Free 02 The Secret on Ararat by Tim Lahaye Page A

thick, evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one….

    “The question is, could that piece of wood have washed down from the ark, which was higher on the mountain? Along this same line, a man named E. de Markoff, a member of the Russian Imperial Geographical Society, found wood near the fourteen-thousand-foot level. Also, in 1936, a New Zealand archaeologist called Hardwicke Knight found waterlogged rectangular timbers protruding out of the snow. These pieces of wood were nine inches to a foot square. The wood wasvery dark and extremely soft. He concluded that they must have been submerged in water for a long period of time.”
    Murphy turned and grabbed another piece of paper off his desk.
    “This represents probably the most famous wood find above the timberline. It was discovered by Fernand Navarra. In 1952, he and a search team were looking for the ark. They were walking over a clear ice field near the Ahora Gorge when suddenly they saw something.
    In front of us was always the deep transparent ice. A few more paces and suddenly, as if there were an eclipse of the sun, the ice became strangely dark. Yet the sun was still there and above us the eagle still circled. We were surrounded by whiteness, stretching into the distance, yet beneath our eyes was this astonishing patch of blackness within the ice, its outlines sharply defined.
    Fascinated and intrigued, we began straightaway to trace out its shape, mapping its limits foot by foot: two progressively incurving lines were revealed, which were clearly defined for a distance of three hundred cubits, before meeting in the heart of the glacier. The shape was unmistakably that of a ship’s hull; on either side the edges of the patch curved like the gunwales of a great boat. As for the central part, it merged into a black mass. The details of which were not discernible.

    “Navarra made two more attempts to discover what was under the ice. One in 1953 and the other in 1955. On the last expedition they found wood. In his own words, he says:
    Once on the edge of the crevasse, I lowered the equipment on a rope. Then I secured the ladder and climbed down myself, assuring Raphael I would not be long.
    Attacking the ice shell with my pickax, I could feel something hard. When I had cut a hole one and one half feet square by eight inches deep, I broke through a vaulted ceiling, and cleared off as much icy dust as possible.
    There, immersed in water, I saw a black piece of wood!
    My throat felt tight. I felt like crying and kneeling there to thank God. After the cruelest disappointment, the greatest joy! I checked my tears of happiness to shout to Raphael, ‘I’ve found wood!’
    ‘Hurry up and come back—I’m cold,’ he answered.
    I tried to pull out the whole beam, but couldn’t. It must have been very long, and perhaps still attached to other parts of the ship’s framework. I could only cut along the grain until I split off a piece about five feet long. Obviously, it had been hand-hewn. The wood, once out of the water, proved surprisingly heavy. Its density was remarkable after its long stay in the water,and the fibers had not distended as much as one might expect.

    “Navarra had the wood carbon-fourteen-tested, along with other tests for lignite formation, grain density, cell modification, growth rings, and fossilization. His results suggested that it was about five thousand years old.”
    The bell rang and everybody jumped. Murphy had lost track of time.
    “Thanks for your interest, people. I’m sorry we’ve got to end it there, but next time we’re going to look at the stories of explorers who claimed to have actually entered Noah’s Ark.”
    As he watched the students making their way out of the auditorium, he wondered if he would soon have a story of his own to tell.

EIGHT
    IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL spring day on the Preston campus. Murphy had found a quiet table near where the lawn