CHAPTER 13

THE BREAKTHROUGH

             It was Sunday, September 30, at around 5:30 am. Uri came running out of the northwest tunnel. He was yelling, and I could hear his voice in my sleep. I was not quite asleep or awake. I had worked nearly fourteen hours straight until midnight the night before and was extremely tired. Mimi was with me in the tent.

           “Jack, come quick. There has been a cave-in.”

            I sat up immediately and began to put my boots on. Half asleep, I had slept in my clothes since I was too tired to take them off.

            I was up and out of the tent quickly. Mimi was dressing herself for what we both knew was horrible news.

           As I exited the tent, I yelled to Bayne. “Bayne, get up! We have a situation.”

          I was upset since he was supposed to be up for this shift. However, as the dig wore on, month after month, Bayne got up later and later and worked less and less.

            I turned to Uri, “What happened? Was anyone hurt?’

          “Sir, there are minor injuries, nothing of immediate concern. But the cave opened a passage to a cavern…a deep cavern. We sent a man down and he found something…a bone.” Uri was smiling.

            I could not believe what I was hearing. I looked at him like a kid on Christmas. I had to ask, “What kind of bone?”

           Uri answered, “A real big one. It is stuck in between the layers of sediment. The man down there says it looks to measure about 4 feet. A leg bone.” Uri smiled at me again. He could feel my excitement.

            Just then Bayne was finally up, as was Mimi. I could not wait to share the news.

          “They found a bone.”

           Bayne looked at me, surprised, “What bone? Where?”

           I explained what Uri had told me.

          Just then, the crew was streaming out of the cave. Simon was with them.

        “Sirs, there is a problem,” Simon shouted. Uri went to him to find out what was going on. Uri and Simon were talking to each other in Greek. The men on the dig were exiting the cave. Uri turned and started yelling at the men.

         Bayne asked, “What is it? Why are they leaving?”

        “They are afraid,” Uri answered.

        “Afraid of what?” Bayne questioned.

         Simon answered, “Afraid of what they are doing. None of these men thought we would find anything. They were here for the paycheck. They, too, were told stories about the giants who once lived in the land. And now, they are afraid of what the stories told them, that the earth would quake if the graves of these ancient, angry giants were disturbed.”

        “This is ridiculous. Those stories are myths,” Bayne answered. “Uri, order your crew back into the caves. We are on the verge of an important discovery!”

         I realized right then that Bayne was likely on a different quest than I was. I realized he didn’t believe our hypothesis. He didn’t believe there were giants. By his admission, he felt these stories were merely myths. I was crushed. So why was he here?

         I thought the whole point of the grant and this project was to prove that we could find actual giant remains. It wasn’t just a myth. The whole purpose of our grant was to prove that these people were real. What were Bayne’s true feelings about the entire project and why was he even involved if he did not believe what our thesis set out to prove? His use of the word “myth” to describe the stories that had laid the framework for our dig stung.

I began to recall when we were working at the university. I remembered sitting with Bayne in the professors’ lounge discussing it in depth. I had been the one doing most of the talking. I was the one passionate about the cause. I was the one who connected the ancient Greek texts to the Hebrew Bible. I proposed that there was concrete proof somewhere on this planet that giants had to have existed. There were far too many accounts in every place in human history of such an existence. Could so many ancient stories tell of similar creatures, and all be fables?

I realized now I had not convinced Bayne of my passion for the truth. He may want to believe, but he was skeptical. I felt betrayed. I wanted him to believe in what I was passionate about. Somehow, in my ideal thoughts, I missed that he wasn’t and that maybe he hadn’t believed at all.

            As Grandpa Jack was telling us this, I asked, “Do you think Bayne ever believed?”

            He was quick, “I don’t know. I’d like to think that maybe he believed it, but just lost his way. I worried that maybe I should have done more to make him believe. But I didn’t.”

            Grandpa continued with the story at the cave in Greece.

As the men continued to leave the site, Uri said, “There is no use. These men may not have believed what we were doing was true, but now, they are afraid that maybe it is all true. With the cave-in and this discovery, they are not taking any chances. It is too close to the truth for them not to take caution.”

            Then Simon turned and spoke to the crew as they were walking away. He spoke to them in Greek, but here is what the young lad said.

            “My friends and companions, have we not come here to work? There is work still to be done. We have all sacrificed time with our families to be here for the pay these men offered. Is it not wrong to leave them in their greatest time of need?”

            Most of the men continued to pack up their belongings in their bags and began walking down the mountain. Some men even laughed and mocked Simon for being foolish.

            He continued, “Are you not a believer of the stories your father and your grandfather told you? Do you not want to believe that these childhood stories are true? This is not just a search for riches. These men are here, and you are here to prove something!”

