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Nan Madol was about forty-five minutes by boat from Kolonia As they came up on the city on the southeast shore of Tenwen Island and caught their first gli to recall what Whittles had told him about the ruins years before The place had been a cere back to the second century AD, but the alithic architecture did not start to take shape until the twelfth century

The city served as a residence for nobility and mortuary priests, and its population never went beyond a thousand The ht islands in the northeast part of the city, a sector called Madol Powe Whittles had taken Austin there and shown him the islets where the priests lived and worked Madol Pah was the administrative sector on the south-western part of Nan Madol That here the nobles lived and the warriors were quartered

Nan Madol’s builders had put up seawall

s to protect the city froular islets were all basically the sa heavy, pris-cabin style, surrounded cores of coral rubble Once the walls reached several feet above sea level, platfor areas, or temples, or even crypts The more elaborate of these islets, like the spectacular mortuary at Nandauwas, had tenty-five-foot walls enclosing the royal compound

In the drawing Whittles had sketched out for Austin, the te Priests was in the mortuary sector of Nan Madol It was a sested that the islet had so the inhabitants The teh a portal in the outer wall, which enclosed a courtyard, then through another portal in a second wall

Following Whit’spast cru walls that seemed out of place in the reers in a couple of open tour boats carrying ca tourists protected from the tropical sun by colorful canopies Nan Madol had become a popular destination for day trips, and the boat went past a guide leading several kayaks like a row of ducklings

Consulting the map, Austin left the main area of tourist activity and turned onto a quiet, dead-end canal lined on both sides by basalt walls and pal Priests would have presided over the tern it had ever existed was a jumbled pile of columns that stuck a foot or so above the surface Austin killed the engine, let the boat drift to within yards of the debris, and dropped anchor

Austin had purchased a Hawaiian surf-print bathing suit at the dive shop, fla that the shop had in his size He tucked his wallet and phone in the waterproof dive-gear bag and slipped into the buoyancy counwale into the tepid water, caulator mouthpiece and did a surface dive that took hireen water

He switched on a waterproof flashlight he had bought at the shop Visibility was liht picked out the broken basalt that had once been the islet’s foundation Austin swam around the perimeter, then came back up to the rental boat

Whittles had suggested that the coral core supporting the temple had cru the building to sink to the bottom of the enclosure and the walls to collapse on top of it

Austin swaain, this ti where basalt slabs had fallen down at an angle He poked his flashlight into the cavity The light petered out, suggesting that there was open space behind Austin twisted through the tight space, banging his air tank against the basalt

Once he was through the passage, Austin swept the flashlight around and saw that he was in a cavelike chaainst one another Even if the tee of the inner wall, which had fallen on top of and around it

Austin thought he had reached the end of his explorations and was preparing to retrace his route when he ht This ti peculiar about the way the shadows fell on the debris to his right He swa so a breach

Austin slithered through the breach, and, after swiular entryway The temple slanted down to the left, and the entry should have been plugged by debris except that its lintel had fallen in such a way that the opening was intact He made a quick visual check to assure hih it and into the temple itself

Austin’s flashlight immediately fell on the pool that Whittles had described It was rectangular, about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide Debris had fallen in it, but Austin estiainst one of the walls, he saw that he was not alone