Clive Cussler - Atlantis Found

"No argument on that score. See you soon."

Pitt slipped the radio back into his pocket, looked over the ice floe to the north, and saw only emptiness. "Where did you leave Cox?"

Suddenly concerned, Northrop sat up and peered across the ice. "He found and entered a crevice in the cliffs. I thought he'd investigate, come out and follow me back."

"I'd better check him out."

Pitt pushed off with his ski poles and traced the footprints in the snow, two sets going, only one returning. The wind was increasing rapidly, the tiny ice particles thickening like a silken veil. Any glare was wiped out and the sun had vanished completely. He could not help but admire the courage of Roxanna Mender. He thought it a miracle she had survived the terrible cold. He found himself skiing under great icy crags that loomed over him. He had the fleeting impression the great hard mass would topple over him at any time.

He heard a muted shout not far away over the swelling sound of the wind. He stood listening, ears cocked, intent on piercing the barrier of the ice mist.

"Mr. Pitt! Over here!"

At first Pitt could see nothing but the frigid white face of the cliff. Then he caught a vague glimpse of a turquoise smear waving from a black shaft that split the cliff. Pitt dug his ski poles into the ice and pushed toward Cox. He felt like Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon, struggling through the Himalayan blizzard into the tunnel that took him to Shangri-la. One moment he was in the midst of swarming ice particles, the next he was in a dry, quiet, wind-free atmosphere.

He leaned forward on his poles and looked around an ice cave that measured about eight feet wide and tapered to a sharp peak twenty feet above. From the entrance, the gloom transformed from ash white to an ivory blackness. The only flash of color he could see was Cox's cold-weather gear.

"A bad storm is brewing," said Pitt, wagging a thumb through the cave entrance. "We'd best make a run for the ship."

Cox pulled up his goggles, his eyes looking at Pitt strangely. "You want to leave?"

"It's nice and comfy in here, but we can't afford to waste time."

"I thought you were looking for an old ship."

"I thought so, too," Pitt said testily.

Cox held up his gloved hand and unrolled an index finger in the upright position. "Well?"

Pitt looked upward. There, near the peak of the crevice, a small section of a wooden stern section of an old sailing ship was protruding from the ice.

Pitt skied back to Northrop, and together they dragged the three sleds into the ice cave. Pitt also briefed Gillespie on their discovery and assured him that they were comfortably shielded from the foul weather outside the ice cave.

Cox immediately removed the tools and set to work attacking the ice with a hammer and chisel, chopping hand and footholds for a ladder that would lead up to the exposed hull of the entombed ship. The upper deck had been free of ice when Roxanna and her husband, Captain Bradford Mender, had walked aboard the Madras, but during the passing of fourteen decades, the ice had completely covered over the wreck until the tops of her masts were buried and no longer visible.

"I'm amazed she's so well preserved," remarked Northrop. "I would have guessed she'd have been crushed to toothpicks by now."

"Just goes to show," Pitt said dryly, "glaciologists do err."

"Seriously, this bears further study. The ice cliffs on this part of the coast have built up and not broken off. Most unusual. There must be a good reason for them building higher but not moving outward."

Pitt looked up at Cox, who had chiseled a set of steps leading up to the exposed planks. "How you doing, Ira?"

"The wooden planking is frozen solid and shatters as easy as my grandma's glass eye. Ah should have a hole big enough to snake through in another hour."

"Mind you stay between the ship's timbers or you'll still be hacking next week."

"Ah know well how a ship is constructed, Mr. Pitt," said Cox, acting peeved.

"I stand rebuked," Pitt said amiably. "Put us inside in forty minutes and I'll see Captain Gillespie gives you a blue ribbon for ice carving."

Cox was not an easy man to get close to. He had few friends on board the Polar Storm. His first impression of Pitt had been as a snotty bureaucrat from NUMA headquarters, but he could see now that the special projects director was a down-to-earth, no-nonsense, yet humorous kind of guy. He was actually beginning to like him. The ice chips began to fly like sparks.

Thirty-four minutes later, Cox climbed down and announced in triumph. "Ah have an entrance, gentlemen."

Pitt bowed. "Thank you, Ira. General Lee would have been proud of you."

Cox bowed back. "Like Ah always said, save your Confederate money. You never know, the South might rise again."

"I believe it might at that."

Pitt climbed the footholds gouged in the ice by Cox and slipped through the hole feet first. His boots made contact with the deck four feet below the opening. He peered into the gloom and realized that he had entered the ship's aft galley.

"What do you see?" demanded Northrop excitedly.

"A frozen galley stove," answered Pitt. He leaned through the hull. "Come on up, and bring the lights with you."

Cox and Northrop quickly joined him and passed around aluminum-encased halogen lights that lit up the immediate area like a sunny day. Except for the soot on the flue atop the big cast-iron stove and oven, the galley looked as if it had never been used. Pitt pulled open the fire door of the oven but found no ashes.

"The shelves are bare," observed Cox. "They must have eaten all the paper, cans, and glass."

"Well, maybe the paper," muttered Northrop, beginning to feel distinctly uneasy.

"Let's stick together," said Pitt. "One of us may spot something the others missed."

"Anything in particular we're looking for?" asked Cox.

"A storeroom in the aft steerage hold beneath the captain's cabin."

"I say it should be two or more decks under where we stand."

"This has to be the ship's officers' and passengers' galley. The captain's cabin must be nearby. Let's find a passageway below."

Pitt stepped through a doorway and shined his light on the dining room. The table and chairs and surrounding furniture were encased in an inch-thick layer of ice. Under their halogen lights, the entire room sparkled like a crystal chandelier. A tea set rested in the center of the dining table as if waiting to be used.

"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?" Cox asked.

Pitt motioned his light through a doorway beyond the dining table. "Just outside, we should find a passageway 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, passing 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, anticipation 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.