through the open door of the ship and hung suspended.
'We should be back in two hours,' Gunn yelled back over the sound of the rotors and the engine exhaust. He pushed the descent button and Pitt dropped below the skids of the helicopter and soon disappeared into the dense vegetation as if he had jumped into a green ocean.
As he hung supported by his safety harness, machete gripped in his right hand, a portable radio in his left, Pitt felt almost as if he were once again dropping into the green slime of the sacrificial well. He could not tell for certain how high he was above the ground, but he estimated the distance from the roof of the forest to its floor to be at least 50 meters (164 feet).
Seen from the air, the rain forest looked like a chaotic mass of struggling plant growth. The trunks of the taller trees were crowded with dense layers of shorter growth, each seeking its share of sunlight. The twigs and leaves nearest the sun danced under the downdraft provided by the helicopter's rotor, giving them the appearance of a restless, undulating ocean.
Pitt held an arm over his eyes as he slowly descended through the first tier of the green canopy, narrowly brushing past the limbs of a high mahogany tree that was sprouting clusters of small white flowers. He used his feet to spring without difficulty out of the way of the thicker branches. A draft of rising steam, caused by the sun's heat, wafted up from the still unseen ground. After the air-conditioned cabin of the helicopter, it didn't take long for sweat to flow from every pore. As he frantically pushed aside a branch that was rising between his legs, he frightened a pair of spider monkeys that leapt chattering around to the other side of the tree.
'You say something?' asked Gunn over the radio.
'I flushed a pair of monkeys during their siesta,' Pitt replied.
'Do you want me to slow you down?'
'No, this is fine. I've passed through the first layer of trees. Now it looks like I'm coming down through what I'd guess is laurel.'
'Yell if you want me to move you around,' said Giordino over the cockpit radio.
'Maintain your position,' Pitt directed. 'Shifting around might snag the descent cable and leave me hanging up here till I'm an old man.'
Pitt entered a thicker maze of branches and quickly managed to cut a tunnel with his machete without having to order Gunn to reduce his rate of descent. He was invading a world seldom seen, a world filled with beauty and danger. Immense climbing plants, desperate for light, crawled straight up the taller trees, some clutching their hosts with tendrils and hooks while others twined upward toward the light like corkscrews. Moss draped the trees in great sheets, reminding him of cobwebs in a crypt from a horror movie. But there was beauty too. Vast garlands of orchids circled their way toward the sky as if they were strings of lights on a Christmas tree.
'Can you see the ground?' asked Gunn.
'Not yet. I still have to move through a small tree that looks like some sort of palm with wild peaches growing on it. After that, I have to dodge a snarl of hanging vines.'
'I believe they're called lianas.'
'Botany wasn't one of my better subjects.'
'You could grab one and play Tarzan,' said Gunn, injecting some humor into a potentially dangerous situation.
'Only if I saw Jane--'
Gunn tensed at Pitt's sudden pause. 'What is it? Are you okay?'
When Pitt answered, his voice was barely louder than a whisper. 'I almost grabbed what I took to be a thick vine. But it was a snake the size of a drainpipe with a mouth like an alligator.'
'What color?'
'Black with yellowish brown spots.'
'A boa constrictor,' explained Gunn. 'He might give you a big hug, but he's not poisonous. Pet him on the head for me.'
'Like hell,' Pitt snorted. 'If he so much as looks cross-eyed at me, he meets Madame LaFarge.
'Who?'
'My machete.'
'What else do you see?'
'Several magnificent butterflies, a number of insects that look like they belong on an alien planet, and a parrot too shy to ask for a cracker. You wouldn't believe the size of the flowers growing out of nooks in the trees. There are violets the size of my head.'
Conversation dropped off as Pitt chopped his way through a low tree with dense branches. He was sweating like a prizefighter in the last round of a championship match, and his clothes were soaked through from the heavy moisture clinging to the leaves of the trees. As he raised the machete, his arm brushed a vine armored with thorns that shredded his shirt sleeve and sliced his forearm as neatly as claws on a cat. Luckily, the cuts were not deep or painful, and he disregarded them.
'Stop the winch,' he said as he felt firm ground beneath his feet. 'I'm down.'
'Any sign of the galleon?' Gunn asked anxiously.
Pitt did not immediately answer. He tucked the machete under his arm and turned a complete circle, unclipping the safety harness as he surveyed his surroundings. It was like being at the bottom of a leafy ocean. There was scarcely any light, and what little was available had the same eerie quality a diver would experience at 60 meters (196 feet) beneath the surface of the sea. The dense vegetation blotted out most of the color spectrum from the little sunlight that reached him, leaving only green and blue mixed with gray.
He was pleasantly surprised to find the rain forest was not impassable at ground level. Except for a soft carpet of decomposing leaves and twigs, the floor beneath the canopy of trees was comparatively free of growth, with none of the heaps of moldering vegetation he had expected. Now that he was standing in the sunless depths he could easily understand why plant life that grew close to the ground was scarce.
'I see nothing that resembles the hull of a ship,' he said. 'No ribs, no beams, no keel.'
'A bust,' said Gunn, the disillusionment coming through in his voice. 'The mag must have read a natural iron deposit.'
'No,' Pitt replied, striving to keep his voice calm, 'I can't say that.'
'What are you telling us?'
'Only that the fungi, insects, and bacteria that call this place home have made a meal out of every organic component of the ship. Not too surprising when you figure that they had four hundred years to devour it down to the keel.'
Gunn went silent, not quite comprehending. Then it struck him like a lightning bolt.
'Oh, my God!' he yelped. 'We found it. You're actually standing on the wreck of the galleon.'
'Dead center.'
'You say all sign of the hull is gone?' Giordino cut in.
'All that remains is covered by moss and humus, but I think I can make out some ceramic pots, a few scattered cannon shot, one anchor, and a small pile of ballast stones. The site reads like an old campsite with trees growing through the middle of it.'
'Shall we hang around?' asked Giordino.
'No, get your tails to Manta and refuel. I'll poke around for the jade box until you get back.'
'Can we drop you anything?'
'I shouldn't need anything but the machete.'
'You still have the smoke canisters?' Giordino asked.
'Two of them clipped to my belt.'
'Set one off soon as you hear us return.'
'Never fear,' Pitt said blithely. 'I'm not about to try walking out of here.'
'See you in two hours,' said Gunn, his spirits brimming.
'Try to be on time.'
In a different circumstance, at a different time, Pitt might have experienced a fit of depression as the sound of the McDonnell Douglas Explorer died away, leaving behind the heavy atmosphere of the rain forest. But he was energized at knowing that somewhere within a short distance of where he was standing, buried in the ancient pile of debris, was the key to a vast treasure. He did not throw himself into a frenzy of wild digging. Instead, he
