“Could be Anubis,” Hunt had to admit. “But right now, I have another question: did we unlock this thing?”
“Let’s see. Each of us should hold onto one end, and then pull straight back.” Gently, Maddy and Hunt performed the action. “Mine’s not budging.” No sooner had Maddy said the words than Hunt’s end piece came free from the device.
Chapter 25
“There’s something inside.” Hunt set the lid of the hexagonal chamber aside on the sandy ground. Together, he and Maddy gently tipped the device up on the closed end so that they could both peer inside from above. Inside the device was a tube-like chamber that contained one object.
“Looks like a scroll of parchment or papyrus!” Maddy said, reaching into the tube. “Oh, we really should get this to a lab immediately. I can’t stand that we’ve exposed it to this salty, humid air.”
“It’s already been exposed, now,” Hunt pointed out. “Might as well read it quickly, if we can, see if it means anything to us, and then we can put it back in there and cap it up. When we get back to the States, you can take it to your lab and give it the full treatment.”
Maddy agreed and then carefully reached inside the tube and extricated the roll of parchment. It was not held together by any kind of fastener, but simply rolled tightly.
“There’s no writing on the outer side,” Maddy said. “I’ll have to unroll it, which is unfortunate because the risk of damage is higher, but, we do need information, don’t we?”
Hunt looked around nervously. “Yeah. In fact, do you still have your camera?” Maddy nodded, indicating her underwater camera still clipped to a wrist strap, and Hunt continued. “We should take a picture of it once it’s unrolled, just in case our friends from Treasure, Inc. decide to check this island out. Because if they find us here, it’d be lucky if they only took our new treasure and left us here alive.”
“First of all, let’s see if I can get it unrolled in one piece. Parchment, or vellum — various material that typically supports old manuscripts — is notorious for falling apart after coming in contact with air after long periods of storage. That’s why museums keep this kind of thing in carefully climate-controlled conditions.”
Maddy began to carefully peel back the leading edge of the heavy, paper-like material. At first she used one hand to hold it and the other to peel it back, but then decided against it and turned to Hunt. “I think it would be better if you hold it so I can use two hands to unravel it from each end. I don’t want to put too much pressure on one end and tear it.”
Hunt complied and Maddy bent to her task again, this time having success as the paper made a rasping sound while it was unrolled. “I see writing…it’s a long manuscript with a lot of text.” She continued to gingerly handle the scroll as she unfurled it. Hunt was able to focus some on the content since he was only holding the scroll in place while Maddy handled the more delicate task of unrolling it.
She took a long look at the lettering itself, hoping to recognize a language, and said, “This is all Greek to me, Carter.”
Carter’s face revealed his disappointment. “Looks like we’ll have to get it in front of more eyes, then, maybe—”
“No, Carter, I mean it’s literally in Greek. As in the Greek language — Attic Greek to be precise, meaning it’s a Greek dialect from the city of Attica.”
Hunt’s laughter rolled across the island until he heard footsteps approaching and whirled around, hand reflexively reaching for the dive knife still strapped to his calf. But he relaxed as soon as he saw Jayden’s lanky form running across the sandy soil. His gait looked off for the normally spry ex-Navy man, though, and Hunt focused in on the load he carried — an armful of coconuts.
“You two lovebirds hungry or thirsty? Because these things have food and water. Love ‘em!”
He reached his friends and dumped the fruits of his tree-climbing labor on the ground.
Sounds good to me,” Maddy said. “How do we open them?”
Jayden unsheathed his own dive knife and demonstrated on one green coconut. He jammed the point of his blade into the soft spot near one end, then held it upside down to let the flow of clear, sweet liquid pour into his mouth.
“Nothing like fresh coconut milk,” he said, turning the coconut back upright and wiping his chin. “You can eat the meat inside them, too, but I thought refreshments would be in order first.” He proceeded to open two more coconuts, handing one each to Maddy and Hunt.
“Whoa, you guys got that thing open? What is that?” Jayden pointed excitedly to the roll of parchment Maddy set back inside the hex chamber when she picked up her coconut for a drink.
“Not sure yet,” Maddy replied. “It’s written in Greek, though, which I am reasonably capable at deciphering. But it’s a long document, and like I told Carter, the proper environment in which to make sense of it is not here on a glorified sandbar drinking coconut juice, but in a controlled laboratory setting.”
“We can try, though, right?” Jayden said with a wet coconut juice smile. He looked down at the scroll. “I mean, first of all, what is it? Is it a letter that says, ‘Dear Mom, I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave the island to come home this summer…’ kind of thing, or is it more like some official political document from ancient Greece?” He shrugged off his own questions by opening another coconut.
She shot him a look of grudging respect. “I suppose I could take another look,” she said, “if I can wipe off my coconut juice hands on your shirt. Can’t have that stuff getting on the parchment.”
“I knew my services would come in handy sooner or later,” Jayden said. Maddy wiped her hands on his shirt and then picked up the scroll again. She and Hunt repeated the careful process to unroll it and hold it steady while Maddy read it. Jayden quickly grew bored and came up with a suggestion.
“How about if while you guys are reading that Greek novel there, I’ll walk around the beach and see if I can flag down a ride to get us off of this rock.”
“Sounds good,” Hunt said without taking his eyes off the scroll. Jayden polished off the last of his coconut before dropping it on the ground and heading off onto the beach.
Maddy gazed intently at the words on the old paper. “It seems to me like whatever it is, it’s continued from something else. It literally seems to begin in the middle of a sentence,” she concluded, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
“Can you translate any of the actual words?” Hunt asked.
“Let me give it a shot. With access to a computer it would be easy for me, but let’s see what I can do from memory. I always knew that classical training all those years ago would come in handy.” She gave Hunt a smile before looking back down at the parchment.
“It looks like dialogue…Someone is addressing a crowd….”
Daedalus paced the stern deck of the Historica restlessly as he looked down on the dive platform. He glanced at his watch yet again. None of his divers had returned yet. He brought the handheld radio to his mouth and was about to call his brother when he spotted thick bubbles, the kind produced by scuba divers, not far off the port rail. His divers — or at least some of them — were returning!
He ran down the steps to the dive platform, eager to hear from his underwater team first-hand. He knew that the underwater operations had been given two broad missions by his brother, one to search and recover the bodies of the thorn in his side that was Carter Hunt and his friends, the other to determine, what, if any, kind of artifacts — related to Atlantis or otherwise — lay beneath the Bimini Road capstone. He saw two heads break the water’s surface. The two divers — he didn’t recognize them through their masks and probably wouldn’t have known their names anyway — began swimming toward the dive platform to make their exit from the water, but Daedalus waved them over to his position along the port rail. He called down to them, already disappointed that he did not see dead bodies in tow.