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.
He saw more rows of amphoras, then a scour channel with darkened timbers protruding below. He drew in his breath. “Well I’ll be damned.”
“Got something?” Costas’ voice crackled through.
“Just another ancient wreck.”
“Couldn’t beat an elephantegos,” Costas retorted. “My elephantegos.”
“Just some old pots,” Jack said.
“It’s never just old pots with you. I’ve seen you empty the gold inside to get at the pot. Typical archaeologist.”
“The pots are where the history lies,” Jack said.
“So you keep telling me. Personally, I’ll take a sack of doubloons over a pot any day. So what have you got?”
“Wine amphoras, about two centuries later than the Rhodian ones with the elephantegos. These date from the time of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. They come all the way from Italy.”
Jack finned toward the row of amphoras. His excitement mounted. “These are outward-bound, no doubt about it. They’ve still got the mortar seals over the lids, with the stamp of the Italian estates that made them. This is Falernian wine, vintage stuff Costas, I think we’ve just hit pay dirt.” He looked back. Costas had swum up from the coral head and was hanging in the water at the halfway point, already rising a few meters above the seafloor. “Time to go, Jack. Two minutes to our no-stop limit.”
“Roger that.” Jack’s eyes were darting around, taking in everything possible in the remaining moments before the alarm bell sounded. “Each of these wine amphoras was worth a slave. There are hundreds of them. This was a high-value cargo. A Roman East Indiaman.”
“You mean actually going to India?” Costas flicked on his headlamp, bringing out the colors in the seabed around Jack. “Doesn’t that mean bullion? Treasure?”
Jack touched one of the amphoras. He felt the thrill that coursed through him every time he touched an artifact that had lain beyond human hands since ancient times. And shipwrecks were the most exciting finds of all. Not the accumulated garbage of a civilization, castoffs and rubbish, but living organisms, lost in a moment of catastrophe, on the cusp of great adventure. Adventure that always came with risk, and this time the dice had fallen the wrong way. This had been a ship heading out into a perilous monsoon, for a voyage of thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean. Jack knew the draw of the east from his own ancestors who had sailed there in the time of the East India Company. They had called it The Enterprise of the Indies, the greatest adventure of all. Untold treasure. Untold danger. And for the ancients, the stakes were even higher. Somewhere out there lay the fiery edge of the world. Yet along its rim, as far as you could go, were to be found riches that would humble even a mighty emperor, and bring him face-to-face with the greatest secrets imaginable, with sacred elixirs, with alchemy, with immortality.
The alarm sounded, a harsh, insistent clanging that seemed to come from everywhere. Jack took a deep
