We were getting closer now and we could see her with the naked eye.
"It would take a sailor's sight to have spotted her from where we were," said Anne, still gazing ahead of her in disbelief. "Anyone else would have thought they were just bare branches of a tree."
"She could never have sailed up here," I said, still more shaken as the three masts, with the mizzen awry to take a lateen sail, became clearly visible. "The coast must have changed radically some time during the past centuries — some enormous volcanic upheaval, perhaps. Just think of all the flat, low-lying country we have come through — perhaps this was a bay once, hundreds of years ago."
"It could be, behind these mountains," said Anne. "Perhaps the seabed was thrown up and created all those dunes. Maybe the true coastline was here where the mountains and the rocks are. It's quite feasible."
"I've heard strange stories about a ship in the desert," I said. "But they're the sort of yarn one hears when the drinks have gone round a good few times. No one ever substantiated them. I've heard stories of an Arab dhow and a galleon — but all of them were so surrounded with mist and legend that one simply couldn't credit them. It's a strange coast this — anything can happen."
"Is she a dhow?" asked Anne. As if we had not trudged all day, we stumbled, sometimes half at a run over the harder patches, towards the ship that had lain dead there for centuries.
"No, never," I said. "She's European. A caravel. Look, you can even see the deadeyes and the cordage holding up the mizzen truck. How those masts have stood… "
"Don't become nautical, I'm just a simple land girl," she grinned back. "What I just simply can't understand is how she has never rotted away."
"The sand and the dry air have unique properties of preserving things," I replied. "I remember reading somewhere that the first British warship which surveyed this coast before the turn of the century found a mummy in a coffin down the coast from Walvis Bay. They took it home and sold it to a sideshow in Blackpool, I think. It was the hit of the place for years."
"A body might be mummified on purpose," said Anne frowning. "But a whole ship… "
"There's a church in Dublin where Robert Emmet is buried," I said, searching for a rational explanation of a medieval caravel, intact, fifty miles from the nearest sea, perfectly preserved after centuries. "I myself saw a Crusader in the crypt who'd been buried since Richard the Lion-heart's time. The sexton told me that the ground had some unique chemical property of keeping bodies indefinitely. As we descended the crypt there were coffins everywhere and they looked like new. It must be something similar here — but on a gigantic scale."
"It seems so utterly impossible!" exclaimed Anne.
We stumbled over a low dune about a quarter of a mile from where the caravel lay, facing south and her starboard bow towards the high cliff another quarter of a mile farther on. Although I was looking at her, a glint like a mirror caught the corner of my eye. I put my hand on Anne's arm.
"If I'm not mistaken, I see water — a pool of it, there to the left, look!"
"It is water, Geoffrey! It's only a small pool, and I shouldn't think it's more than a quarter of a mile away."
"Not a word to Stein," I said. "This may well be our salvation, Anne."
The idea hit her.
"It's simple, then," she said. "We have water here and we can strike back to the coast. He'll never be able to catch us."
"With nothing to carry water in, no food, and — that?" I gestured towards the formidable mountain barrier on our right, for we were facing up the valley. We'd be half dead by tomorrow afternoon and completely dead by the next afternoon. It's only useful knowledge, this pool. We may be able to use it in the future, though."
The pool of water had distracted our attention, but now we paused in amazement at the sight of the old ship. The anchor rope was down, lost to sight in the deep sand. The gunports were open and the puny muzzles pointed defiantly. A good deal of the lower rigging was intact, although the foremast was broken off short above the truck and lay over towards the cliff. The mizzen stays, brown instead of their original tarred black, looked firm enough. She was bedded in sand almost up to the row of gunports. The gilding, or "gingerbread work," round her stern was tarnished and faded, but still clearly visible. I could make out the spokes of the helm on the high poop. I would not have felt surprised if a figure in an old-time helmet had paced her deck and called on us to declare our business.
"Let's go aboard," I said huskily.
"It's like — the past coming alive," whispered Anne. "What is she — Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch?"
"I should say Portuguese, but that's only a guess," I said. "Perhaps we'll find some identification when we get on deck."
"Isn't there a name?" asked Anne, her voice still low, as if in the presence of the dead. Dead she had been for centuries.
"All I can make out is something ending in 'az'," I said. "We may be able to decipher it close up."
The maindeck wasn't more than six feet from the level of the sand. I reached up and was about to haul myself through one of the gunports towards the poop when Anne stopped me.
"Geoffrey," she said urgently. "Don't go aboard. Let's go back. We've seen enough. I feel — there's something sacred aboard… perhaps, we should respect the dead. Don't let's pry. Please don't go. I have the strangest feeling… "
I laughed reassuringly.
"This is a secret and a mystery. How could I ever forgive myself in the future if I stopped now? Sooner or later someone is bound to find her. I want to be the first aboard since she sailed from Lisbon in fourteen something-or-other. Think, the first sailor to come aboard in five centuries!"
She looked at me and the tears welled in her eyes. ' You're assuming you've got a future," she said sombrely. "I've got a premonition, a hunch, call it what you like."
The right eyelid was rumpled. Her sweater, stained with sand and sweat, looked years, instead of weeks old. Her face was thin and drawn with inward tension.
"Come," I said, testing the wood to see whether it would hold my weight. "You're coming too. If there's any sudden death, or bolt of lightning, we'll share it."
I hauled myself past the cannon's mouth, which was not very rusted, and gave a quick glance round the deck before reaching for Anne's hands. The port side guns were all run out and a curious-looking culver in on the rail of the poop pointed the same way. The starboard broadside was secure, and the gunports on that side were closed. By each gun was a neat little pile of shot, some no bigger than a cricket ball.
Some leather buckets, hard as iron with age, stood grouped round each gun. Of the crew there was no sign. A fine carpet of sand coated the deck.
"Nothing spooky here," I called cheerfully to Anne. "Give me your hands."
I leaned over the rail and pulled her up. She glanced round and shivered.
"What happened — to them?" she said with a sweep of her hands at the guns.
"Probably escaped ashore when the catastrophe struck," I said. "See, they were obviously expecting trouble. All the guns are run out, but on one side only. It would support our idea, too, that this was the seaward side and the other, the starboard side — maybe that very same cliff there — land. Something happened out to sea which made her captain run out a full broadside."
"We'll never know what it was," said Anne, with no change of mood.
"There are no bones about," I said. "That means they must have got away. Let's take a look below."
She glanced round again reluctantly.
"I can't get rid of the feeling that we're intruding, somehow," she said in a low voice. "All right, if you wish."
I tried the small door leading under the port side of the poop rail. I thought it was locked at first, it was so stiff, but it yielded about a foot. We edged in. The passageway was narrow and so low that I had to stoop. I led. Another door.