Treasure Stories

Treasure Books

Ships & Coins

My Compass Points to Treasure

$45.00 free shipping in US

 

My Compass Points to Treasure 5 1/2" X 8" 148 pages 1955 first edition by Harry E. Rieseberg

Excellent condition for a 55 year old rare first edition treasure hunting adventure

The book is like new with minor shelf damage to the DJ

 

Rieseberg leads to the adventure with his love for the basic tool of sailors--------" A nautical chart is a wonderfully satisfying thing to a man. The paper is full-bodied to the fingers. The size allows ample room for work, the symbols have a cryptic heraldry that appeals to the masculine flair-for pageantry and mysticism. The buoys and beacons plotted along its shore lines are reassuring landmarks from which to make a departure. And across the expanse of the chart is the clear white paper on which to lay down that completely individual line: the course to be steered. , . . North lay over my shoulder, South was ahead.

 So begins a rousing adventure yarn, with the added spice of it-really-happened.

 On board the Cholita, Harry Rieseberg sailed the Caribbean, looking for Spanish gold, seeking the exact locations of the lost treasure ships. Working from old maps' he made careful calculations on his new charts. Sometimes the ships were easily reached; sometimes there were natural barriers but not until he had descended to the ocean’s floor' could he tell what dangers, what obstacles, would stand in his way. He tells of the treasures he lost and the treasures he won and of two strange adventures on land in the steaming jungle with a gold-mad killer, the other on a lonely, ghost-ridden beach on a moonlit night.

And always there was the lure of adventure and treasure, until the last furious storm when the Cholita foundered on a reef and was lost forever.

Excerpts from the book lure of buried treasure pg 53----

I curled up on my bedroll within the canvas flaps of my tent, my perspiration-soaked garments clammy in the heavy air. Then I sat up and mopped my brow. I could hear vague sounds of the trees as they muttered among themselves. And I thought of the soucoayan a combination of vampire, medieval succubus, and skin-changer. Loathsome enough are the big vampire bats of Trinidad caves, but the soucoayan is far more repulsive and deadly, for a pact with the devil has given this lost soul the power to strip off its skin and exercise all sorts of powers and appearances.

The creature sheds its skin at midnight, hides the human exterior under a stone, and penetrates the home of its victim, fastens itself to the unfortunate's body, and greedily sucks his heart's blood.

There are only three protections: a scattering of rice about the floor, a chalk mark about the bed, or, best of the three, the hidden skin, if found, should be sprinkled plentifully with salt which causes great pain to the soucoayan when it resumes its human form.

Carefully I took my gun from my holster and laid it across my----

Excerpts from the book gold that challenged freedom pg 97-

I pointed to the sling. "Lani, there's a content value close to thirty thousand dollars. Don't you think that's pretty good pay for five days' work? "

"Si, sir" he laughed. "Good pay."

Still, $30,000 dollars was peanuts alongside the millions known to have been in the San Pedro de Alcantara. We had found some ship, but I questioned that it was the Spanish frigate, for I had expected to locate a sizable hulk, not fragments of one. True, the flagship had blown up but even a great explosion should have left the bow and stern castle intact and an oak-ribbed hull would have broken amidships before the ends were sundered.

 My final judgment was that the remains I found were not from the San Pedro de Alcantara, but from some other ill-fated craft whose history quietly gathers dust in a forgotten archive.