“Once we had our map we flew along the line in a chopper trailing a magnetometer.”

“I did the same thing for days,” Sloane told them, “but I was searching out at sea. Guess I should have done more research.”

“It took us two days to get a hit that could be the Rove, and it was less than thirty feet from where Max said she’d be.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I’ve been trying to convince Hiram to make his computer predict lottery numbers for me,” Zavala quipped. “He says it can do it, but he won’t let me ask.”

“We used ground-penetrating radar to confirm it was a ship and not a mass of iron, like a meteorite,” Austin went on. “The rest was just a matter of moving sand.”

Zavala opened a second round of beers. “Moving a lot of sand.”

“Have you been inside her yet?” Sloane asked.

“We were saving that honor for your arrival. Come on aboard.”

He led them up the gangplank and onto the Rove’s teak deck. They had done a masterful job removing the overburden, going so far as to sweep out the corners so the only sand on her was what blew with the wind.

“The bridge windows were smashed in, either by the storm or later when she was buried, so it was filled with sand. However…” He left the word hanging in the air and slapped a hatch. The metal echoed. “The desert never entered her crew’s quarters.”

“I’ve already loosened the dogging wheel,” Zavala said. “So Miss Macintyre, if you’d please.”

Sloane stepped forward and spun the locking wheel another half turn to disengage the latches. She pulled it open and a trickle of sand spilled over the coaming. The wardroom beyond was lit only by a couple shafts of light from small portholes along two walls. Other than the drifts of sand covering the floor, it looked as though a hundred years had never passed. The furniture was all in its place. A stove sat ready to warm the teakettle sitting on its top and a lantern hanging from the ceiling appeared to need just the touch of a match to glow.

But as their eyes adjusted they all saw that what at first looked like sacks of cloth draped over the table were actually the mummified remains of two men who’d died facing opposite each other. Their skin had turned gray as their bodies dried out and seemed as brittle as paper. One wore nothing but a loincloth around his waist and the stalks of feathers that had lost their fletching in a band around his skull. The other wore rough bush clothes and next to where he lay his head sat an enormous slouch hat that had been white eleven decades earlier.

“H. A. Ryder,” Sloane breathed. “The other must have been one of the Herero warriors their king sent to retrieve the stones.”