'The Mayan writings say the voyage lasted one moon cycle. About thirty days. The Maya were precise timekeepers. Here is the last in the series. The boats have arrived at their destination. They are being greeted as they unload. There is an easy familiarity to the operation which suggests they were known to the inhabitants of this land.' He turned to Trout and said, 'It is time, my friend, to perform your computer magic.'
Trout nodded. The blinking computer cursor selected three figures from the scene, framed their faces in a heavy white outline, then enlarged them. One face was that of a bearded man with an aquiline profile and a conical hat. The next was wide with full lips and a close-fitting skullcap or helmet. The third was a man with high cheekbones and elaborate feathered headdress.
Trout moved the images to the left of the screen, arranging them top to bottom. Three new faces appeared to the right.
'Looks like they were separated at birth,' Zavala observed of the pairings.
'The similarity is pretty obvious, isn't it?' Orville noted. 'Let's go back to the full scene again. Dr. Kirov, as our marine archaeologist, we would be pleased to have your opinion.'
Using a laser pointer Nina highlighted first one ship then another. 'What we have here is basically the same vessel used for dual purposes. The features are identical. The long and
straight flat-bottomed hull. The absence of a boom; the brails or napes used to lower and raise sail hang from a fixed yard. The lines sweep back to an overhanging stern. Three decks.. Fore and aft stays. The carved bow.' The red dot lingered for a second. 'Here is the double steering oar. The protrusion at this other end is a ram. This is a row of shields along the deck.'
'So it's a warship?' Zavala said.
'Yes and no,' Nina said. 'On the top deck of one of these ships are men with spears. Obviously soldiers or marines. There are lookouts in the bows and space for lots of rowers.' The laser flicked to another ship. 'But here the deck is reserved for a person of quality. See this figure of a man reclining in the sunshine. The staff has a crescent on top, indicating the admiral's flagship. This thing hanging off the stern could be a decoration, a rich carpet maybe, that indicates the admiral is in authority.'
'How long would this ship be?' Austin asked.
'My guess is that they're somewhere in the range of one to two hundred feet. Maybe longer. That would put them at around. a thousand tons.'
Orville interjected. 'Nina, could you mention that comparison you used with us landlubbers?'
'I'd be glad to. This ship is much longer than an English ship of the seventeenth century. The Mayflower, for example, was only one hundred eighty tons.'
Orville asked, 'So in your opinion, Nina, what are we looking at?'
Nina stared at the images, as if she were reluctant to vocalize what was in her brain. The scientist won out, however, and she said, 'In my opinion as a nautical archaeologist, the ships shown in this rendering reflect the characteristics of Phoenician ocean-going vessels. If that sounds a little vague, yes, I am hedging my bets until I have more evidence.'
'What sort of evidence would you need, Nina?' Austin said.
An actual ship, for one thing. What we know about Phoenician ships we learned mainly from their pictures on coins. There have been some reports that they were as long as three hundred feet. I'd take that with a grain of salt, but even if you cut that length down by half you still have a substantial vessel for its day.'
'Substantial enough to cross the Atlantic?'
'Without a doubt,' she replied. 'These vessels were a lot bigger and more seaworthy than some of the minuscule sailboats that have made the crossing. People have rowed across the ocean in a dory, for heaven sakes. This vessel would have been ideal. You can't beat the square sail for an ocean passage. With a fore-and-aft rig you've always got the possibility of a dangerous jibe, the boom swinging violently over with a shift of the wind. With the brails they could shorten sail in a brisk wind. They'd get a roll with that shallow keel, but the rowers could help keep her steady, and the length of the ship would help. A trireme like this could sail more than a hundred miles a day under ideal circumstances.
'Short of an actual ship, what would you need to convince you this is Phoenician?°
'I'm not talking about convincing me,' Gamay said. 'I'm already convinced. Could we go back to those fares again, Paul?' The six carved heads came up on the screen again. The laser dot touched on one depiction of the bearded man, then flicked to his twin. 'The pointed hat on these gentlemen is consistent with those worn by Phoenician mariners.'
'Which should come as no surprise,' Orville interjected, 'because the picture on the right came from a Phoenician stela discovered near Tunisia. The gentleman below him is identical to African-type faces found at La Venta, Mexico. The third physical type is from the Mayan ruins at Uxmal.'
'I hear a conclusion lurking in there,' Austin said.
Orville sat back in his chair and made a tent with his fingertips. 'Basing conclusions on pictorial matching is fine if you're a pseudoscientist trying to sell a paperback book, but it's not good archaeology,' Orville said. He took a deep breath. 'My colleagues would drag what's left of my tattered reputation from one end of Harvard Yard to the other if they heard me say this. Marine
archaeology is not my forte, so I can't assess Nina's statements. What I do know is that the inscriptions on these rocks show Phoenicians, Africans, and Mayans together in one place. Furthermore, Dr. Chi and I have translated the glyphs together and independently, and we've come, up with the same results each time. The stones say that those ships arrived in Maya country after fleeing a disaster in their homeland. What's more, they were greeted not as strangers but as old acquaintances.'
'Did the glyphs indicate a date?'
'Knowing the Maya's obsession with timekeeping, I'd be surprised if there weren't one. The ships arrived in what would be 146 B.C. in our calendar.'
Nina stared at the projection and whispered in Latin.
Seeing all eyes turned in her direction she explained, 'It's something you learn in first-year Latin. 'Delenda est Carthago.' Carthage must be destroyed! Cato the Elder ended every speech he made in the Roman senate with the phrase. He was trying to whip up public sentiment in favor of a war against the Phoenician city of Carthage.'
'It worked, as I recall. Carthage was destroyed,' Austin said.
'Yes. In 146 B.C.'
'Which means these ships could have been escaping the Romans.
A date is a date,' Nina said, digging in her heels before she got dragged too far into Austin's theory. 'I simply pointed out the coincidence. I made no conclusion. As a scientist I'd be irresponsible to make a statement like that,' she added, but she couldn't hide the excitement building in her gray eyes.
Austin said, 'I understand why as scientists you can't come out and say what you're thinking without more solid evidence. But from what I've seen here today I'm convinced the inscriptions on these stones suggest that ancient voyagers arrived in America long before Columbus. You know the Phoenicians were capable of making the crossing.
'I know they were the world's greatest explorers up until the fifteenth or sixteenth century. They circumnavigated Africa and went as far as Cornwall on the English coast and Cape Verde. On one voyage they supposedly took thousands of people on sixty ships.'
'I rest my case,' Austin said with exaggerated smugness.
'Not so fast, Perry Mason. The doubters will say these inscriptions are interesting, but who's to say they are authentic? Years ago inscriptions in Brazil supposedly described a Phoenician expedition in 531 B.C. The consensus was that they were forged. It sounds crazy, but you'll get people saying the antiquities looters could have been carving this stuff to sell to gullible collectors. Sure, you could make a case that the 'ships of Tarshish' undertook transatlantic voyages, but you need more substantial and substantiated proof to get anyone in the scientific community to accept it.'
'What about the astrolabe you and the professor found?'
'Even that wouldn't do it, Kurt. They would say someone with Cortez or a Spanish hidalgo brought this thing in, an Indian stole it and stuck it in an old temple. Close but no cigar until you know for sure how it got there.'
'Did the writing indicate what the ships were carrying?'
'We've been saving that for last,' Orville said, giggling like a schoolboy.
