Atlantis Found Part 37

"No bodies in here," said Northrop, with relief.

"They all died in their cabins," said Pitt. "Probably a combination of hypothermia, starvation, and scurvy."

"Where do we go from here?" c.o.x asked.

Pitt motioned his light through a doorway beyond the dining table. "Just outside, we should find a pa.s.sageway that drops down to the deck below."

"How do you know your way around a two-hundred-year-old ship?"

"I studied drawings and old plans of East Indiaman merchant ships. Though I've never actually seen one until now, I know every nook and cranny by heart."

They dropped down a ladder, slipping on the ice that covered the steps but remaining on their feet. Pitt led them aft, pa.s.sing old cannon that looked as new as they had the day they had left the foundry. The storeroom's door was still open, just as Roxanna and the crew of the Paloverde had left it.

Pitt, antic.i.p.ation surging through his veins, stepped inside and swung his beam around the storeroom.

The packing crates were still stacked from deck to ceiling along the bulkheads, just as they were when last seen in 1858. Two of the wooden crates sat on the deck, their lids pried open. A copper urn was lying on its side behind the door, where it had rolled when the ship was hurriedly abandoned by Mender and his crew as the ice pack began to melt and crack apart.

Pitt knelt and began lifting the objects from the open crates with tender loving care and setting them on the icy deck. In a short time, he had collected not only a menagerie of figurines depicting common animals-dogs, cats, cattle, lions-but also sculptures of creatures he'd never seen before. Some were sculpted from copper; many were bronze. He also found figures of people, mostly females dressed in long robes, with full pleated skirts covering their legs to their strangely booted feet. The intricately grooved hair was long and braided to the waist, and the b.r.e.a.s.t.s were simply formed without exaggerated fullness.

Laid on the bottom of the crates, like chips on a casino c.r.a.ps table, were round copper disks half an inch thick and five inches in diameter. The disks were engraved on both sides with sixty symbols that Pitt recognized as similar to those in the Paradise Mine chamber. The center of the disks revealed hieroglyphs of a man on one side and a woman on the other. The man wore a long pointed hat on his head that was folded over on one side, and a flowing capelike robe over a metal breastplate and a short skirt similar to a Scottish kilt. He sat on a horse that had a single horn protruding from its head, and held a broadsword above his head that was in the act of cutting through the neck of a monstrous lizard with an open mouth full of gaping teeth.

The woman on the opposite side of the disk was dressed the same as the man, but with more ornaments about her body, strings of what looked like seash.e.l.ls and some kind of beads. She was also astride a horse with a horn in the center of the head. Instead of holding a sword, she was thrusting a spear into what Pitt recognized as a saber-toothed tiger, an animal extinct for thousands of years.

Pitt's mind traveled to another time, another place that was vague and nebulous, barely outlined in a gentle mist. As he held the disks in his hand, he tried to sense a contact with those who had created them. But remote viewing was not one of Pitt's skills. He was a man attuned to the here and now. He could not pa.s.s through the unseen wall separating the past from the present.

His reverie was broken by the Southern-accented voice of Ira c.o.x. "Do you want to start loading the sleds with these crates?"

Pitt blinked, looked up, and nodded. "Soon as I replace the lids, we'll carry them out in stages up to the next deck. Then lower them by rope through the hole you made in the hull down to the floor of the ice cave."

"I count twenty-four of them," said Northrop. He walked to a stack of crates and picked one up. His face turned four different shades of red, and his eyes bulged.

c.o.x, quickly sizing up the situation, took the crate from Northrop as easily as if he were handed a baby. "You'd better let me do the heavy work, Doc."

"You don't know how grateful I am, Ira," said Northrop, overjoyed at being relieved of the crate, which must have weighed close to a hundred pounds.

c.o.x took the most strenuous part of the job. Hoisting each crate onto one shoulder, he carried it down the ladder to Pitt, who then tied it with a sling and lowered it down to a waiting sled, where Northrop shoved it into place. When they finished, each sled held eight crates.

