"We're here, ain't we?" Wilbanks retorted with a smile. "Anybody have any objections against working at night?"
No one objected. Pitt and Hall quickly retrieved the sonar towfish and magnetometer sensor, and soon they had the Benthos MiniRover MK II robotic vehicle tethered up to the control handbox and a video monitor. At seventy-five pounds, it only took two of the men to lift it over the side and lower it into the water. The bright halogen underwater lights of the ROV slowly vanished in the deep as she began her journey downward into the dark void of Lake Michigan. She was attached to the Divercity and the control console by an umbilical cable. Wilbanks aimed an eye on the computer screen of the global positioning system and adroitly kept the Divercity floating motionless above the wreck.
The descent to four hundred feet took only a few minutes. All light from the setting sun vanished at 360 feet. Hall stopped the MiniRover when the bottom came into sight. It looked like a lumpy blanket of gray silt.
"The depth here is four hundred thirty feet," he said as he swung the ROV in a tight circle. Suddenly, the lights illuminated a large shaft that looked like a giant tentacle reaching out from a sea monster.
"What in hell is that?" muttered Wilbanks, turning from his computer positioning screen.
"Move toward it," Pitt ordered Hall. "I think we've come down on the forward cargo section of the hull, and we're looking at the overhead boom of a loading crane on the forward deck."
Working the controls of the MiniRover's handbox, Hall slowly sent the ROV along one side of the crane until the camera revealed a clear video image of a hull belonging to a large ship. He worked the ROV along the sides of the hull toward the bow, which still stood perfectly upright, as if the ship had refused to die and still dreamed of sailing the seas. Soon the outline of the ship's name became visible. It looked to have been painted crudely on the raised white gunwale atop the black bow slightly aft of the anchor, which still fit snug in its hawsehole. One by one the letters slid past the screen.
A doctor will tell you that if your heart stops, you're dead. But it seemed everyone's heart paused for several seconds as the name of the sunken ship passed under the MiniRover's cameras.
"Princess Yung T'ai," Giordino shouted. "We got her!"
"The queen of the China Sea," Julia murmured as if she was in a trance. "She looks so cold and isolated. It's almost as if she was praying we'd come."
"I thought you wanted a ship called the Princess Dou Wan," said Wilbanks.
"It's a long story," Pitt replied with a big grin, "but they're one and the same." He laid one hand on Hall's shoulder. "Move aft, keeping at least ten feet from the side of the ship so we don't entangle our tether and lose the ROV."
Hall silently nodded and worked the little joysticks on the handbox that controlled the camera and vehicle movement. Visibility was nearly fifty feet under the vehicle's halogen lights and showed that the exterior of the Princess Dou Wan had changed very little after fifty-two years. The frigid fresh water and deep depth had inhibited marine growth and corrosion.
The superstructure came into view, looking surprisingly fresh. None of it had collapsed. Only a light coat of silt adhered to the paint, which had dulled somewhat but still appeared surprisingly fresh. The Princess Dou Wan looked like the interior of a haunted, abandoned house that had not been dusted for half a century.
Hall ma
neuvered the MiniRover around the bridge. Most of the windows had been smashed from the force of the waves and the pressure of the deep. They could see the engine-room telegraph standing inside, its pointer still set on FULL AHEAD. Only a few fish lived in her now. The crew was no more, most all swept away by frenzied waves when she went down. The MiniRover crept alongside the ship on a horizontal course a short distance from the main promenade deck. The lifeboat davits were empty and twisted out, grim evidence of the chaos and terror that occurred that violent night in 1948. Wooden crates, still intact, were lashed down on every square foot of open deck. Her funnel was missing aft of the bridge, but could be seen where it had fallen beside the hull when the ship drove herself into the soft bottom.
"I'd give anything to see what's inside those packing boxes," said Julia.
"Maybe we'll find one that's broken open," said Pitt without taking his eyes off the screen.
The hull aft of the superstructure had been ruptured and spread open, the steel twisted and jagged from when she had broken up from the battering of the giant waves. The stern section was completely torn away when the ship plunged under the water. It was as if a giant had squeezed the ship apart and then tossed her broken pieces aside.
"Looks like mementos from the ship are scattered in a debris field that leads from one part of the wreck to the other," observed Giordino.
"Can't be," said Pitt. "Every nonessential piece was stripped off before she was to go to the scrappers. At the risk of sounding like an irrepressible optimist, I'm betting we're looking at an acre or more of fabulous works of art."
On closer inspection the cameras on the MiniRover revealed a sea of wooden crates that had been spilled between the broken sections of the ship when she sank. Pitt's prediction was confirmed when the ROV soared over the debris field and homed in on a strange shape materializing out of the murk. They all stared astonished as a poignant artifact from the distant past slowly rose and met the camera lens. The walls of a large crate had burst open like petals of a rose, exposing a strange shape standing in eerie solitude.
"What is it?" queried Wilbanks.
"A bronze life-size horse and rider," Pitt muttered in awe. "I'm not enough of an expert, but it must be the sculpture of an ancient Chinese emperor from the Han dynasty."
"How old do you reckon it is?" asked Hall.
"Close to two thousand years."
The effect of the horse and rider standing proud on the bottom was so profound, they all gazed solemnly at its image on the screen for the next two minutes without speaking. To Julia it was as if she had been carried back in time. The horse's head was turned slightly in the direction of the MiniRover, its nostrils flared. The rider sat stiffly upright, his sightless eyes staring into nothingness.
"The treasure," whispered Julia. "It's everywhere."
"Steer toward the stern," Pitt said to Hall.
"I've got the tether at its maximum length now," Hall replied. "Ralph will have to move the boat."