Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt 15)

But remote viewing was not one of Pitt's skills. He was a man attuned to the here and now. He could not pass through the unseen wall separating the past from the present.

His reverie was broken by the Southern-accented voice of Ira Cox.

"Do you want to start loading the sleds with these crates?"

Pitt blinked, looked up, and nodded. "Soon as I replace the lids, we'll carry them out in stages up to the next deck. Then lower them by rope through the hole you made in the hull down to the floor of the ice cave.

"I count twenty-four of them," said Northrop. He walked to a stack of crates and picked one up. His face turned four different shades of red, and his eyes bulged.

Cox, quickly sizing up the situation, took the crate from Northrop as easily as if he were handed a baby. "You'd better let me do the heavy work, Doc."

"You don't know how grateful I am, Ira," said Northrop, overjoyed at being relieved of the crate, which must have weighed close to a hundred pounds.

Cox took the most strenuous part of the job. Hoisting each crate onto one

shoulder, he carried it down the ladder to Pitt, who then tied it with a sling and lowered it down to a waiting sled, where Northrop shoved it into place. When they finished, each sled held eight crates.

Pitt walked to the entrance of the cave and called the ship. "How does the storm look from your end?"

he asked Gillespie.

"According to our resident meteorologist, it should blow over in a few hours."

"The sleds are loaded with the artifacts," said Pitt.

"Do you require help?"

"There must be close to eight hundred pounds per sled. Any assistance to pull them back to the Polar Storm will be gratefully accepted."

"Stand by until the weather clears," Gillespie said. "I'll personally lead the relief party."

"Are you sure you want to make the trip?"

"And miss walking the deck of an eighteenth-century ship? Not for all the cognac in France."

"I'll introduce you to the captain."

"You've seen the captain?" Gillespie asked curiously.

"Not yet, but if Roxanna Mender didn't exaggerate, he should be fresh as a Popsicle."

Captain Leigh Hunt still sat at the desk where he had died in 1779. Nothing had changed except for the small indentation in the ice where the ship's log had once lain on the desktop. Solemnly, they studied the child in the crib and Mrs. Hunt, two centuries of ice covering her saddened and delicate features. The dog was only a frozen mound of white.

They walked through the cabins, illuminating the long-dead passengers with their halogen lights. The shrouds of ice glittered brightly, scarcely revealing the bodies beneath. Pitt tried to visualize their final moments, but the tragedy seemed so poignant it just didn't bear thinking about. Seeing those waxen effigies in the shadowy gloom, rigid under their ice coating, made it hard to imagine them as living, breathing humans who went about their everyday lives before dying in a remote and awful part of the world. The expressions on some of the faces, distorted by the ice, were ghastly beyond description.

What were their last thoughts alone, without hope of rescue?

"This is a nightmare," murmured Northrop. "But a glorious nightmare."

Pitt looked at him questioningly. "Glorious?"

"The wonder of it all. Human bodies perfectly preserved, frozen in time. Think what this means to the science of cryogenics. Think of the potential for bringing them all back to life."

The thought struck Pitt like a blow to the head. Could science make it possible someday to present the cold, dead passengers and crew of the Madras with a rebirth? "Think of the amazing amount of history that would be rewritten after talking to someone brought back to life after two hundred years."

Northrop threw up his hands. "Why dream? It won't happen in our lifetime."

"Probably not," said Pitt, contemplating the possibility, "but I wish I could be around to witness the reaction of these poor souls when they saw what's happened to their world since 1779."