Clive Cussler: Atlantis Found

"Literally hard as a rock," said Mender.

"Poor thing," Roxanna murmured sadly.

Mender nodded at a closed door toward the aft end of the passageway. "The captain's cabin. I shudder to think what we may find in there."

"Maybe nothing," said one of the crewmen nervously. "Everybody probably fled the ship and trekked off along the coast northward."

Roxanna shook her head. "I can't imagine anyone leaving such a beautiful animal to die on board alone."

The men forced open the door to the captain's cabin and entered, to a gruesome sight. A woman dressed in clothing from the mid to late seventeen hundreds sat in a chair, her dark eyes open and staring with great sadness at the form of a small child lying in a crib. She had frozen to death while in deep sorrow at losing what appeared to be her young daughter. In her lap was an open Bible turned to the Psalms.

The tragic sight numbed Roxanna and the crew of the Paloverde. Her enthusiasm at exploring the unknown had suddenly evaporated into a feeling of anguish. She stood there with the others in silence, their hushed breath misting in that crypt of a cabin.

Mender turned and walked into an adjoining cabin and found the captain of the ship, who he rightly assumed was the dead woman's husband. The man was seated at a desk, slumped in a chair. His red hair was coated by ice and his face was dead white. One hand was still clutching a quill pen. A sheet of paper lay before him on the desk. Mender brushed away the frost and read the wording.

August 26, 1779

It has been five months since we were trapped in this accursed place after that storm drove us far off our course to the south. Food gone. No one has eaten for ten days. Most of the crew and passengers dead. My little daughter died yesterday, my poor wife, only an hour ago. Whoever should find our bodies, please notify the directors of the Skylar Croft Trading Company of Liverpool of our fate. All is at an end. I shall soon join my beloved wife and daughter.

Leigh Hunt

Master of the Madras

The leather-bound logbook of the Madras lay to one side of Captain Hunt on the desk. Mender carefully dislodged it from the ice that froze the rear cover to the wooden desktop and placed the book inside his heavy coat. Then he stepped from the cabin and closed the door.

"What did you find?" asked Roxanna.

"The body of the captain."

"It's all so terrible."

"I imagine there is worse to see."

The words were prophetic. They divided up and went from cabin to cabin. The more exquisite passengers' accommodations were in the roundhouse, an expansive space with quarter galleries and windows partitioned into various-sized cabins in the stern below the poop deck. Passengers booked empty space. They had to furnish their cabin themselves, providing couches, beds, and chairs, all lashed down in anticipation of heavy weather. Wealthy passengers often brought such personal possessions as bureaus, bookshelves, and musical instruments, including pianos and harps. Here the searchers found nearly thirty bodies in various positions of death. Some died sitting upright, some lay in bed, while others were sprawled on the deck. All looked as if they had peacefully dozed off.

Roxanna was unsettled by those whose eyes were open. The color of their irises seemed enhanced by the pure white faces surrounding them. She cringed when one of the Paloverde's crewmen reached out and touched the hair of one of the ladies. The frozen hair made a strange crackling noise and broke off in the crewman's hand.

The great cabin on the deck below the more elegant roundhouse staterooms looked like a morgue after a disaster. Mender saw any number of dead, mostly men, many of them British military officers in uniform. Forward was the steerage cabin, which was also filled with frozen corpses in hammocks slung over ship's supplies and luggage in the steerage compartment.

Everyone aboard the Madras had died peacefully. There was no sign of chaos. Nothing was in disarray. All articles and goods were stowed neatly. But for the final narrative by Captain Hunt, it seemed that time had stopped and they had all peacefully died as they lived. What Roxanna and Mender saw was not grotesque or terrifying but simply an overwhelming misfortune. These people had been dead for seventy-nine years and been forgotten by the passing world. Even those who had wondered about and mourned their disappearance were long since gone.

"I don't understand," said Roxanna. "How did they all die?"

"Those who didn't starve, froze," answered her husband.

"But they could have fished through the ice and shot penguin the same as we did, and burned parts of the ship to stay warm."

"The captain's last words say his ship was driven far off their course to the south. My guess is they were trapped in the ice much farther from shore than we were, and the captain, believing they would eventually drift free, followed the rules of good seamanship and forbid fires on board his ship for fear of an accidental conflagration, until it was too late."

"So, one by one, they died."

"Then, when spring came and the ice melted, instead of being carried by the current out into the South Pacific as a derelict, contrary winds drove the ship ashore, where it has lain since the last century."

"I think you're right, Captain," said first mate Bigelow, approaching from the forward part of the ship. "Judging from the clothing on the bodies, the poor devils did not expect a voyage that would take them into frigid waters. Most all appear better dressed for a tropical climate. They must have been sailing from India to England."

"A great tragedy," Roxanna sighed, "that nothing could have saved these unfortunate people."

"Only God," muttered Mender, "only God." He turned to Bigelow. "What cargo was she carrying?"

"No gold or silver that I could find, but a general cargo of tea, Chinese porcelain in tightly packed wooden crates, and bales of silk, along with a variety of rattan, spices, and camphor. And, oh yes, I found a small storeroom, locked with heavy chains, directly below the captain's cabin."

"Did you search it?" asked Mender.

Bigelow shook his head. "No, sir. I thought it only proper that you should be present. I left my men to work at breaking the chains."

"Maybe the room contains treasure," said Roxanna, a tinge of red returning to her cheeks.

"We'll soon find out." Mender nodded at Bigelow. "Mr. Bigelow, will you lead the way?"

The first mate led them down a ladder into the aft main steerage hold. The storeroom stood opposite an eighteen-pound cannon whose port was frozen shut. Two of the Paloverde's crew were attacking the heavy padlock securing the chains that were bolted into the door. Using a sledgehammer and chisel found in the carpenters' workshop, they furiously hammered away at the lock's shackle until it snapped apart. Then they twisted the heavy door latch until it sprang free and the door could be pushed inward.

The interior was dimly lit by a small port in the bulwarks. Wooden crates were stacked from bulkhead to bulkhead, but the contents appeared to have been packed haphazardly. Mender stepped over to a large crate and easily lifted one end of the lid.

"These chests were not carefully packed and loaded aboard in port by commercial traders," he said quietly. "It looks to me like they were sloppily crated by the crew sometime during the voyage and placed under lock and key by the captain."

"Don't just stand there, husband," ordered Roxanna, mesmerized by curiosity. "Open them."

While the crew stood outside the storage room, Mender and Bigelow began prying open the wooden chests. No one seemed to notice the bitter cold. They were spellbound in anticipation of finding some great treasure in gold and gemstones. But when Mender held up one of the pieces of the contents from a chest, their hopes were quickly shattered.