“You know why.”
She stepped up to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Drive the boat, Sam. Let’s finish this together.”
Sam sighed, then smiled. “You’re a remarkable woman.”
“I know. Now, drive the boat.”
BY LATE AFTERNOON, what had merely been a smudge on the overcast horizon began to resolve into the island’s lush green peaks and craggy coastline. Shaped like a jagged comma, the uninhabited Pulau Legundi was roughly four miles long by two miles wide. Like all the other islands in and around the Sunda Strait, it had once been blanketed by volcanic ash from Krakatoa. A hundred thirty years of wind and rain and an ever-patient Mother Nature had transformed the island into an isolated patch of thriving rain forest.
JUST OVER TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after leaving Jakarta, with the sun setting over the Legundi’s peaks, Sam turned the pinisi’s bow in to a sheltered cove on the eastern shoreline. He gunned the engine and slid the bow onto a ten-foot-wide strip of white-sand beach, and Remi jumped out. Sam tossed down their packs and followed her. He secured the bowline to a nearby tree.
Remi unfolded the tourist map they’d purchased at the hotel-the best they could do in a pinch-and laid it on the sand. They crouched down. Before leaving the museum, Sam had studied a few digital maps on the kiosk and mentally marked the ship’s position.
“From here it’s less than a mile to the western side,” he said. “As best I can tell, the Shenandoah-”“Assuming it was her.”
“I’m praying it was her. My best guess puts her here, in this shallow bay. If we’re using the Berouw’s fate as a model-”“Yes, run that by me again.”
“According to accepted history, the Berouw was the only true ship to be pushed inland. Anything smaller was either driven to the bottom of the strait or instantly destroyed by the final tsunami. My theory is this: What made the Berouw different is that she was anchored at the mouth of a river.”“A path of least resistance,” Remi said.
“Exactly. She was driven inland via a preexisting gouge in the terrain. If you draw a line from Krakatoa through the ship’s anchorage and onto the island, you see a-”
Leaning closely over the map, Remi finished Sam’s thought. “A ravine.”
“A deep one, bracketed on both sides by five-hundred-foot peaks. If you look closely, the ravine ends below this third peak, a few hundred yards shy of the opposite shoreline. One mile long and a quarter mile wide.”
“What’s to say she wasn’t crushed into dust or shoved up and over the island and slammed into the seabed?” Remi asked. “We’re twenty-five miles from Krakatoa. The Berouw was fifty miles away and she ended up miles inland.”
“Two reasons: One, the peaks around our ravine are far steeper than anything around the river; and two, the Shenandoah was at least four times as heavy as the Berouw and iron-framed with double-thick oak and teak hull plates. She was designed to take punishment.”“You make a good case.”
“Let’s hope it translates into reality.” “I do, however, have one more nagging detail . . .”
“Shoot.”
“How would the Shenandoah have survived the pyroclastic flow?”
“As it happens, I have a theory about that. Care to hear it?”
“Hold on to it. If you turn out to be right, you can tell me. If you’re wrong, it won’t matter.”
WITHIN FIVE MINUTES of breaching the tree line they realized Madagascar’s forests didn’t hold a candle to those of Pulau Legundi. The trees, so densely packed that Sam and Remi frequently had to turn sideways to squeeze between them, were also entwined in skeins of creeper vines that looped from tree trunk to branch to ground. By the time they’d covered a hundred yards, Sam’s shoulder throbbed from swinging the machete.
They found a closet-sized clearing in the undergrowth and crouched down for a water break. Insects swirled around them, buzzing in their ears and nostrils. Above, the canopy was filled with the squawks of unseen birds. Remi dug a can of bug repellant from her pack and coated Sam’s exposed skin; he did the same for her.“This could be a positive for us,” Sam said.
“What?”
“Do you see how most of the tree trunks are covered in a layer of mold and creepers? It’s like armor. What’s good for the trees could be good for ship planking.”
He took another sip from the canteen, then handed it to Remi. “The going will get easier the higher we go,” he said.
“Define easier.”
“More sunlight means fewer creeper vines.”
“And higher means steeper,” Remi replied with a game smile. “Life’s a trade-off.”
Sam checked his watch. “Two hours to sunset. Please tell me you remembered to pack the mosquito hammock . . .”
“I did. But I forgot the hibachi, the steaks, and the cooler of ice-cold beer.”
“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?”
