Arthur froze, unable to tear his eyes away from this find, dredged from the depths of the North Sea. Before him lay a treasure that could change his life forever.
It all began a few hours ago. Aboard the Silver Trace, Arthur was hauling in his nets when a sudden jolt rocked his boat. The winch cables suddenly tightened, creaking under an ominous pressure. Something deep beneath the water held his net with enormous force.
He donned his old wetsuit and dove into the icy water.
Beneath the murky surface, he quickly discovered that the net had become caught on a rocky outcrop. As he tried to free it, the beam of his lamp illuminated a strange figure: an antique diving suit lying in the mud, as if abandoned for decades. Beside him lay a pile of dark stones, embedded with gold.
He slowly filled the sleeves and torso of an old diving suit with the mysterious stones before securing everything in a net. Returning on board, he gazed at his find in amazement.
Convinced he had found sunken treasure, Arthur discreetly covered the suit with a tarp and immediately returned to port.
Arriving home, he moved the suit to his old shed.
The next morning, several stray dogs crowded around the shed, attracted by a strange odor emanating from within. Their noise caught Arthur’s neighbor, Jim’s, attention.
Alarmed, Jim called the police.
A few minutes later, two officers knocked on Arthur’s door. Convinced there might be a corpse in the shed due to the foul odor, they demanded to see what he was hiding.
Arthur showed them the mysterious stones, claiming he had discovered gold on the seabed. But when one of the police officers suggested heating the piece to test its nature, everything changed.
Under the flame of a lighter, the material quickly melted, turning into a black, oily substance that emitted an extremely strong odor.
The police officers, disgusted by the smell, ordered him to get rid of the strange substance before the entire neighborhood started complaining.
Furious and frustrated, Arthur immediately loaded the old suit and the remaining parts onto his boat and threw everything into the sea.
But as soon as the debris hit the water, he noticed something strange: unlike rocks or ore, it hadn’t sunk.
At the port, the same police officers ran up to him. At the police station, the former sailor, hearing their story, immediately realized what Arthur had found.
It was ambergris.
This extremely rare substance, produced by sperm whales and used in luxury perfumes, could be worth millions of euros if found in large quantities. Sailors sometimes call it “floating gold.”
Arthur’s blood ran cold.
He had just thrown a fortune worth millions into the ocean.
Looking confusedly at the dark sea, he realized the ocean had taken back what it had lent him for a few hours.