Clive Cussler: Sahara

The atmosphere of the gun deck was oppressive but surprisingly cool. It was also eerily empty but for the guns. No fire buckets, no ramrods or shot and shell. Nothing littered the floor. It was as though it had been stripped clean for a dockyard refit. Pitt turned as Perlmutter awkwardly climbed down the ladder followed by Giordino.

"How odd," said Perlmutter, gazing around. "Are my eyes failing or is this deck as bare as a mausoleum?"

Pitt smiled. "Your eyes are fine."

"You'd think the crew might have given it a lived-in look," Giordino mused.

"The men on this deck and these guns battered half the Union fleet," exclaimed Perlmutter. "Many of them died in here. It doesn't figure there isn't a scrap of their existence."

"Kitty Mannock mentioned seeing bodies," Giordino reminded him.

"They must be below," said Pitt. He aimed his light beam at a stairwell leading down into the ship's hull. "I suggest we begin with the crew's quarters forward and then work back through the engine room toward the stem and the officers' quarters."

Giordino nodded. "Sounds good."

So they moved on, numbed by an awe of the unknown. The knowledge that she was the only completely intact ironclad from the Civil War with remains of her crew still on board only deepened an almost superstitious reverence. Pitt felt as if he was walking through a haunted house.

They slowly moved into the crew's quarters and came to an abrupt halt. The compartment was a tomb of the dead. There were over fifty of them frozen in their final posture when overtaken by death. Most had died while lying in their bunks. Although there was water to drink from the dwindling flow of the river, the shrunken stomachs of their mummified corpses told of the disease and starvation after their food ran out. A few were sitting slumped around a mess table, some crumpled on the deck. Much of their clothing was stripped off their bodies. No sign of their shoes or a trace of their sea chests or personal belongings could be seen.

"They've been picked clean," murmured Giordino.

"The Tuaregs," Perlmutter concluded wearily. "Beecher said that desert bandits, as he called them, had attacked the ship."

"They must have had a death wish to attack an armored ship with old muskets and spears," said Giordino.

"They were after the gold. Beecher said the Captain used the Confederate treasury gold to buy food from the desert tribes. Once the word spread, the Tuaregs probably made a couple of futile assaults against the ship before getting smart and laying siege by cutting off all food and supplies. Then they waited until the crew starved or died off from typhoid and malaria. When all signs of resistance disappeared, the Tuaregs simply walked on board and pillaged the ship of the gold and everything else they could carry. After years of scrounging by every nomad tribe that wandered by, nothing is left but the crew's bodies and the cannon that were too huge to haul away:"

"So we can forget about the gold," said Pitt thoughtfully. "It's long gone."

Perlmutter nodded. "We won't get rich this day."

There was no temptation to linger in the compartment of the dead. They moved aft and into the engine room. Coal was still heaped in the bins and shovels hung beside the scuttles. Without moisture to cause corrosion, the brass on gauges and fittings still had a faint gleam under the bright glare of the max optic flashlights. But for the dust, the engines and boilers looked to be in first-class operating condition.

One of their light beams caught the figure of a man sitting hunched over a small desk. A yellowed paper lay under one hand next to an inkwell that had spilled when he had slumped into death.

Pitt gently removed the paper and read it under his flashlight.

I have done my duty to the last of my strength. I leave my sweet, faithful engines in prime condition. They beautifully carried us across the ocean without missing a stroke and are as strong as the day they were installed in Richmond. I bequeath them to the next engineer to move this good ship against the hated Yankees. God, save the Confederacy.

Chief Engineer of the Texas,

Angus O'Hare

"There sits a dedicated man," said Pitt approvingly.

"They don't make them like him today," Perlmutter agreed.

Leaving Chief Engineer O'Hare, Pitt led the way past the big twin engines and boilers. A passageway led into the officers' quarters and mess, where they found four more undressed bodies, all reposed on bunks in their individual cabins. Pitt gave them little more than a passing glance before stopping at a mahogany door mounted in the aft bulkhead.

"The Captain's cabin," he said definitely.

Perlmutter nodded. "Commander Mason Tombs. From what I read of the Texas' audacious fight from Richmond to the Atlantic, Tombs was one tough customer."

Pitt brushed off a tinge of fear, turned the knob, and pushed open the door. Suddenly, Perlmutter reached out and clutched Pitt's arm.

"Wait!"

Pitt looked at Perlmutter, puzzled. "Why? What are you afraid of?"

"I suspect we may find something that should remain unseen."

"Can't be worse than what we've already laid eyes on," Giordino argued.

"What are you holding back, Julien?" Pitt demanded.

"I-I didn't tell you what I found in Edwin Stanton's secret papers."

"Tell me later," Pitt muttered impatiently. He turned from Perlmutter, shined his light through the doorway, and stepped inside.

The cabin would have seemed small and cramped by most contemporary warship standards, but ironclads were not built for long weeks at sea. During the fighting along the rivers and inlets of the Confederacy, they were seldom away from dock for more than two days at a time.

As with the other quarters, all objects and furniture that were not attached to the ship were gone. The Tuaregs, having no skills for handling tools and wrenches, had ignored any fixtures that were built in. The Captain's cabin still retained bookshelves and a mounted but broken barometer. But for some inexplicable reason, as with the stool in the pilothouse, the Tuaregs had left behind a rocking chair.

Pitt's light revealed two bodies, one reposed in a bunk, the other sitting as though slumbering in the rocking chair. The corpse in the bunk was lying on its side against the bulkhead naked, the position the Tuaregs had crudely shoved it in when stripping away the clothes and bed covers and mattress. A thicket of red hair still covered the head and face.

Giordino joined Pitt and closely studied the figure in the chair. Under the bright glare of the max optic light, the skin reflected a dark brown shade with the same textured leather look of Kitty Mannock's body. It had also mummified from the dry heat of the outside desert. The body was still clothed in old-fashioned one-piece underwear.

Even in the sitting position it was evident the man had been quite tall. His face was bearded and exceedingly gaunt with very prominent ears. The eyes were closed as if he had simply drifted off to sleep, the brows thick and strangely short, stopped abruptly as if clipped at the outer edge of the eye. The hair and beard were jet black with only a sprinkling of gray.

"This guy is the spitting image of Lincoln," Giordino remarked conversationally.

"That is Abraham Lincoln," came Perlmutter's subdued voice from the doorway. He slowly sank to the deck, his back against the bulkhead, like a whale settling to the seabed. His eyes were locked on the corpse in the rocking chair as if hypnotically fixed.

Pitt stared at Perlmutter with concern and obvious skepticism. "For a renowned historian, you've taken a wrong turn, haven't you?"

Giordino knelt beside Perlmutter and offered him a drink from a water bottle. "The heat must be getting to you, big buddy."