The Silver Dollar Eyes: Was One of Them Dated 1804?

The Silver Dollar Eyes is an action-adventure story in the old tradition: hidden treasure, rival claimants, hand-to-hand combat, oriental intrigue, conniving schemers and native head hunters, all involved in a perilous journey through the most primitive islands in the world. Several years after the end of World War II in the pacific, a San Francisco travel writer is assigned to a bizarre search in Dutch New Guinea: find a remote native temple said to have scores of human skulls with silver dollars embedded in the eye sockets. An ex-GI who stole into the temple in 1945 swears that some of the dollars were dated 1804, the most valuable rare coin date in the world! As news of his mission leaks out, the writer is mugged, slugged, drugged, and duped as other adventurers join in the race to reach the Temple of Skulls before it is engulfed in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption. Albin Roman is retired from the Army as a civilian Public Affairs Officer. As a member of an Amphibian Engineer unit, he visited many remote villages along New Guinea's 1600-mile coast.