CHAPTER XVII

THE HOUSES

They dined at six o'clock, and after dinner they sat on deck in the gathering dark making plans for the morrow.

The map of Hyalos, which they had studied so often, was impressed on their minds so that they had no need to refer to it. Roughly, and for their purpose, the town of Hyalos might be described as framed around three streets and the market-place or agora. The theatre, presumably outside the walls, did not come into the plan of the town.

The three streets, as named by Isaac Behrens, were the Street of the Winged Victory running north, the Street of the Winds running east, and the Street of Hermes running south.

The town was roughly half-moon shaped, the curve to the east.

Behrens, who must have carried a photographic camera in his brain, had drawn his map with the most loving minuteness, showing all sorts of little by-streets intersecting the main avenues. Amongst the notes on the back of the map was one which read: "Search mainly houses adjoining agora end Victory, Hermes, St. of Winds."

That evidently referred to treasure.

It was obvious enough that whatever works of art Hyalos might disclose would be found in the better-class houses adjoining the big streets. But why did Isaac specify the agora end of the streets? What antiquarian or art-lover instinct prompted him? Who could tell?

"To-morrow," said Sam, "I'll bring the ship along and we'll anchor right over one of those houses. The drift is nothing. I won't use the anchor--just a couple of ballast pigs at the end of the cable will hold her steady--and we can work the air pump from deck. She has a low freeboard, and will be just as handy to use as the boat and a lot more comfortable."

"Glastonbury knows what to look for," said Bobby. "I've given him a course of instruction. Pretty simple, too. Everything moveable he can lay hands on, and especially anything in the way of figures or heads made of stone. There's no use in talking of objects of art to Glastonbury, but he understands the meaning of figures."

"It's nothing of a job as far as he's concerned," said Sam. "It's only a six- or seven-fathom drop into one of those courtyards, and the Sooloo pearl divers will do seventeen fathoms without a diving dress."

"Tell me," said Martia. "I only know about diving that the diver has an air-pipe to give him air which has to be pumped to him. Well, suppose we lower Glastonbury down into one of those courtyards."

"We don't lower him," said Sam--"he goes down himself."

"Well, he's in the courtyard, then he goes under the colonnade and into the room of the house. Isn't there danger of the air-pipe getting tangled round something, or bent, so's he can't breathe?"

"Not with a diver who knows his work," replied the other. "Those houses are nothing to Glastonbury. Why, he's often gone down to a sunk ship and into it, into the cabins and places, and that off the English coast, where the water's as thick as pea-soup compared with the water here."

"How will he see when he gets into the house?"

"Oh, he's got an electric torch. We lower a net-bag with a sinker in it--I've got two in the sail-room. He puts what he finds in the bag and we haul it up, so he hasn't to come to the surface every time he finds anything."

"And how does he come up when he's finished. Do we pull him?"

"No, he comes up a rope; or if he's in a hurry he just shuts the escape valve in his helmet and the air balloons out his dress, and he rises like a bubble."

Martia sat for a moment in silence. The moon was just lifting, a great silver moon lighting the bay and the sea beyond, silver-faced yet rosy-fingered, for where she touched the bunt of a badly stowed sail and the white planking of the deck the light showed in it a tinge of rose.

"There's one thing I haven't thought of till now," said she. "Are we doing right in keeping this place a secret from the world?"

"How do you mean?" said Bobby.

"I mean this is one of the wonders of the world, like Pompeii. It is a Pompeii, covered with water instead of lava. Well, oughtn't we to talk about it?"

"Why?" asked Bobby.

"So that people may see it; archæologists and people."

"I don't see why we should make ourselves advertising agents for this place," said Sam. "Anyhow, I don't see there's any 'ought' in it. You've come out here to scrape up statues and things for old Behrens, and from what you say the Greek Government might lay claim to them if they knew. No, keep it dark. Suppose you did tell? Even if the Greeks didn't make trouble, what good would it do? You'd have shiploads of beastly tourists coming here, that would be all, and fusty old archæologists. The world wouldn't be a bit better for it."

"Anyhow," said Bobby, "it's always up to us to give information about the place. We could do it in a year or so, anonymously: write a letter to the _Times_ or something of that sort."

They sat whilst the moon rose higher, lighting the island, the bay and the reefs; the girl trying to fancy shiploads of tourists breaking into this beautiful desolation--tourists come to "do" Hyalos. Her mind refused the idea. The city that time had hidden so carefully appealed against it.

"Take what you will of my treasures," it said, "but spare me that."

