Atlantis Found

"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 Roxa

"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 ca

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 Roxa

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.

"A copper urn," he said, passing it to Roxa

Bigelow removed and passed several more artifacts through the open door. Most of them were small copper sculptures of strange-looking animals with black opal eyes. "They're beautiful," whispered Roxa

"They do look unusual," agreed Mender.

"Are they of any value?" asked Bigelow.

"To a collector of antiquities or a museum maybe," answered Mender. "But I seriously doubt any of us could get rich off them…" He paused as he held up a life-size human skull that gleamed black in the veiled light. "Good Lord, will you look at this?"

"It's frightening," muttered Bigelow.

"Looks like it was carved by Satan himself," murmured a crewman in awe.

Totally unintimidated, Roxa

"My guess, it's obsidian," observed Mender, "but I couldn't begin to presume how it was carved-" Mender was interrupted by a loud crackling sound, as the ice around the stern of the ship heaved and grumbled.

One of the crew dropped down the stairway from the upper deck, shouting, his voice high-pitched and harsh. "Captain, we must leave quickly! A great crack is spreading across the ice and pools of water are forming! I fear if we don't hurry, we'll be trapped here!"

Mender wasted no time in questions. "Get back to the ship!" he ordered. "Quickly!"

Roxa

"No time for souvenirs," Mender snapped at her. But she ignored him and refused to let go of the skull.

Pushing Roxa

Skirting the upheaved masses, some of them forty feet high, and leaping across the cracks before they widened and made crossing impossible, the crew and Roxa

The wind began to pick up again, and incredibly it felt warm, the warmest air they had felt since the ship had become jammed in the ice. After ru

Seeing their predicament, the Paloverde's second mate, Asa Knight, ordered the men on board to lower a whaleboat over the side, and they manhandled it across the ice to the fissure, which had now increased to nearly thirty feet. Heaving and pulling the heavy boat, the crew struggled to save the captain and his wife and their shipmates before it was too late. After a herculean effort, they reached the opposite edge of the fissure. By then, Mender, Roxa

The boat was quickly pushed into the freezing water, and the men rowed it across the rapidly expanding river in the ice, to the vast relief of those minutes away from death on the other side. Roxa

"We owe you a great debt, Mr. Knight," said Mender, shaking his second mate's hand. "Your daring initiative saved our lives. I especially thank you on behalf of my wife."

"And child," Roxa

He looked at her. "Our child is safe on the ship."

"I wasn't talking about Samuel," she said, through chattering teeth.

Mender stared at her. "Are you telling me you're with child again, woman?"

"I think about two months."

Mender was appalled. "You went out on the ice in a storm knowing you were pregnant?"

"There was no storm when I set out," she said with a weak grin.

"Good Lord," he sighed, "what am I to do with you?"

"If you don't want her, Captain," said Bigelow jovially, "I'll be happy to have her."

Despite the fact that he was chilled to the bone, Mender laughed as he hugged his wife, nearly crushing the breath out of her. "Do not tempt me, Mr. Bigelow, do not tempt me."

Half an hour later, Roxa