Pitt walked to the entrance of the cave and called the ship. "How does the storm look from your end?" he asked Gillespie.

"According to our resident meteorologist, it should blow over in a few hours."

"The sleds are loaded with the artifacts," said Pitt.

"Do you require help?"

"There must be close to eight hundred pounds per sled. Any a.s.sistance to pull them back to the Polar Storm will be gratefully accepted."

"Stand by until the weather clears," Gillespie said. "I'll personally lead the relief party."

"Are you sure you want to make the trip?"

"And miss walking the deck of an eighteenth-century ship? Not for all the cognac in France."

"I'll introduce you to the captain."

"You've seen the captain?" Gillespie asked curiously.

"Not yet, but if Roxanna Mender didn't exaggerate, he should be fresh as a Popsicle."

CAPTAIN Leigh Hunt still sat at the desk where he had died in 1779. Nothing had changed except for the small indentation in the ice where the ship's log had once lain on the desktop. Solemnly, they studied the child in the crib and Mrs. Hunt, two centuries of ice covering her saddened and delicate features. The dog was only a frozen mound of white.

They walked through the cabins, illuminating the long-dead pa.s.sengers with their halogen lights. The shrouds of ice glittered brightly, scarcely revealing the bodies beneath. Pitt tried to visualize their final moments, but the tragedy seemed so poignant it just didn't bear thinking about. Seeing those waxen effigies in the shadowy gloom, rigid under their ice coating, made it hard to imagine them as living, breathing humans who went about their everyday lives before dying in a remote and awful part of the world. The expressions on some of the faces, distorted by the ice, were ghastly beyond description. What were their last thoughts alone, without hope of rescue?

"This is a nightmare," murmured Northrop. "But a glorious nightmare."

Pitt looked at him questioningly. "Glorious?"

"The wonder of it all. Human bodies perfectly preserved, frozen in time. Think what this means to the science of cryogenics. Think of the potential for bringing them all back to life."

The thought struck Pitt like a blow to the head. Could science make it possible someday to present the cold, dead pa.s.sengers and crew of the Madras with a rebirth? "Think of the amazing amount of history that would be rewritten after talking to someone brought back to life after two hundred years."

Northrop threw up his hands. "Why dream? It won't happen in our lifetime."

"Probably not," said Pitt, contemplating the possibility, "but I wish I could be around to witness the reaction of these poor souls when they saw what's happened to their world since 1779."

THE storm clouds pa.s.sed over and the wind died after another four hours. c.o.x stood outside the cave and waved the yellow tarpaulin like a flag that had covered the ice tools. A group of figures spotted the signal and began winding their way through the rugged contours of the ice toward the cave. Pitt counted ten turquoise antlike creatures approaching across the dead white floe. As they came closer, Pitt could see Gillespie was leading. He also recognized the small figure behind him as the journalist, Evie Tan.

Thirty minutes later, Gillespie walked up to Pitt and smiled. "Nice day for a walk in the park," he said cheerfully.

"Welcome to the Antarctic museum of marine antiquities," Pitt said, showing the captain inside and pointing up at the hull. "Watch your step climbing the ladder Ira so ably hacked in the ice."

While Pitt and Gillespie made a tour of the Madras with Evie, who shot ten rolls of film, recording every inch of the old ship's interior and its dead, c.o.x and Northrop helped the Polar Storm's crew pull the sleds and their ancient cargo back to the icebreaker.

Pitt was amused as he watched Evie unzip her big parka, pull up the heavy wool sweater underneath, and tape rolls of film to her long john underwear. She looked at him and smiled. "Saves the film from the extreme cold."

Jake Bushey, the Polar Storm's first officer, hailed Gillespie over his portable radio. The captain listened for a moment and shoved the radio back into his pocket. Pitt could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn't in a good mood. "We must get back to the ship."

"Another storm coming in?" asked Evie.

He gave a curt shake of the head. "The U-boat," he said grimly. "She's surfaced through the ice less than a mile from the Polar Storm."