They were up an hour after sunrise next morning, and, after tea and biscuits served on deck by Bowler, they started to get the anchor up and the auxiliary engine going.

It was good to be alive. A tepid sea-scented breeze ruffled the bay and brought a faint whisper from the reef where the foam traces showed in lines of gold. Gulls filled the air and followed them as the _Lorna_, with the anchor up and the engine going, turned to the helm and glided eastward, whilst the hands forward were getting ready the ballast pigs to serve as anchors and Glastonbury, on his knees, was going over the diving gear which he had spread out on deck. The great brass helmet, the lead sinkers, the boots so heavy that they were difficult to lift, the air tube and signal line, the electric torch--all and each of these he was inspecting with the care of a man whose life depended on perfection of detail. The pump had been rigged on the starboard side, and, having finished with the gear, he turned to the pump, overhauling it, whilst Sam, forward and leaning over the side, was giving directions to the steersman.

They passed over the theatre, then the market-place showed its wide surface glimmering up through the breezed water.

Sam ordered the engine to be shut off, and the _Lorna_, gliding with the way on her, stole towards the advancing houses, whose walls showed now like a submarine cloud, now more solidly.

"Ready with the anchor there!" cried Sam.

Martia, standing by the steersman, watched breathlessly whilst the fellows handling the two great ballast pigs attached to the cable got ready to heave them over.

Then came the voice: "Port--steady so." And a moment later: "Damn, we've overrun it! Put her back a stroke or two."

The little propeller flopped and was still. The _Lorna_ receded slightly, ceased to move, and then began gently to drift.

"Over with the anchor!" The order came sharp as a pistol-shot; and on the splash Martia came forward and looked down.

Sam had manœuvred the _Lorna_ right over the courtyard of a house on whose tessellated pavement the ballast pigs were resting: seven and a half fathoms of cable were out and the bubbles were still coming up.

"Will she hold?" asked Glastonbury, who was leaning over beside Sam.

"Sure," said Sam. "But let her swing first. That weight will hold her with this move of current, but we'll soon see."

The _Lorna_ was shifting her position, coming round gently bow on to the almost imperceptible drift. Then she hung motionless to the tautened cable.

"She holds all right," said Sam. "But, if you like, I'll put another anchor out."

"No, I reckon that's enough," said the diver. "If she did drift them pigs would catch up against the roof there"--he pointed to the roof of the colonnade. "House you call it. Why, it's more like a darn cistern without a lid."

"Well, that's how they built in the old days," replied the other. "And now, you'll remember all I told you. Under that roof-place you'll find the rooms. Take your time over it and don't be in a hurry. Nab anything you can find and fix in your head all the details."

Glastonbury turned from the side, and then, indifferently, as though he were going down in Poole Harbour to free an anchor-chain or fix a pile, he began to dress.

Martia watched. It was the most exciting moment of her life. What might happen to him? What might he not find? No treasure hunt could have more thrills in it than this search--not for base gold but for that which no gold could create. This was the moment of moments towards which all their labours had tended.

She watched him getting into the canvas suit, and the boots weighing sixteen pounds each being put on his feet, and the lead sinkers on his shoulders; the great helmet with the front glass open put on his head and fixed, with the air-tube attached.

Church and Bowler were at the pump, and they set it going.

"Right," said Glastonbury; and the helmet was closed to a hiss of air from the escape valve.

Then she watched as slowly, with the movements of a paralysed elephant, he turned to the side, got over, and began to crawl down the ladder. Oh, if anything should happen to the pump, to the air-tube! She had never seen a diver going down before, and the thought clutched her so that for a moment she did not dare to look. When she did, leaning over beside Bobby, she saw on the tessellated pavement beneath her the diver like a horned monster, a long stream of bubbles ascending from his head. He was standing erect and seemed looking round him, then, followed by the pipe and the signal line, he vanished beneath the colonnade roof.

The clanking of the pump, slow and rhythmical, filled the air, answering to the voices of the far-off gulls.

"Now over with the net," said Sam; and the net-bag with its sinker went down, resting on the courtyard floor. As it did so a fish, blue and grey, and big as a twenty-pound salmon, darted from the shadows where the diver had vanished. He had frightened it out, and it fled hither and thither, scared by the ship above, and disappearing at last under the colonnade roof at the northern end.

A minute passed, two, three, four--then the figure in the helmet, the air bubbles gaily spraying upwards from it, reappeared; he was carrying something.

He bent by the net-bag, then rose and passed off again into the shadows. Bobby and Sam between them hauled up the bag, dripping from the sea.

