“Did you mention this to President Lincoln?” Thomas asked as he raised his head.
“Mention what?”
“Your time frame for these events, you old fool!” Taylor said, suddenly frustrated just listening to the old man. His men could possibly die on the assumptions of an insane professor who had been fired from his teaching post at Harvard for these very same beliefs.
No one ventured to go further with the conversation. Claire hung her head and then stepped over to a large rock and leaned heavily against it.
Ollafson didn’t seem to notice the distance everyone was putting between themselves and him. He just smiled and stared out onto the expansive glacier.
“The Ark has to be right down—” He reached down and retrieved his walking staff and then jabbed the ice with its spiked tip. “Here!”
Thomas looked up and saw the staff sticking in the ice. He looked at Jessy, who was insane with rage at having dragged his men six thousand miles away from home to please an old fool with dreams, or was it delusions, of grandeur.
Snow started to blow in from across the Persian border. The winds were cold and the snow stung their exposed skin. Still, Ollafson looked from face to face in anticipation of their excitement at arriving.
Gray Dog and Dugan watched from a distance away.
“Well, my guess is that it’s time we go home,” Dugan said as he spit a stream of tobacco juice into the snow and ice. Gray Dog grimaced at the disgusting habit of the sergeant major and looked down at the brown stain on the snow. He cocked his head to the right when he saw not only the stain, but the ice it was upon, vanish. Gray Dog knew what was about to happen and could do nothing to warn anyone. He grabbed Dugan and pushed him away and they both fell into the snow.
“Professor, we have no way of digging down through what is possibly a mile of ice to find your fantasy. This is a fool’s errand and always has been,” Jessy said as he threw his gloves into the snow. The wind had picked up by at least thirty miles per hour in the past two minutes and the snow was of a much thicker volume than any time before.
“Look, the petrified wood was found only feet from where we are standing. The Ark is here.” Ollafson was pleading after he read the faces of those around him and he finally started to understand. They did not believe him.
“You have the rest of the day and tomorrow. Then we leave this place,” John Henry said as he started to move off. The realization struck him that for the first time in his military life he had failed to complete a mission.
“You can’t mean that!” Ollafson cried as he tried to catch Thomas.
“Get down!” came the distant call.
All heads turned and they saw Gray Dog waving frantically toward the line of soldiers.
“What in the hell is he—” Jessy started to say.
The crack sounded like a large-bore cannon exploding only inches from them. The tear in the ice was so sudden and so loud that it hurt the ears of every man who heard it.
Without further warning the entire ice shelf gave way. The first one pulled in was Thomas. He scrambled frantically to remove the rope from his waist before he was pulled in. Claire and the others started doing the same but it was far too late. John Henry vanished into the dark void that formed in the few feet of stone before the actual glacier.
One by one the expedition was pulled down into the darkness. Finally the sixth man in line managed to cut his rope and saved the bulk of the men from being pulled in. The shock was palpable as they saw the entire command team being pulled into the hole.
* * *
John Henry struck his head on the edge of the hole as he was pulled in, and still he tried to get the rope off to save those he could. He landed hard on his back and then he started to slide. The darkness of the void slipped by with only the notice of a rough grade and the flow of rushing air to attest to the speed of his slide. Above him he heard the screams and shouts of others as they too tumbled down deep into the beginnings of the glacier. He bounced off a curve in the strangely made tunnel of the void. He heard a woman shout and then cry out in pain above him in the darkness. Then the voices of others as they started their free fall to whatever death awaited them. Finally he slid to a stop and was absolutely shocked that he was still alive. Bruised and battered, but he was breathing. Then he heard another thud next to him and Claire, with Jessy atop her, landed at his feet. He quickly pulled them back as the rest of them, McDonald, Jackson, and then finally Ollafson, came sliding and crashing to a stop.
John Henry could not speak for the briefest of moments. He felt Claire take hold of him in a death grip and hug him as hard as he had ever been hugged. It was Jessy who managed to extricate himself from the pile of humanity and then strike a match. He raised his brows when he saw the tight hold Claire had on John Henry, then moved the match around.
“My God!” Ollafson said.
They were inside a giant void. It had been formed more than ten thousand years ago by volcanic activity that produced bubbles the size of Manhattan Island and created what it was they had landed in—a giant geode of water and ice. There was a waterfall. That much they could hear in the distance, and they all wondered just how far they had slid.
Claire finally regained some composure and released John Henry.
“Sorry. I thought we would slide off into oblivion at any moment.”
“As far as that goes, I’m pretty sure we just did,” John Henry said, as he rubbed at his hurt and aching muscles. He felt the back of his head and the hand came away with a patch of blood. Claire saw this and made him bend over.
The match soon burned out and before Jessy could light another McDonald stayed his hand.
“Look,” he said in wonder.
As they glanced around the immense ice cave, they saw that the sun, as weak a light as it was, was showing through the thickness of the ice from above. It was though the cave was brushed with soft moonlight.
“Amazing. It’s as though the ice is amplifying the weak sunlight into an incandescent state,” Ollafson said as Jessy looked at him as though he still thought him insane.
