Shad lives in the small town of Ship’s Cove, where he and his friends are enjoying the last few weeks of their summer vacation. Everyone is listening to the weather reports throughout the week, watching the progress of a hurricane up the coast toward Nova Scotia. On Gull Island, the Crawleys are continuing their work to excavate a hidden pirate treasure that has been lost for a century in caverns flooded with seawater under the rocks. Something strange is going on in Ship’s Cove, including boats that mysteriously disappear, a makeshift dock that is being built on a secluded beach, and Shad and his friends are on the lookout for a gang of smugglers. When a tourist arrives asking questions, Shad is suspicious, but agrees to take a group of tourists out to Gull Island to see the Money Pit, a 100-foot shaft that the pirates dug to reach the caverns below.

I loved this old-fashioned story! Shad and his friends, Michael and Willie, are ready for adventure, poking their noses into every nook and cranny around the cove, and keeping a weather eye out to sea. They are spunky and rambunctious, good-hearted and brave.
The only thing that bothered me was that Shad is dismissive of his sister and other women in the book, and the ladies don’t play any major role in the story. Why couldn’t the sister have gone smuggler-hunting too? Why don’t they include her in their treasure hunts? The women are portrayed as being helpless, and mostly stay in the kitchen. Shad and the other men are respectful and polite to the ladies, but they don’t include them in the action. Ah well, it’s old-fashioned.

I liked the writing style, and the suspense in the plot. There are a lot of minor mysteries and strange events that all add up to the big adventure surrounding the hurricane. I loved how all the separate mysteries resolved together into the conclusion.