Lost Empire (42 page)

“This one time I’ll forgive you.”

They pressed on for another ninety minutes, moving slowly but steadily up the western slope of the peak, pulling themselves along using exposed roots and drooping vines, until finally Sam called a halt. They strung their double-wide hammock between two trees, double-checked all the mosquito nets’ seams, then crawled inside and shared a meal of warm water, beef jerky, and dried fruit. Twenty minutes later they fell into a deep sleep.

 

 

THE JUNGLE’S NATURAL SYMPHONY woke them just after sunrise. After a quick breakfast they were on the move again. As Sam had predicted, the higher they climbed, the more the foliage thinned, until they were able to move without the aid of the machete. At 10:15 they broke through the trees and found themselves standing on a ten-foot-wide granite plateau.

“That’s what I call a view,” Remi said, shrugging off her pack.

Spread before them were the blue waters of the Sunda Strait. Twenty-five miles away they could see the sheer cliffs of Krakatoa Island and, beyond that, Java’s west coast. They stepped to the edge of the plateau. Five hundred feet below them, at the bottom of a sixty-degree slope, lay the floor of the ravine. On either side of it were the peaks that formed its northern and southern walls. The ravine itself was more or less straight, with a slight curve as it neared the far shoreline a mile away.

Sam pointed at the patch of water visible beyond the ravine’s mouth. “That’s almost exactly where she was anchored.”

“Let me ask you a question: Why didn’t we start over there and just stroll up the ravine?”

“A couple reasons: One, that’s the windward side of the strait. I might be a tad paranoid, but I’d wanted us to have some cover from prying eyes.”

“And the second reason?”

“Better vantage point.”

Remi smiled. “You were half hoping we’d find a mast jutting out from the canopy down there, weren’t you?”

Sam smiled back. “More than half hoping. I don’t see anything, though. You?”

“No. Now might be the right time to tell me your theory: How would the
Shenandoah
have survived the pyroclastic flow?”

“Well, you probably know the scientific term for it, but I’m thinking of the Pompeii Effect.”

Pompeii, Italy, famous for having fallen victim to another volcano, Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., was also renowned for its “mummies,” still-life casts of Pompeii’s inhabitants in the final moments of life. Like Krakatoa, Vesuvius had unleashed an avalanche of blistering ash and pumice that rolled over the village, both charring and entombing virtually everything before it. Humans and animals unlucky enough to be caught in the open were instantly broiled alive and buried. As the bodies decomposed, the resulting fluids and gasses hardened the interior of the shell.

“I think that’s the term for it, actually. The principle is a little different here, though.”

“That’s what I’m counting on. Assuming the
Shenandoah
was driven here, she would have been waterlogged from the tsunami and blanketed in thousands of tons of soaked vegetation and trees. When the pyroclastic flow came, all the moisture would have flashed into steam and, hopefully, the blanket of foliage would have been charred instead of the ship.”

Remi was nodding. “Then all of it was buried in several feet of ash and pumice.”

“That’s my theory.”

“Why hasn’t it been found already?”

Sam shrugged. “Nobody’s been looking for it. How many artifacts are eventually found just feet from where everyone’s been excavating for years?”

“Too many to count.”

“Plus, the
Shenandoah
was only two hundred thirty feet long and thirty-two feet wide. That ravine is”—Sam did the calculation in his head—“twenty-five times longer and forty times wider.”

“You’re no dummy, Sam Fargo.” Remi looked down the slope before them. “What do you think?” she asked. “Straight down?”

Sam nodded. “I think we can manage it.”

 

 

THE GOING WAS SLOW but not particularly treacherous. Using the trunks of diagonally growing trees as makeshift steps, they picked their way down the slope and back into deeper jungle. The sun dimmed through the canopy, leaving them in twilight.

Sam called a halt for a water break. After a few gulps he wandered off along the hillside with a “Be right back” over his shoulder. He returned a minute later with a pair of heavy straight sticks and handed the shorter of the two to Remi.

“A poker?” she asked.

“Yes. If she’s here, the only way we’re going to find her is legwork. Likewise, if she’s covered in a layer of petrified vegetation and ash, there are going to be gaps and voids. If we probe enough ground, we’re sure to find something.”

“Assuming—”

“Don’t say it.”

 

 

FOR THE NEXT SIX HOURS, as the afternoon wore toward evening, they marched side by side across the ravine floor and up and down hillocks, poking with their sticks and doing their best to keep to a north/south-oriented, switchback pattern.

“Six o’clock,” Sam said, glancing at his watch. “We’ll finish this line, then call it a night.”

Remi laughed wearily. “And retreat to the lovely confines of our hammock—” She stumbled forward and landed with an “Umph!”

Sam strode over and knelt beside her. “Are you okay?”

She rolled over, pursed her lips, and puffed a strand of hair from her cheek. “I’m fine. Getting clumsy with exhaustion.” Sam stood up and helped her to her feet. Remi looked around. “Where’s my stick?”

“At your feet.”

“What? Where?”

Sam pointed down. Jutting two inches from the loam was the tip of Remi’s stick. Sam said, “Either that’s a fantastic magic trick or you’ve found a void.”

 

 

STEPPING CAREFULLY, THEY BACKED UP A FEW FEET AND SCANNED the ground nearby. “Anything?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“Hop onto that tree.”

“If we haven’t fallen through yet, we probably won’t.”

“Just humor me.”

Remi backed up until her butt bumped into the trunk, then turned and climbed onto the lowermost branch. Sam shrugged off his pack and laid it on the ground. Next, holding his stick parallel to the ground at waist height like a tightrope walker, he crept forward until he was standing over the tip of Remi’s stick. He knelt down, placed his stick in front of his knees, then pulled Remi’s free. He dug his headlamp from the thigh pocket of his cargo pants and shone the beam into the hole.

