Several more minutes dragged by before Redfem finally laid the pages on the table with trembling hands. Then he stared vacantly into the distance, his eyes strangely blurred.

Redfem had been rocked right down to his toenails.

"You look like you just found the Holy Grail," said Pitt.

"What is it?" asked Lily. "What did you find?"

They could barely hear Redfem's answer. His head was down.

He said, "It's possible, just possible, your chance discovery may unlock the door to the collection of art and literary treasures the world has ever known."

"Now that you have our undivided attention," Pitt said dryly, you mind sharing your revelation?"

Redfem shook his head as if to clear it. "The story-saga is a better definition-is overwhelming. I can't quite comprehend it all."

Lily asked, "Do the tablets tell why a Graeco-Roman ship sailed far beyond her home waters?"

"Not Graeco-Roman, but Byzantine," Redfem corrected her. "When the Serapes sailed the ancient world, the seat of the Empire had been moved by Constantine the Great from Rome to the Bosporus, where the Greek city of Byzantium once stood."

"Which became Constantinople," said Pitt.

"And then Istanbul." Redfem turned to Lily. "Sorry for not giving you a direct answer. But, yes, the tablets reveal how and why the ship came here. To fully explain, we have to set the stage, beginning with 323

B.c., the year Alexander the Great died in Babylon-His empire was split up by his generals. One of them, Ptoleiny, carved out Egypt and became king. A canny guy, Ptolemy. He also managed to get his hands on Alexander's corpse, encasing it in a gold-and-crystal coffin. He later enshrined the body in an elegant mausoleum and built a magnificent city around it that surpassed Athens. In honor of his former king, Ptolemy called it Alexandria."

"What does all this have to do with the Serapes?" asked Lily.

"Please bear with me," replied Redfem gently. "Ptolemy founded a massive museum and library from scratch. The inventory became monumental. His descendants, through Cleopatra, and later successors all continued to acquire manuscripts and art objects until the museum, and especially the library, became one of the largest storehouses of art, science and literature that has ever existed. This vast collection of knowledge lasted until A.D. 391. In that year, Emperor Theodosius and the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilos, who was a religious nut case, decided all reference to anything except newly fanned Christian principles was paganism. They masterminded the destruction of the library's contents. Statues, fabulous works of art in marble, bronze, gold and ivory, incredible paintings and tapestries, countless numbers of books inscribed on lambskin or papyrus scrolls, even Alexander's corpse: all were to be smashed into dust or burned to ashes. "

"What kind of numbers are we talking about?" Pitt asked.

"The books alone numbered in the hundreds of thousands."

Lily shook her head sadly. "What a terrible waste."

"Only Biblical and church writings were left," continued Redfem. "The entire library and museum was finally leveled after Arab and Islamic rebbels swept Egypt sometime around A.D. 646."

"The earlier masterworks that took centuries to collect were lost, gone forever," Pitt summed up.

"Lost," Redfem agreed. "So historians have thought until now. But if what I just read rings true, the cream of the collection is not gone forever. It lies hidden somewhere."

Lily was confused. "It exists to this day? Smuggled out of Alexandria by the Serapis before the burning?"

"According to the inscriptions on the tablets."

Pitt looked doubtful. "No way the Serapes sneaked off with more than a tiny fraction of the collection. It won't wash. The ship is too small.

Less than forty tons burden. The crew might have carried a few thousand scrolls and a couple of statues into the cargo hold, but nothing like the quanity you're talking about."

Redfem gave Pitt a respectful gaze. "You're,very astute. You have a good knowledge of early ships."

"Let's get back to the Serapes washing up in Greenland," Pitt urged, as Redfem picked up the appropriate pages of Lily's text and shuffled them into order.

"I won't give you a literal translation of fourth-century Latin. Too stiff and formal. Instead, I'll try and relate the text in English vernacular. The first entry is under the Julian calendar date of April

, A.D. 391. The report begins:

"I, Cuccius Rufinus, captain of the Serapes, in the em ploy of Nicias, Greek shipping merchant of the port city Of RhOdeS, have agreed to transport a cargo for Junius Venator of Alexandria. The voyage is said to be long and arduous, and Venator will not disclose our destination.

My daughter, Hypatia, sailed with me this trip and her mother will be very concerned at our lengthy separation.

But Venator is paying twenty times the usual rate, a good fortune that will greatly benefit Nicias as well as myself and the crew.

"The cargo was put on board at night under heavy guard, and quite mysteriously, as I was ordered to remain at the docks with my crew during the loading. Four sol diers under the command of the centurion Dominus Se verus have been commanded to stay on the ship and sail with us.

"I do not like the look of it, but Venator has paid me for the voyage in full, and I cannot go back on my con tract.

"An honest man," said Pitt. "Hard to believe he didn't discover the nature of his cargo."

"He comes to that later. The next few lines are a log of the voyage. He also makes mention of his ship's namesake. I'll skip to where they make their first port.

our god Serapes for providing us with a smooth and fast passage of fourteen days to Carthago Nova where we rested for five days and took on four times our normal supply of provisions. Here we joined Junius Venator's other ships. Most are over two hundred tons burden, some close to three hundred. We total sixteen with Vena tor's flagship. Our sturdy Serapes is the smallest vessel in the fleet."

"A fleet!" Lily cried. Her eyes gleamed, her whole body taut. "They did save the collection."

Redfem nodded delightedly. "A damned good chunk of it anyway.

Two-to-three-hundred-ton-ships were representative of large merchantmen of that era. allowing for two ships to carry men and provisions, and taking an average tonnage of two hundred for the other fourteen ships, you have a gross tonnage for the fleet of 2,800 tons. Enough to transport a third of the Library's books and a fair share of the museum's art treasures."

Pitt called for a break. He went to the galley counter and brought back two cups of coffee. He set one in front of Lily and returned for a plate of doughnuts. He remained standing. He thought and concentrated better on his feet.

"So far the great Library snatch is theory," he said. "I've heard nothing that proves the goods were actually spirited away."

"Rufinus nails it down further on," said Redfem. "The description of the Serapis's cargo comes near the end of the log."

Pitt gave the marine archaeologist an impatient look and sat back, waiting.

"On the next tablet Rufinus mentions minor repairs to the ship, dockside gossip, and a tourist's eye of Carthago Nova, now Cartagena, Spain.

Oddly, he doesn't express any further uneasiness about the coming voyage. He even failed to note the date the fleet left port. But the really offbeat part is the censorship. Listen to the next paragraph.