A Greek vase showed through the meshes of the bag, a vase of red glazed earthenware, exquisite in shape and pictured in black with men reclining at a banquet and girl flute-players playing double flutes. It stood nearly eighteen inches in height in the light of the sun that it had not seen for two thousand years, and Martia, kneeling before it, could not speak. She lifted it in both her hands to pour the water from it, when out tumbled a little figure that seemed made of crystal: a winged Eros, fat as a Roman Cupid, standing on its hands on a base of crystal, its feet in the air, turning a somersault. Some child's toy, possibly, dropped into the jar by the child or by its mother for safe keeping. Bowler, who had turned his head for a moment as he worked at the pump, saw this thing as it stood on the deck where Martia had placed it beside the jar, and laughed--a single laugh like a knock on a board. Then, without a word, he went on with his pumping. The humour of the thing had kept through all the centuries, and the artist had not worked in vain.

Meanwhile, Sam had flung the net over again, but it did not come up again immediately. Glastonbury, going and coming, was collecting things in a dump to save time. Then they began to come up so rapidly that the receivers had only time to disengage them from the bag.

Vases like the first; shallow drinking-cups, all exquisite in form, unbroken, and pictured with feasts, battles, and ceremonies, flute-girls and girls at play, men sacrificing animals on altars, and men putting on armour for the fight; a bracelet of metal, heavy as gold; a cup of black metal, possibly silver, and carved with figures; a sea nymph of marble astride a marble dolphin, the whole not over ten inches high; and a disc thrower in marble like the discobolus of the Museum, except in size, for the plinth was not bigger than a soup plate.

All these things the collector of antiques, seven fathoms below the keel, sent up to be received dripping from the sea; and all these things, to the value of thousands of pounds, stood on the deck-planking in the burning sun, of little interest to any but Martia and Bobby. Sam had talked of a crew of blind men; in reality he was nearly as blind as his crew, as far as these things were concerned.

Then Glastonbury came up, reporting a clean sweep. With helmet off and cigarette in his lips he gave a sketch of the rooms he had entered.

"More like cells in a police-station than decent rooms," said Glastonbury--"all but the big room I got them things from," pointing to the statuary.

It seemed that the largest of the jars had come from the big room, and the rest, from a room that might have been a kitchen. There were stone benches but no trace of any wooden furniture: that would no doubt have been eaten by the sea ages ago.

Well, there on the deck was the result of the sacking of a single house, and if all the other houses in the better-class streets of Hyalos were to give up an equal amount of treasure, it seemed to Sam that they would want the _Mauretania_ to bring the stuff back to England. He said so.

The remark did not trouble Martia. Her mind was already in trouble. They had clean forgotten packing material. Her woman's instinct for crockery had brought this fact suddenly into her mind.

Those lovely jars, which she would not have allowed a servant to handle! How were they to be carried unbroken to England? The statuary was all right: it would stand rough usage--but the jars? Where was the straw and where were the hampers that ought to have been provided?

She asked all this kneeling on the deck beside her treasures.

"We can shove them in the sail-room," said Sam. "Put them close enough together and they won't carry away."

"Shove them in the sail-room? Don't you know that each one ought to be wrapped round with straw and then straw put between them? It is my fault. I ought to have thought of this. But then how was I to know? I never imagined finding things so fragile as these."

"Beg your pardon, miss, but you are talkin' about straw," said Bowler.

"Yes."

"Well, there's enough grass growin' ashore to make all the straw you want. It's all there bar the cutting."

"We've nothing to cut it with," said Bobby.

"There are knives enough, and we can sharpen them," replied Sam. "We'll start in to-morrow, and when we've cut enough we'll leave it to dry in the sun. Meanwhile, you can stow those things in the sail-room; there's no roll or pitch here to harm them."

They went below to get some food, and two hours later, the anchor being got in, Sam jockeyed the _Lorna_ over the courtyard of the next house.

Glastonbury was down five minutes. He sent nothing up; he came up himself with the report that the place was stripped. Stone couches, a chair of marble too heavy to be moved, and a few scraps of corroded metal were all the things he found.

A depressing result after the first glorious discoveries.

The inhabitants had either removed their things or had cared nothing for objects of art and adornment.

It was Sam who cheered the others up as they sat in the cabin that night discussing matters.

"There's no use in thinking on a job like this," said Sam. "We've begun well, anyhow. I don't care whether these Hyalites cleared out before the sea took them or were swallowed whole. It stands to reason that one house can't be full of things and all the rest empty. We've just got to go ahead and go slow and methodical, and to-morrow there'll be no diving. We'll land and cut grass--and pray for fine weather."