“It’s deep,” he said. “Can’t see the bottom.”

“What do you want to do?”

“What I want to do is widen it and crawl down there, but it’s almost dark. Let’s set up camp and wait for daylight.”

THEY SLEPT FITFULLY, passing the hours dozing and talking, their minds imagining what might lay only feet away from their hammock. Having both metaphorically and literally traced the same course Winston Blaylock followed during his quest, Sam and Remi felt as though they’d been hunting for the
Shenandoah
for years.

They waited until enough morning sun was filtering through the canopy to partially light their work, then ate a quick breakfast and climbed back up the hillock to the hole left by Remi’s stick, this time equipped with a thirty-foot coil of nylon boating rope that had come with the
pinisi
.

Remi looped one end of the line twice around the nearest tree; the opposite end of the line Sam formed into a makeshift horse collar that he slipped over his shoulders and tucked under his armpits.

“Luck,” said Remi.

Sam paced over to the hole and knelt down. Carefully, he began jabbing with the stick, knocking chunks of loam and congealed ash into the unseen voids below, backing away on his knees as the hole widened. After five minutes’ work, it was the size of a manhole.

Sam stood up and called over his shoulder, “Have you got me?”

Remi grabbed the line tighter, took in the slack, and braced her feet against the trunk. “I’ve got you.”

Sam coiled his knees and jumped a few inches off the ground. He did it again, a little higher. He paused and looked around.

“See any cracks?”

“All clear.”

Sam stomped on the ground once, then again, then six times in quick succession. “I think we’re okay.”

Remi tied off her end of the line and joined Sam at the hole. He unraveled the horse collar and knotted it around the strap on his headlamp, then clicked the lamp on and started lowering it into the hole, counting forearm lengths as he went. The line went slack. At the bottom of the hole, the headlamp lay on its side. They leaned forward and peered into the gloom.

After a moment Remi said, “Is that a . . . No, can’t be.”

“A skeleton foot? Yes, it can be.” He looked up at her. “Tell you what: Why don’t I go first?”

“Great idea.”

 

 

AFTER RETRIEVING THE HEADLAMP, they spent a few minutes tying climbing knots in the rope, then dropped it back into the hole. Sam slid his feet into the opening, wiggled forward, and began lowering himself hand over hand.

Like a geologist examining an exposed cliff face, Sam felt as though he were descending through history. The first layer of material was regular soil, but passing two more feet the color changed, first to light brown, then a muddy gray.

“I’m into the ash layer,” he called.

Clumps and veins of what appeared to be petrified wood and vegetation began appearing in the ash.

His feet touched the bottom of the shaft he’d excavated from above. He kicked toeholds into the sides of the shaft and slowly transferred his weight to his legs until he was certain he was steady. Jutting from the side of the shaft was what they’d thought was a skeletal foot.

“It’s a tree root,” he called.

“Thank God.”

“Next one will probably be the real thing.”

“I know.”

“Stick, please.”

Remi lowered it down to him. Using both hands, he worked the stick first like a posthole digger, then like a pot stirrer, knocking and scraping at the shaft until he was satisfied with the width. Plumes of ash swirled around him. He waited for the cloud to settle, then squatted on his haunches and repeated the process until he’d opened four more feet of shaft.

“How deep so far?” Remi called.

“Eight feet, give or take.” Sam lifted the stick up and slid it into his belt. “We’re going to have to evacuate this debris.”

“Hold on.”

A moment later, Remi called, “Bag coming down.”

One of their nylon stuff sacks landed on his head; knotted to the drawstring was some paracord. Sam squatted down, filled the bag with the debris, and Remi hauled it up. Two more times cleared the shaft.

Sam began lowering himself again. Under the weight of the layers above, the mixture here had become more and more compressed until finally, at the ten-foot mark, the color morphed again, from gray to brown to black.

Sam stopped suddenly. He felt his heart lurch. He turned his head sideways, trying to aim the headlamp’s beam at what had caught his eye. He found it again, then braced his feet against the shaft’s sides to steady himself.

“I’ve got timber!” he called.

There were several seconds of silence, then Remi’s faint voice: “I’m dumbfounded, Sam. Describe it.”

“It’s a horizontal piece about three inches thick. I can see eight to ten inches of it.”

“Three inches thick is too thin to be the spar deck. Could it be the deckhouse roof? The only other raised structures were the stack, the engine-room skylight, the wardroom skylight, and the wheelhouse. Do you see any traces of glass?”

“No. I’m moving on.”

Again he reached the bottom of his excavation. They evacuated more debris, then he kicked out his toeholds and went to work with the stick. On his first strike, he heard the solid thunk of wood on wood. He did it again with the same result. He dug out the remainder of the shaft, then craned his neck downward, illuminating the bottom with his headlamp.

“I’ve got decking,” he shouted.

 

 

HE LOWERED HIMSELF until his feet touched the deck. The wood creaked and bowed under his weight. After shoving debris to one side with his boot, he slammed his heel down and got a satisfying crack in reply. A dozen more stomps opened a ragged two-foot hole. The rest of the detritus plunged through the opening.

“I’m going through.”

Hand over hand, he lowered himself through the deck. The light from the surface receded and faded, leaving him suspended in the glow of his headlamp. His feet touched a hard surface. He tested his weight on it. It was solid. Cautiously, he released the rope.

“I’m down,” he called. “Looks okay.”

“I’m on my way,” Remi replied.