            Simon had made an impassioned plea to his peers. This young man was as optimistic a believer as I was. He tried his hardest to convince the others that this was important work. He also knew that without a crew, our mission would go in vain.

            The retreating crew members yelled back at Simon, mocking his beliefs and saying that he was sure to be killed. They felt that the mission was no longer safe. They said he was naive for believing in such childish fantasies and wanting to stay.

            In the end, only six of the crew stayed with us. Some stayed because they just really needed the money. Maybe a couple stayed because of Simon. Whatever their reasons, we were fortunate to have the six that stayed. In all, we lost about 24 men that morning. With our money issues and shift reduction, we lost 40 men in total throughout the dig. It was clear that this wasn’t enough to continue the project.

            “Uri let’s prepare to move quickly to uncover the rest of that bone,” I said. “Simon, go and get Dr. Haralambos from the base camp.”

            “No, I’ll go,” said Mimi. “Mum and I will get Cadmus and bring him back.” She looked at me and smiled. I smiled back at her.

            “Be careful, Jack,” she said with eyes that said I love you. She went to the tent, got her backpack, and was on her way down to Base Camp 1.

            “Bayne, you and I need to go and check this out,” I said.

            “But sirs,” Uri replied. “This is too dangerous. The opening to the cavern below is small. The only way in is to be lowered by a rope down to a landing below. It's unstable. We need to shore up the operation before we proceed.”

            “Uri, we don’t have time,” I reminded him. “We will need to work fast. We have limited resources at this point. Plus, if the cavern collapses, we will lose what has been found. If that bone is exposed, we must get it out now. If there is an aftershock or another cave in all will be lost.”

            With that, Bayne came alive.

           “You're right, Jack. We can't lose sight of our goal here. If we can produce a bone from this dig, it would be far easier for us to gain additional funding for additional trips.” He turned to Uri and continued, “If we can get that bone out of there, we have exactly what the National Geographic Society would need to fund our future operation. They'll pay us for the right to photograph the bone and put it in their magazine.”

            “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Bayne,” I said. “We have no idea yet what type of bone it is. Let’s not be too hasty in our decisions to go public.”

            Bayne answered back, “Hasty? Jack, we’re nearly out of money and the bulk of our crew just walked out on us. We need to act fast and do whatever we can to fund the rest of this trip and future trips. You have a vision of what we're looking for. Let me help you get there. This is exactly what we need – publicity. Get the word out now about what we're doing and watch the funding come rolling in.”

            I wasn’t as worried about the funding as he was at this point. I wanted to complete this project correctly. I wasn’t about to let our financial concerns jeopardize the integrity of my thesis and the grant. Besides, Mimi and I had reserved some of our own cash in case of such an issue. I was holding that information and money close to my chest and had not made this known to anyone, including Bayne. It didn’t matter anyway. The money we did have was not nearly enough to complete the project from this point. Especially if there were any more setbacks.

            “Regardless, Uri, we need to move fast to get to that bone. We do not have time to waste. Let’s get going.” I said.

            Uri, Simon, Bayne, I, and the six other men began surveying the site. The opening to the cavern below was small. No more than two feet around. No large man was going to be able to get down there. The opening was not at all like I had envisioned. It was not like a hole in the ceiling opening to a large open area below. Instead, the opening was narrow, following a crooked path down to a dark crevice that went even further down. You couldn't see to the bottom. It was dark. Halfway down the crevice, you could kind of make out a small light flickering from below. Anyone going down that hole would have to maneuver their body down the openings until they reached the area where the bone was lodged. It was a difficult challenge. The fear of a cave-in was real. The space you had was small, and any seismic activity could easily trap you below without any chance of coming back out the way you went in.

            “Uri, who was down there?” I asked.

            “It was this man, Pelle. Him, along with another man, who just left with the others.”

            “Ask him if he thinks there was another way in or out from when he was down there.”

            Uri asked him in Greek, and Pelle shook his head no and replied.

           “No,” said Uri. “He said it was so dark. The ground level he was on was only about six by eight feet and covered in rubble. He said you might be able to dig and find another opening, but he wasn't sure.”

            Bayne replied, “How far down is it? We're working some twenty feet inside the mountain face. The lower you go, the wider the base becomes. Remember when we surveyed the mountain and found this site, there is no other site with an opening like this anywhere down the mountain.”

            We knew it was likely now or never. We would plan that Pelle, Bayne, and I would work our way down the opening. We asked for an additional volunteer to go down halfway as a communicator from the top to the bottom. Someone in the middle would be able to yell up and down the shaft. Simon volunteered.