“Okay, okay,” I said, in some alarm. “I get your point. But I don’t see why a breakwater or a couple of warehouses should be such a-”
He laughed. I think it was the first time I had ever heard him laugh, and if this was a representative sample I knew I wasn’t looking forward to hearing it again.
“Don’t be so stupid,” he said. “Think. You know what happened here in the fifteenth century B.C. on a spring day, when the wind was blowing from the northwest.”
It was an unexpectedly poetic phrase for him to use. His voice softened and his face became calm, brooding. There was a far-off look in his eyes. I felt as if I were hearing an eyewitness account of the event.
“There had been signs of the displeasure of the gods. The cloud of fiery gas by night, the pillar of smoke by day, and the rumbling roar of the bull god, Poseidon, the Earthshaker. But these things had happened before. Some fled; most remained, making their ineffectual sacrifices, and hoping… When the cataclysm occurred, it caughtthem all-women tending their children, the men in the fields, priests in the shrines…”
His voice rose. “And what else? What else, in a harbor town, a mercantile shipping center?”
His eyes bored into me. They were perfectly sane. He was excited, but he wasn’t crazy. I knew what he was driving at. But-
“It’s impossible,” I said.
“Ships!” He slammed his fist against the rock. “Minoan ships, the trading fleet of the sea king himself. They are there, in the water, where they sank over three thousand years ago.”
Chapter 4
UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN, THE WAVES ROCKED ME. I was hypnotized by the motion, the warm caress of the water, and the mesmerizing gaze of this maniac who happened to be my father.
“Now just one minute,” I said, getting a grip on myself; for a moment the picture had dazzled me. “Your reasoning is excellent. Sure, there were ships. Some of them must have sunk. But no ship could survive underwater all that time. Oh, I know about the wrecks of Greek and Roman ships; quite a few of them have been located. But they date from a hundred A.D. or a hundred B.C. You’re talking about fifteen hundred B.C. Almost thirty-five hundred years ago.”
“A ship could survive that long. It has. At Cape Gelidonya, in Turkey. That wreck was investigated in 1960. It has been dated to approximately the fifteenth century before Christ. Not only was the cargo found, but even the planks of the ship’s hull.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t. He wouldn’t joke about anything as important as this. In fact, I had never heard him joke about anything.
“No.”
“Okay, it could happen. But how do you know it happened here? I mean, what exactly did you find?” And then, as he hesitated, I said impatiently, “Look, I know what a couple of hundred years can do to the wreckage of a ship. Nothing survives unchanged-except gold. Timber rots and is eaten by worms, metal corrodes. Even pottery would be changed by marine accretions, or by electrolysis from the elements in the clay. And it’s easy to be deceived. Rocks look like ballast, and natural formations can imitate straight-line, man-made shapes.”
For the first time since I had known him he looked at me with something like respect.
“Essentially you are correct,” he said. “Although pottery is not altered as much as you suggest. There are pots here. They are amphorae, vessels containing material meant for export. A heap of such jars almost always indicates an ancient wreck. But that is not all. The ships themselves are there.”
I was silent. If anyone but Frederick had told me such a yarn I wouldn’t have believed him. I don’t know why I believed Frederick. Maybe it was because I just didn’t expect his insanity to take this particular form. Paranoia was his problem, not fantasy. If I ever lost my mind, this was the kind of beautiful madness I would create.
“An entire fleet must have been in the harbor,” he went on. “Ash had been falling for hours, perhaps for days; the sky was black as night, poisonous fumes made breathing difficult. The rulers of Thera reached a decision-to flee, while flight was still possible. Save the royal treasures, the ritual vessels of the shrines. Seek the safety of the sea, retreat to the motherland. They could not have dreamed of the magnitude of the disaster; they could not know that Crete was also in peril.
“They crowded on board the ships, men, women, and children, with their private treasures and the most precious possessions of the state. But before they could cast off, the volcano caught them. Earthquakes, great tidal waves, showers of molten rock turned the harbor into a scene out of Dante. Some ships caught fire. The flames were quickly quenched when the vessels sank, but I tell you, there are charred ships’ timbers down below, in this very bay.
“The sunken ships were covered almost immediately by sand and ash. That is what preserved them. Throughout the succeeding millennia they remained sealed in their natural tombs. And then, by pure accident, a storm, accompanied by earth tremors, shifted those strata. The hardened ash cracked and the sands were washed away. The skeletons of the ships lay exposed as they had fallen. Only for a short time; another storm followed and again the wrecks were buried. It may be that they are gone forever. But I doubt it. I think they are still there. Of all that wreckage something must remain. It will be a long project to search the area thoroughly. I am no longer fit for such exertion. So-”
“So,” I said. “Me. It’s funny, isn’t it, that your long-lost daughter should turn out to be a diver?”
“Funny?” The cold gray eyes grew cloudy, as if they were focusing on some inner vision. “In the cosmic sense, yes; the kind of jest one might expect from a deity who excels in irony. The Olympians would enjoy such a joke. It would have suited their primitive, revengeful sense of humor. I felt at times as if they were taking a hand in my affairs. And why not? I have been so long concerned with theirs. The accident that put an end to my diving was such a jest, and its author is not hard to identify-who else but the Earthshaker, the lord of the sea, who was also the god of ancient Crete? Resenting the interloper, punishing him for intruding. And then…you. How is that to be taken, I wonder? Has the god relented, or is this the first part of another of those elaborate, childish practical jokes?”
I shivered. The water was warm, but if you stayed in too long without moving, gradually the chill got to you. It had to be the chill of the water-not my response to that eerie speech, which struck an echoing chord somewhere deep inside me.
Suddenly, for no good reason, I knew there was something wrong with Frederick ’s story. He had omitted something, something important.
However, this was no time for questions. He looked odd, and I was worried about the return trip.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll look for your ships. In fact I’m going to have a look right now. Climb up on that ledge and soak in the sun for a few minutes before we start back.”
He gave me a funny look, but did as I suggested. I filled my lungs and went down.
I wasn’t expecting to find anything. If the wreck had been located near a landmark as conspicuous as this rock, he’d have remembered. All I wanted to do was get some idea of the depth and the general character of the bottom.
It didn’t look encouraging. There was a lot of debris down there, rocks and pumice and old, hardened lava flows. I could see the search was going to take a long time. Every blessed rock would have to be examined to make sure it wasn’t an encrusted pot or piece of sculpture.
When we got back to our cove, Frederick was gray in the face and I had to help him up the cliff. I pumped him full of hot soup and coffee and tried to put him to bed, but the food restored all his normal meanness, and he went back to the dig. He wanted me to go with him, but I refused. I hadn’t had my holiday yet. Even my swim had turned out to be an invitation to work.