Kraken had fixed the location of the sunken device by lining up a blasted tree above Silverdale with a chimney pipe atop a manor house beyond it and away to the northeast. Fred walked along a line defined by the tree and the chimney pipe until he was very near dead center on yet another pair of conspicuous points, the spire-like pinnacle of a high rock atop Humphrey Head, and a stone tower on a hill off in the distance toward Flookburgh. He gestured the wagon forward, stopping it a few short feet from the edge of what turned out to be a broad pool of quicksand.“This is what we call ‘Placer’s Pool,’ hereabouts,” Fred told us. “It’s always quick, never solid. A man named Placer and his bride went down into it in a coach and four, with their worldly goods, because they were in a flaming hurry and didn’t bother to hire a pilot, but left it up to the driver to find a way. The fool found it right enough, but it wasn’t the way they had in mind. If your man was bound from the shore opposite to Humphrey head, then…”
