David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

The voice crackled again. “Fifteen years of diving with you, and I thought I’d seen everything. This one really takes the cake.”

Jack turned toward the far edge of the plateau. He could see Costas now, hovering motionless in front of a coral head the size of a small truck, the growths rising several meters higher than him. Two more heads rose behind the first, forming a row. Beyond them the water was too deep for coral to flourish, and Jack could see the sandy slope dropping off into an abyss. He flicked on his headlamp and swam toward Costas, coming to a halt a few meters before him and panning his light over the seabed. It was an explosion of color, bright red sponges, sea anemones, profusely growing soft corals, with clown fish darting among the nooks and crevices. An eel drooped out of a hole, mouth lolling, eyeing Jack, then withdrew again. Jack looked down through a waving bed of sea fans and saw fragments of amphoras, so thickly encrusted as to be almost unrecognizable. He peered again, saw a high arching handle, a distinctive rim. He turned to Costas, his headlamp lighting up his friend’s yellow helmet and the streamlined backpack that held his trimix breathing gas.

“Nice find,” he said. “I saw sherds like this coming down the slope. Rhodian wine amphoras, second century BC.”

“Switch off your headlamp.” Costas seemed riveted by something in front of him. “Take another look. And forget about amphoras.”

Jack was itching to swim over to the wreck he had seen in the sand. But he lingered in front of the coral head, stared at the dazzle of color and movement. He remembered the words of Professor Dillen, all those years ago at Cambridge. Archaeology is about detail, but don’t let the detail obscure the bigger picture. Jack had already known it, since he had first gone hunting for artifacts as a boy. It had always been his special gift. To see the bigger picture. And to find things. Lucky Jack. He shut his eyes, flicked off his headlamp then opened his eyes again. It was as if he were in a different universe. The profusion of color had been replaced by a monotone blue, shades of dark where there had been vivid purples and reds. It was like looking at an artist’s charcoal sketch, all the finish and color stripped away, the eye drawn not to the detail but to the form, to the overall shape. To the bigger picture.

And then he saw it.

“Good God.”

He blinked hard, and looked again. There was no mistaking it. Not one, but two, sticking out of the sand, curving upward on either side of the coral head, symmetrical, gleaming white from centuries of burial in the sediment. He remembered where they were. The Red Sea. The eastern extremity of Egypt, the edge of the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Beyond here lay fabled lands, lands of terror and allure, of untold treasure and danger, of races of giants and pygmies and great, lumbering beasts, beasts of the hunt and of war that only the bravest could harness, beasts that could make a man a king.

They were tusks.

“I’m waiting, Jack. Explain your way out of this one.”

Jack swallowed hard. His heart was pounding with excitement. He spoke quietly, trying to keep his voice under control. “It’s an elephantegos”

“A what?”

“An elephantegos.”

“Right. An elephant. A statue of an elephant.”

“No. An elephantegos”

“Okay, Jack. What’s the difference?”

“There’s an amazing papyrus letter, found in the Egyptian desert,” Jack said. “Maurice Hiebermeyer emailed it to me on Seaquest II as we were sailing here. I asked him for anything in the papyrus records that might refer to a shipwreck. It’s almost as if he had an instinct we’d find something like this.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Costas said. “He’s an oddball, but I’ve got to hand it to him.”

Jack’s mind was racing. He reached out and touched the tip of the nearest tusk. It was silky-smooth, but powdery, like chalk. “The letter mentions a shipwreck. It’s one of very few ancient documents to mention a shipwreck in the Red Sea. Maurice knew we were planning to dive here, on our way up to his excavation at Berenike.”

“I’m listening, Jack.”

“It tells how a ship dispatched from the port at Berenike had sunk. The letter was meant to reach a place called Ptolemais Theron, Ptolemais of the Hunts. That was an outpost somewhere to the south of here on the coast of Eritrea. It was where the Egyptians procured their wild animals. Because of the shipwreck, the men in the outpost hadn’t received their grain. The letter assures them that another elephantegos was under construction at Berenike, and would soon be on its way with all the supplies they needed.”

“Elephantegos,” Costas murmured. “You mean…”

“Elephant-transporter. Elephant-ship.”

“Jack, I’m getting that funny feeling again. The one I always get when I dive with you. It’s called disbelief.”

“Have you looked beyond? There are two more coral heads. Exactly the same size. Three of them, in a row. Just the number you’d expect. Chained and roped down just as they would have been in a hull.”

“You’re telling me this thing in front of me is an elephant. A real elephant. Not a statue.”

“We know ivory can survive burial underwater, right? We’ve found tusks and hippo teeth in the Mediterranean. And the coral around here grows pretty fast, quicker than it would take for an elephant skeleton to crumble. There may be no bones left inside there now, but the coral preserves the shape.”

“I need a moment, Jack. Remember, I’m just an engineer. I need to stare this thing in the face. This could be the one archaeological discovery that finally does it for me, Jack. I think I might cry.”

“You can handle it.” Jack floated back and stared at the ghostly apparition that loomed in front of them, one of the most amazing things he had ever seen underwater. He switched on his headlamp again. “Those tusks aren’t going to survive long. We need to get them reburied. But before that we need a film team down here, pronto. This is headline stuff.”

“Leave it to me, Jack. I’ve got a channel open to Seaquest II.”

Jack glanced at his wrist computer. “Seven minutes left. I want to have a look at those amphoras in the sand. I’ll be within visual range.”

“I think I’ve had enough excitement for one dive.”

“I’ll meet you halfway for the ascent.”

“Roger that.”

Jack drifted back toward the sandy plateau, letting the current take him. It had picked up slightly during their dive, raising a pall of fine silt that hung a meter or so over the seabed, briefly obscuring the amphoras from view. Ahead of him a school of glassfish hung in the water like a diaphanous veil, parting to reveal a reef shark swimming languidly along the slope. He heard the muffled roar of the Zodiac boat on the surface gunning its outboards, circling to keep position. A banging from the boat marked their five-minute warning. He glanced back at Costas, now some twenty meters away, then dropped down into the suspended sediment. Costas might not be able to see him, but Jack’s exhaust bubbles would be clearly visible. He stared ahead, concentrating on his objective, his arms held out in front of him with his hands together, his legs slowly kicking a frog stroke. He was in perfect control of his buoyancy. Suddenly he saw them, a row of four amphoras, intact and leaning in the sand, another row poking up beyond. He exhaled hard, emptying his lungs, knowing his life depended on his equipment delivering that next breath, the edge of danger that made diving his passion. He dropped down, then inhaled just above the seafloor, regaining neutral buoyancy. The amphoras were covered with fine sediment, sparkling with the sunlight that streamed through the water from the surface forty-five meters overhead.