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bright sunlight, enhanced by the mirror effect of the sand—as pitch black as it could be.
    A bit hesitantly, fearful of what horrors the ancient wreck might still hold within its dark, secret places,

    Fitz switched on the flashlight and played its beam about the interior of the low-ceilinged, cramped space, only to find his fears to be utterly groundless.
    Despite the closed door, fine sand had drifted in over the space of the long years to dust the spartan furnishings of what looked to have once been sleeping quarters for one or more men. On the top of a tiny table built into the very fabric of the ship itself sat a few shallow, earthenware cups and one smaller one, of verdigrised copper; a stack of plain, uneven earthenware bowls; and a big, rusty knife, half out of a rusty sheet-metal case, with a throat and chape of greened bronze or brass.
    Ducking his head, Fitz stepped through the low doorway into the cabin. He picked up the knife and drew the full length of the blade—which, overall, was about the size and heft of the Ka-Bar knife he had carried in the Corps, so long ago—from out its sheath. Rusty, it most assuredly was, but both the lower edge and the first third of the upper edge still were frighteningly sharp. Deep fullers ran down both faces of the blade to a wicked point. He hefted the sizable knife, clearly more weapon than mere tool, then carefully resheathed it and thrust it under his belt. Finders, keepers. The small copper cup looked cute, so he stuck it into a pocket; his rented home boasted few enough knickknacks.
    The door on the port side seemed shut permanently and for good, barring the destructive use of a wrecking- or crowbar, an axe or a heavy sledge, and Fitz had all but despaired of budging the contrary portal until he noted and finally recognized for just what they were the two badly rusted slide bolts at top and bottom. But, even then, the pitted, decomposed metal did not move in any way easily after so long in the one place and, before he was done, he

    had added to his raw palms, barked shin and bruised shoulders, two sets of skinned knuckles and an assortment of broken fingernails; also, he had dusted off and brought vehemently out some choice words and phrases that he had not used since the Korean War. But at last the stubborn door swung open, gaping wide, and he could view the interior of what seemed an appreciably larger cabin.
    Strangely, inexplicably, a sense of deja vu swept briefly over him as he ducked to enter the low door, but it was gone almost before it had come. His flashlight beam picked out the furnishings—a low armchair of carven and inlaid wood, a brace of even lower stools, a small octagonal table centered under a large brass lamp coated with verdigris and hung from the ceiling with three equally coated brass chains. A chest or locker was built into the hull side of the cabin and atop it was a shallow trough looking a bit like a dry sink; from the rotted remnants of cloth and felt within it, Fitz assumed that it had once been a bed or bunk.
    "And a damned hard bed," he muttered to himself, poking with the chape of the knife scabbard at the moldering strands and pieces of felt and wool. "But, then, nothing I've yet come across on this whole boat seems to have been designed or built with comfort or pleasure in mind—anybody's comfort or pleasure."
    Three great, massive hasps of rusty, pitted iron on the front of the chest-dry sink-bed were secured by three equally massive padlocks. The leftmost and the center of these hung stiffly open but, though the rightmost still was locked, the ring-handle of a bronze or brass key jutted from the face of it. It turned very slowly and very, very stiffly under Fitz's fingers and he had to tug and work at the shank for some time

    before it finally quitted the body of the lock. With all three of the heavy locks on the floor at his feet, he pulled up the hasps and opened the lid of the chest with yet another scream of rusty