As if that were not enough, beneath the amphoras they had found piles of crushed galena, the lead sulphide used in the cupellation process to extract tin from ore, a material that would have been of huge value to the ancient miners of Cornwall. And to cap it all, a copper box in the stern contained two bronze steelyards and multiple sets of balance-pan weights, bronze with lead cores, as well as some of the earliest coins ever made, stamped lumps of electrum from the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor from about 590 BC. To Jack, all of this indicated a merchant captain not only well stocked and prepared for every type of transaction, a Phoenician through and through, but also one who was speculative, plumbing new markets before the demand for certain products had become established, something that had made him think again of Himilco and Hanno and the very dawn of Phoenician contact with the late Bronze Age peoples of Britain.
He reached his own area of the excavation, about five meters along the port side from the stern of the ship, at a place from which all the amphoras had been removed. He released a small amount of air from his BC to make himself negatively buoyant, and carefully lifted away three small sandbags from where he had left them, covered with silt during the past days. To his right was one of the water dredges that served as their main excavation tool, powered by a pump on Seafire; the water was pumped down a hose into one end of a solid plastic tube two meters long that floated just above the seabed, creating a vacuum that sucked water and sediment in at that end and spewed it out at the other, beyond the edge of the excavation. He pulled it over, careful to keep the exhaust end pointing out of the site, and brought the nozzle close to the area of shingle that had been covered by the sandbags, wrapping his right arm around it and getting ready to waft with his left hand. He looked up, knowing that Rebecca would have been watching him, and made a whirling motion with his left hand. She made an okay signal, swam to the surface and signaled the boat. Seconds later, the dredge erupted into life, lurching and bucking until he got it under control. He glanced back, seeing the blur in the water at the exhaust end, and then turned back. It was as if he had never left, as if the past week and the dive on Clan Macpherson were a dream, part euphoric and part nightmare, something he had parceled in his mind along with all the other dives he and Costas had done over the years where they had pushed the envelope as far as it would go.
Seconds later he had exposed what he had started to uncover last time, tapering expanses of polished white, his excitement mounting as first one, then the other was revealed. They were the ends of huge elephant tusks, lying flat and extending under the sediment. They were an extraordinary find, unquestionably the premium trade item of this cargo. But what was more incredible was their origin, revealed in the analysis of a sample Jack had taken the week before. Many archaeologists had assumed that the elephant ivory traded by the western Phoenicians came from their outposts on the Atlantic shore of Africa, acquired from native middlemen from sources far inland south of the Sahara. But the analysis had pointed to an East African origin, to modern-day Somalia or Ethiopia, the place known as Punt, where the ancient Egyptians had obtained their ivory. And there was something else, something Jack had wondered whether he had really seen on that last dive, but here it was again, as clear as could be. Both of the tusks had been inscribed with the alphabetic symbols for the letter H, twice over. Ancient Phoenician merchants were assiduous markers of their own trade goods, so there was nothing exceptional in that. It was the letters themselves that made Jack’s mind race. HH: Hanno and Himilco. Could it be?
The tusks were one of the most sensational finds of the excavation, left in situ until his return and now ready for recovery and conservation. It was extraordinary for Jack to see them again, but what really set his pulse racing now was to imagine what might lie beneath. Elephant ivory, especially the prized East African variety, would have been enormously valuable, and would have been packed in dunnage in the safest place on the floor of the cargo hold, below the amphoras and immediately above the ship’s timbers. The tusks were resting on a gray-black layer, revealed now across the entire space beneath them as he wafted the sediment away. The color indicated anoxic conditions, suggesting that this layer had survived undisturbed below the cargo. If timbers existed on the site, this layer might be the first place to find them.
He wafted again, and the water turned black, staining his fingers. That was an excellent sign, evidence of metal oxidization, exactly what he would expect from decayed iron nails and rivets. He wafted once more, waiting for the dredge to clear the water, and then he saw it. About fifteen centimeters below the tusk was the surface of a wooden strake, with another beside it, running precisely where they should be, parallel to the likely location of the keel. Another waft revealed a frame. Peering closely at the side of the first strake, he saw a stamped letter A, the crossbar sloped in early Phoenician style, clearly a shipwright’s mark. He put his palm on the wood, just as he had done half an hour earlier at the steamship wreck, feeling the same surge of excitement, the thrill of watching the sea give up her secrets. He could suddenly see the ship in his mind’s eye, wide-bellied, sturdy, with close-set frames, her shaped timbers carpentered together with pegged mortice-and-tenon joints, so well preserved that he could imagine her released from the sands and surging forward, square sail billowing and helmsman at the steering oar, a brilliant image of human endeavor from the time when Carthage and her mariners ruled the waves.
He pushed back, easing the dredge out of the excavation, and looked up. Rebecca was there again, pointing excitedly into the hole, giving him the okay sign. He did the same, gave a thumbs-up to indicate that he was about to surface, and then made a whirling motion at the dredge again. She acknowledged his signal and rose to the surface, and seconds later the dredge stopped sucking. He had finished where he had left off a week before, done what he had needed to do; now it was the job of the excavation team to take up where he had left off. Jeremy and Costas would be at the camp by now, and he needed to be ready for what Jeremy had to say about the plaque from Clan Macpherson.
He tied off the dredge, rose above the seabed and then looked up, seeing Rebecca spread-eagled on the surface above him, silhouetted by the sun, wreathed by bubbles from his exhaust. He felt a supreme sense of contentment. This had been one of the best dives of his life.
9
Two hours later, Jack sat outside the beach café finishing his Cornish pasty and tea, feeding the last morsels to the black-and-white collie from the local farm who had been his companion on many visits to the cove over the years. He got up, waved at the farmer’s wife who ran the café, and gave the dog a final stroke, then strode across the lane to the dunes and along the track toward the church behind the headland. Just before the graveyard he veered right into the grassy compound behind the old dry-stone wall that served as the shore headquarters for the IMU project, protected from the prevailing westerlies by the steep rise of the promontory. Rebecca was at the entrance talking to several hikers on the coastal path who had stopped to look at the information board they had set up in the lane about the Phoenician wreck. He smiled at the walkers and nodded at her, knowing that she would join him as soon as she could.