Treasure

"I'm inside the ship's galley," he notified the spellbound party on the ice. "The upper half is dry. Camera is rolling."

"Acknowledged," Giordino said briefly. Pitt used the next few minutes to video-record the galley's interior above and below the water level, while keeping a ru

A sense of awe and apprehension flooded over Pitt. He looked quickly around as if expecting a ghostly crew, or at least their skeletal apparitions, to come bursting through the hatchway to accuse him of theft. Only there was no crew. He was alone and touching objects that belonged to men who had walked the same deck, prepared food and eaten here-men who had been dead for sixteen centuries.

He began to wonder what had happened to them. How had they come to be in the frozen north when there were no records of such a historic voyage? They must have died of exposure, but where did their bodies lie?

"You'd better come up," said Giordino. "You've been down almost thirty minutes."

"Not yet," replied Pitt. Thirty minutes, he thought. It seemed more like five. Time was slipping away from him. The cold was begi

The galley's ceiling rose half a meter above the main deck overhead, and small arched windows that normally allowed ventilation were battened down on the upper side of the forward bulkhead. Pitt pried one partially open only to confront a solid wall of ice.

He made a rough measurement and found the water level was deeper toward the aft end of the galley, Pitt took this to indicate that the bow and central section of the hull were aground on the raised slope of the ice-buried shoreline.

"Come up with anything else?" Giordino inquired with burning curiosity.

"Like what?"

"Remains of the crew?"

"Sorry, no bones to be seen." Pitt ducked under the water and sca

"They probably panicked and abandoned ship at sea," Giord'L-o theorized.

"Nothing points to a panic," said Pitt. "The galley could pass a general inspection."

"Can you penetrate the rest of the ship?"

"There's a hatchway in the forward bulkhead. I'm going to see what's on the other side."

He leaned down and ducked through the low and narrow opening, carefully pulling his lifeline and air hose after him. The darkness was oppressive. He unhooked the dive light from his weight belt and swept its beam around a small compartment.

"I'm now in some kind of storeroom. The water is shallower here, rising just short of my knees. I can see tools, yes, the ship's carpenter's tools, spare anchors, a large steelyard ' "Steelyard?" Giordino broke in.

"A balance scale that hangs from a hook."

"Got you."

"There's also an assortment of axes, lead weights and fish netting. Hold on while I document."

A narrow wooden ladder led upward through an opening in the main deck.

After shooting tape, he cautiously tested it, surprised to find it still stout enough to support his weight.

Pitt slowly climbed the rungs and poked his head into the shattered remains of a deck cabin. Little was visible except a few buried bits of debris. The cabin had been nearly crushed flat by the build up of ice.

He dropped down and waded through another hatch that opened into the cargo hold. He swung the dive light's beam from Starboard to port and instantly went numb from shock.

It was not only a cargo hold.

It was also a crypt.

The extreme cold had transformed the dry hold into a cryogenic chamber.

Eight bodies in a state of nearperfect preservation were grouped around a small iron stove toward the bow. Each was covered by a shroud of ice, making them look as though they had been individually wrapped in a thick, clear plastic.

Their facial expressions appeared peaceful and their eyes were locked open-Like ma

Pitt felt as if he had entered a time machine. He could not believe he was staring at men who had been citizens of Imperial Rome. Ancient mariners who sailed into ports long buried under the debris of later civilizations, ancestors over sixty generations from the past.

They had not been prepared for the Arctic cold. None wore heavy clothing; all were bundled in coarse blankets. They seemed small in size compared to Pitt; all would have measured a good head shorter. One little man was bald, with gray woolly side hair. Another had shaggy red hair and was heavily bearded. Most were clean-shaven. from what he could read through their icy covering, the youngest was around eighteen and the oldest close to forty years of age.

The mariner who had died while writing had a leather cap pulled tight around his head and long strips of wool wrapped around his legs and feet. He was bent over a small stack of wax tablets resting on the scarred surface of a small folding table. A stylus was still gripped in his right hand.

The crew did not look as if they had starved or died slowly from the cold. Death had come suddenly and unexpectedly.

Pitt guessed the cause. All hatch covers had been tightly sealed to keep out the cold, and the only opening for ventilation had frozen over.

The pots containing the last meal were sitting on the small oil stove.

There was no way for the heat and smoke to escape to the outside. Lethal carbon monoxide had built up within the cargo hold. Unconsciousness had struck without warning, and each man died where he sat.

Almost as if he was afraid to awaken the long-dead seaman, Pitt very carefully chipped the ice away from the wax tablets until they came free. Then he unzipped the front of his dry suit and slipped them inside.

Pitt no longer noticed the agony of the cold, the nervous sweat that was trickling from his pores, or the shivering. His mind was so absorbed in the morbid scene that he failed to hear Giordino's repeated demands for a reply.

"Are you still with us?" asked Giordino. "Answer, dammit!"

Pitt mumbled a few unintelligible words.

"Say again. Are you in trouble?"

Giordino's concerned tone finally shook Pitt out of his trancelike state.

Inform Commander Knight his worst fear is confirmed," Pitt answered.

"The antique status Of the ship is genuine. And by the way," he added in a monotonous, laconic voice, "you might also mention that if he needs witnesses, I can produce the crew."

"You're wanted on the phone," Julius SchiHer's wife called through the kitchen window.

Schiller looked up from the barbecue in the backyard of his tree-shaded home in Chevy Chase. "They give a name?"

"No, but it sounds like Dale Nichols."

He sighed and held up a pair of tongs. "Come mind the steaks so they won't burn."

Mrs. Schiller gave her husband a brief kiss as they passed each other on the porch. He entered his study, closed the door and picked up the receiver.