled cloth map, and a second clue pointing them onward: Behind Marstins Stone.

Now its the summer of 1968, and Jake, Tommy, Ben, and Will are done waiting. The clue leads them to a gnarled old live oak the locals call the Devils Hand — and under it, their spades turn up an iron dispatch box sealed with a four-leaf clover lock. Whats inside isnt treasure either. Its a journal, an ivory-scaled octant, and directions to somewhere far older and far better hidden: the Overseers Mill, sealed under granite ballast stone, thirty rods south of the brick tidal gate.

They cant do it on bicycles anymore. So they take the biggest risk of the whole hunt — they tell somebody. Wills brother David is home from Vietnam, carrying a wooden leg and a soldiers clear eyes, and after he holds the box in his own hands, he believes them. Now the boys have a truck, a grown man on their side, and a plan.

Theyre going to need all three. Because Mr. Whitaker — the teacher who shadowed them all last summer, who has hunted this treasure longer than the boys have been alive — is done watching from a distance. This summer, he means to take it from them, and he doesnt care who gets hurt.

Blackbeards Loot: The Devils Hand is Book Two of one long treasure hunt, told in Jakes own voice. The iron chest is still out there. The boys finally know where it sleeps. Now they just have to get inside the mill — before Whitaker does.