Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14 Back in the car, Dan high–fived Amy so hard that her palm stung. "We did it!" he yelled. "Cobras— go worm away on your bellies and crawl into a hole somewhere! Ha!" Amy let herself enjoy the spark and fizz of his excitement for a few moments. Her own response was much more subdued. She felt almost dazed by the idea that they had actually gone after Isabel Kabra and succeeded in securing the fang. Dan's enthusiasm bubbled over into a complete lack of caution. "Now we've got icons for all four branches!" he crowed, totally oblivious to Amy's look of dismay. Great. Nellie only knew about the snakes and the fang before, but now she knows everything. Dan babbled on. "But we still don't know what they're for, so what do we do next?"

Amy had thought this through already. "Nellie, will you call Miss Alice? Ask her if she remembers if there was anything that Grace was really interested in when she was here. I mean, something other than the earring." The phone calls that followed proved even more productive than they'd hoped. Miss Alice recalled that Grace had been fascinated by the archaeological site of Port Royal and had spent a lot of time there. At Miss Alice's suggestion, they then phoned Lester at the Archives. Because Lester was a historian, he knew all about Port Royal. He would meet them there when he got off work. The route to Port Royal took them onto the Palisadoes, a long spit of land that curved out into the ocean. The peninsula was so narrow that at times they could see the waters of Kingston Harbour on one side and the open sea on the other. Lester had instructed Nellie to drive to a church called St. Peter's. It was not a grand, impressive cathedral— just a small white church. Lester was already there and greeted them with that nice smile of his.

"This is St. Peter's," he said. "There's something here I want you to see." He led them to the churchyard, where there was a little cemetery. "This one," he said, pointing to a tombstone that lay flat on the ground. Amy read the inscription aloud. "'Here lies the body of Lewis Galdy who departed this life at Port Royal on December 22, 1739 aged 80. He was born at Montpelier in France but left that country for his religion and came to settle in this island where he was swallowed up in the Great Earthquake in the year 1692 and by the providence of God was by another shock thrown into the sea and miraculously saved by swimming until a boat took him up. He lived many years after in great reputation. Beloved by all and much lamented at his Death.'" "'Swallowed up in the Great Earthquake'?" Dan asked. "June 7, 1692," Lester said. "A huge earthquake, followed by tidal waves and

aftershocks. Supposedly, Lewis Galdy fell into a fissure like a lot of other folks. Most of them died when the aftershocks sealed the fissures. But somehow he got ejected and ended up miles out at sea." "What a ride!" Dan exclaimed. Lester grinned. "I thought you'd be interested." "It's amazing he got through it alive!" Amy said. "The earthquake destroyed two–thirds of the city," Lester said. "You probably noticed on the way here, it's pretty quiet now, just a small fishing village." "That must have been one heck of an earthquake," Nellie said. "I bet it was the waves," Dan said. "Like tsunamis. They probably swamped the place." "Close," Lester said, "but not quite. The whole city was built on sand. The earthquake and the tidal waves destabilized the ground, and nearly the whole city got sucked down in quicksand." Dan's mouth fell open. "A whole city? Wow!" "It's called the Sunken City now, over that

way," Lester said, pointing to the northeast. "I do some research for the excavation crew. The Sunken City is considered one of the richest archaeological sites in the Caribbean— in the whole Western Hemisphere, actually. A seventeenth–century city, preserved underwater!" Amy found his enthusiasm contagious. She had always loved history, but Lester was making her realize that it wasn't just dates and places and names. The past was alive all around him, every day. "There are also a number of ships that are important salvage sites," he said. "They're being carefully excavated, too." Amy was paying close attention. "Can we go there? Can we see any of the excavation work?" Grace, she thought. Miss Alice said Grace spent a lot of time here. Probably poking around looking for stuff related to Anne Bonny or Nanny. A dig site would be the perfect place to start figuring out what she was looking for…. "You'd like to see it?" Lester's smile was even wider than usual. "They don't normally allow

tourists, but I'll see what I can do," he said, and winked. Dan beamed back at him. "Lester, you rock!" Lester laughed. "Thanks. But reggae is more my style." "Okay," Dan said cheerfully. "Lester, you reggae!" In the car, as they neared the oceanfront on the other side of the peninsula, Amy marveled for the hundredth time at the color of the sea. "Az–tur–pea–lean," she whispered again. Then she blinked. Amy took the magnifying glass and the little gold strip out of her backpack. "What?" Dan said. "Did we miss something?" Amy's eyes were glowing. "I got it!" she said. "It's not words at all. It's sort of— it's like abbreviations." She scrabbled around in her pack again and took out a pen and her little notepad. "Look," she said as she wrote. EKTOMALUJA