In the Money Pit area, the team recovers a 30-foot core from borehole F-8.5, spanning 178 to 208 feet with bedrock hit at 205, in an area where previous water tests revealed evidence of gold and silver. Charles Barkhouse detects a metal signal with his pinpointer in the solution channel material, but the hit vanishes when the soil is moved. Gary Drayton sweeps the sample with his Manticore detector and finds nothing, noting that gold dust concentrated in a small spot would register on a pinpointer but disperse beyond his detection threshold when disturbed. The team bags the entire section for lab analysis by Dr. Ian Spooner, who will test the soils for precious metals. Later, Dr. Spooner collects new water samples from previously drilled boreholes across the Money Pit area, assisted by Terry Matheson, to help determine where the highest concentrations of gold and silver are flowing underground. He recovers water containing red rhodamine dye from just 105 feet deep, evidence carried over from dye tests the previous year in which the team injected the tracer 200 feet deep in the solution channel.
In the War Room, Rick and Marty Lagina and Craig Tester meet with the team to review a heat map prepared by Steve Guptill, Emma Culligan, and Jillian, plotting all artifacts found across the island by estimated age. Pink marks represent potential depositor-era finds from 1725 and older, blue marks indicate searcher-era items from the 1800s onward, and orange covers the ambiguous mid-1700s range. The map reveals two primary concentrations of pre-depositor artifacts on Lot 5 and in the Money Pit area, but also highlights a significant cluster on Lot 15, located roughly 200 yards northwest of the Money Pit. The team notes that Lot 15 has produced burned charcoal possibly dating to the 14th century, a Chinese coin potentially over 1,000 years old, and pre-17th-century cannon stoneshot originating in the Azores Islands of Portugal. Gary is assigned to begin fresh detecting on the lot.
On Lot 15, Rick Lagina, Gary Drayton, and Steve Guptill search a field that Billy Gerhardt has plowed with a two-and-a-half-ton tractor and three-bottom plow to bring buried artifacts closer to the surface, a technique Gary adopted from his experience metal detecting on English farmland. Gary recovers a piece of coal that may connect Lot 15 to the believed Portuguese stone road in the swamp, where similar coal was found. He then finds a rosehead spike, a hand-forged iron fastener with a hammered floral head dating to the 16th through 18th centuries, matching rosehead spikes found both on the surface and more than 150 feet deep in the Money Pit area, all dated before 1750. He also recovers a pintle, a gate or door hanger that could have served as a lantern mount in mine shafts. In a separate search on the same lot, Peter Fornetti and Katya Drayton find a large copper button and then unearth a two-piece metal instrument that Peter identifies as a possible compass or navigation tool, noting its potential connection to the precise astronomical alignments of Nolan's Cross.
In the southwest corner of the swamp, Alex Lagina, Peter Fornetti, Billy Gerhardt, and Gary Drayton begin excavating a newly permitted area. They uncover a concentration of rocks and boulders arranged in a linear formation resembling a road, with layers of stone more than one rock thick interspersed with decaying organic matter. Gary detects an ox shoe among the rocks, an unusual design unlike the French and English ox shoes previously found on the island, which he interprets as evidence that draft animals once traveled this route pulling heavy loads. Dr. Ian Spooner examines the feature and confirms the boulders are not naturally in place, identifying the formation as "open work" with air spaces between the stones and no glacial till, meaning the rocks were deliberately moved. He notes the formation is elevated above the surrounding ground and could represent the crude foundation of a road, possibly used to move cargo from the shoreline toward the interior of the island.
Dr. Spooner presents his water sample results to Rick, Marty, Craig, and the team in the War Room. His analysis confirms that precious metals are present in the new samples and that the dye test data indicates water is moving from the solution channel in the south toward monitoring wells near the Garden Shaft in the north. The drilling operations themselves are creating a plunger-like effect, pushing water deep in one area and forcing it upward in another, which explains how metals from the solution channel are being carried to shallower boreholes. Spooner concludes that the source of the gold and silver signatures is deep in the solution channel, validating the team's prevailing theory that treasure from the original Money Pit fell to greater depths when the underground structure collapsed. Marty summarizes that if a great treasure dropped into the solution channel, it explains the metals in the water and why 230 years of searchers failed to find it. Rick notes that despite the Money Pit being investigated for over two centuries, the solution channel remains an under-explored area where the treasure may still lie, and the team resolves to focus their efforts on defining the cavity both quantitatively and qualitatively.