“Is anyone alive down there?” came the voice of Sergeant Major Dugan as if from heaven. The question echoed for a brief moment and then John Henry called up.
“We need ropes, block and tackle!” he called.
“Yes, sir. Glad to hear you’re still sucking breath,” Dugan said, going on faith alone as he could not see past a few feet into the giant void.
“Colonel, we must explore this magnificent structure before we evacuate,” Ollafson said.
“Professor, this has gone on long enough. Wasn’t that fall convincing enough for you? This is a dangerous place.”
“Yes, but we must—”
“We must do nothing but end this charade, old man. There is nothing up here for us but death.” Taylor’s eyes were wide in anger and he was very tired of beating circles around the proverbial bush. He faced John Henry, whom he could now see clearly in the strange and diffused light. “Now, you know we tried, John Henry, but not one life is worth proving this maniac’s dream.” He turned and looked at Ollafson. “Now, I appreciate the fact that this is your life’s work, but this will end up costing men their lives. Men who want to survive not only this fool’s errand, but the war also.” Jessy looked down in sadness. “They want to go home to their families. Not just my men, but every man who wears a uniform.”
Claire heard the honest words and felt for not only Ollafson, but the men on this venture. For the first time she realized every one of these men was someone’s father, husband, or brother. What right did Ollafson have to send them to their death just to prove a point of theory? She walked until the darkness became more complete and she was surprised when she walked right into a wall. She was startled but stepped back.
That was when her world changed forever.
* * *
Ollafson was despondent. He slowly slid down the wall when he realized Thomas was calling an end to the mission. There was just too much
area to search and they were fast running out of time. John Henry stepped over and assisted the old man to his feet.
“In better times, Professor, I have no doubt you’ll come back for the Ark and actually find it,” Thomas said as he looked around and noticed that Claire wasn’t with them. He had just started to search when she stepped into the soft light filtering through the ice. She walked to her pack and removed a small lamp and lit it.
“Why wait to come back?”
“What are you talking about?” McDonald asked as Claire held the small lamp up high.
“We may as well do something with it right now. I mean, we are here, are we not?”
She turned and held the lamp higher. Everyone, including John Henry Thomas, the man whom nothing surprised, felt his eyes go wide.
There, buried in many thousands of years of ice, was the curved bow of a ship. It rose sixty feet above their heads and vanished into blue-tinted ice. John Henry could make out the wood of its beams, but then again he knew it wasn’t wood, because after all of this time it looked as if the giant bow had been carved from black stone. It was the Confederate colonel who summed it up for the rest of them in an articulate way that only Taylor could accomplish.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch!”
22
John Henry stood atop the glacier after he and the others had been pulled out by Dugan and the men. Word of the find sent a shock wave through the tired troops, North and South. After most had figured the headquarters staff had been killed, they learned the news that made all of those days in Sunday school class as children come into their thoughts.
The large hole had been widened and a sling system was built by the navy riggers. Men and equipment were now below shoring up the large system of caves. After the initial discovery had been made it was learned that the cave had many duplicates, and sections of the great Ark could be seen through many thin or bare spots. The size of the vessel was enormous. Ollafson noted that the Ark was heavily damaged not only by the passage of time, but by the elements that had combined to crush large sections of the ancient ship.
More than a hundred oil lamps assisted the weak and fading light of day to illuminate the most amazing sight the men had ever seen. Even McDonald was in awe of what the Americans had found. His mission had changed somewhat since their thrill ride through hell. The bloody Yanks had proven the myth. Now they would have to get the proof back to civilization, and that was what McDonald had to stop or claim as England’s own. He would have to move fast. He would not tell Madame Claire about his plans. For some reason he could not fathom, she had become distant and she was constantly observing him, and to be frank about it, it made him uneasy.
Jessy was leading the men who were busy shoring up the tighter and more fragile areas of the cave system. They had sacrificed ten of the valuable sleds for the wood needed and they would still be dangerously short if the ceiling of the void came crashing down. For the most part the men had settled into an uneasy silence since their initial viewing of the Ark. Now their eyes were constantly moving to the ice around them, waiting to hear the sound of cracking, indicating they were about to be buried alive.
The latest man down was Daniel Perlmutter. The equipment inside the wooden boxes was handled by him alone as he used the rope sling to carefully maneuver the camera equipment down.
Ollafson, who was walking around the exposed section of the Ark taking notes and making diagrams, saw the young photographer and smiled. He approached him as the boy was unloading the first of his equipment.
“I see you are about to do your magic with that box, eh?” the old man asked as he saw the rope sling heading back to the surface.
Perlmutter looked up and smiled. The young man pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up his nose and then lowered the hood of his jacket.
“Oh, hello, Professor. Yes,” he said as he looked around at his scattered camera equipment. “I figured I better get my things down here before the navy starts lowering the explosives.”
“Sensible,” Ollafson said.
“Now, Professor, don’t go wandering off. We want to immortalize you and your find,” Perlmutter said with a wink.
“Oh, my. No, there will be plenty of time for that. We have other work we need to do.”
“So I understand. The colonel is getting ready to send down the men who will disassemble some of the Ark after I take my images.”
Ollafson froze with pencil and notebook in hand. He was looking at Perlmutter as if he were deranged. “Excuse me, disassemble?”
“Yes, the colonel said they need a few sections for your proof—well, that and the photographs I take, that is.”
“No, no, no, young man, you must have heard wrong. We must stay and excavate this site properly. There will be no disassembly for samples.”
Perlmutter could see that the news had unhinged the professor somewhat.
“I’m sure I heard right, but you can double-check the orders.”
The notebook and pencil fell from Ollafson’s hand and his eyes went wide just before he lunged at the young man. Perlmutter yelped when the professor grabbed him by the throat and both men went down over the scattered equipment. Ollafson had lost control and was trying his best to kill the messenger.
Taylor heard the boy call out and he turned to see two men rolling on the ice floor of the cave. He thought for sure it must have been one of his men and one of John Henry’s. He ran over and was surprised when he pulled Professor Ollafson off the learned student of Mathew Brady. He had to shake Ollafson to get him to stop trying to claw his way back to Perlmutter.
“What in the hell has gotten into you, Doc?” Jessy said as he shook the man, trying to shock some sense back into those crazed eyes. Taylor shook him so hard that Ollafson’s glasses went flying. Then the man went semi-limp in Jessy’s hands. He looked down at Daniel Perlmutter, who was rubbing his neck and trying to stand up. A few of the marines and Rebs gathered around to see what the ruckus was about. “What did you do?” he asked the still-shaken Perlmutter.
“Nothing. I just told him that the colonel had ordered samples of the Ark and its images recorded.”
“We can’t just leave it here,” Ollafson said as his eyes stared off into the distance as though Taylor was not even there.
“Professor, the find is yours. You have proven that it exists. No one can ever take that away from you. You’ll be back. Lincoln will surely support a more legal expedition now.”
The Rebs who had gathered around exchanged looks when Taylor mentioned Lincoln. It was if he was conceding Lincoln would always be there, meaning the war was lost in his opinion.
Ollafson continued to stare at nothing.
“All right, you men get the professor hooked into that harness and get him out of here. I don’t want him anywhere near that dynamite when it gets down here.”
The men didn’t move at first, and then the professor lowered his head in defeat. The men moved to follow the command of Taylor.
* * *
It had taken Claire two full hours to get Ollafson to sleep, and it also took several sleeping aids prescribed by the marine corpsman at that. The sun had set and the snow was falling at a brisk pace, the winds were picking up, and it looked as though the camp was in for rough night. The rest of the late afternoon had been taken up by Captain Jackson and John Henry as they pondered the communication problems that had arisen along with the bad weather. They needed to signal Lieutenant Parnell on the plain below by rocket fire that they had made their goal of the summit. The cloud cover was so thick they couldn’t see the slope of the mountain, much less the plain below. They would have to await a clearing of the skies before contact could be established.
“I think that part of our plan could have been thought out better,” Jackson said as he scanned the skies above.
“Well, we didn’t have the time to lay a telegraph line from Talise all the way up here. We’ll have to make do. Maybe in a day or two we can send a messenger back.” The two men knew that wit
hout the signal rockets they would be blind as to what was approaching them from the west.
* * *
Four hours later John Henry stared up at the raked and curved bow of the Ark and shook his head. Jessy and Claire stood next to him as they examined the giant’s bow under lamplight for the first time. The men were above trying to bed down as best they could with the storm intensifying.
“It kind of makes you wonder what else you’ve been mistaken about all your life, doesn’t it?” Thomas said as he saw the tool markings that had been carved in the wood more than thirteen thousand years before. He saw the wooden pegs that held the massive vessel together, all turned to stone.
“I don’t take well to reflection,” Jessy said as he gave John Henry a sorrowful look. “Hell, I’ve been wrong so much it’s become a career objective.”
For the first time since the mission began all three of them laughed at the same time. They stopped when they heard the men who were assigned the task of shoring up a small cave that extended halfway to the middle of the Ark. Jenks, several Confederate prisoners, a few marines, and Grandee and his off-duty mess crew were assisting.
The laughter died and then John Henry handed Claire the lamp and shocked her by starting to climb the rope ladder that had been placed on the large bow for work crews to enter in the morning when the Ark was examined.
“Hey, your own orders were to await the naval engineers in the morning,” Claire called up.
“I have a history of not following orders. That’s why I’m here,” he said as he made the top of the curving prow of the Ark and then vanished over the ancient gunwale.
Claire looked at Taylor. He just half-bowed and then gestured toward the rope. “You’re the one that climbs like a ring-tailed lemur. After you,” he said, smiling.
Claire lowered the hood of her coat, gave Taylor a smug look, and then smiled and took hold of the rope. Jessy had to grin as Claire shot up the rope ladder almost as fast as Thomas had done. When she made it over the top, a small piece of ice was thrown over and struck Jessy on the head. He looked back up and saw Claire smiling down on him.
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