CHAPTER XXII
THE DUMPING OF THE VICTORY
Lying awake that night, Bobby remembered again his first interview with Martia, and her talk about the predilection of editors and the public for stories with a feminine interest. He began to wonder, as he lay listening to the heavy breathing of the skipper, whether there ever existed a story, in real life or fiction, since the story of Adam, without some woman somewhere or somewhen having a finger in it.
If he had set out to choose on sight, for this expedition, a skipper absolutely fool-proof against females, he would have chosen Sam. Yet look!
How could he have known that Sam had a mysterious female somewhere in the background of his life; a love tragedy, the remembrance of which tended now and then to make him fly off the handle? He couldn't. Sam had been foisted on him as sound goods by the god of expeditions--who sends ships to sea with rotten garboard strakes, who puts weevils in biscuits, and leaks in water tanks: the god who loves to watch strong men fighting against adversity.
Had Sam talked on board the _Santa Margharita_? Had he by any chance said a word too much?
Bobby was quite sure that Samuel in no circumstances whatever would have told of their doings at Hyalos. All the same, he might by accident have done just as bad, letting fall a chance word that would arouse suspicion.
Well, if he had, the thing was done, and there was no use in bothering about it. Time would tell. Leaving it at that, Bobby turned on his side and fell asleep.
* * * * *
Coming on deck next morning, he found the festive one dressed and in his right mind, without a trace of his doings upon him. He was talking to Martia, telling her what a pleasant time he had spent the night before, the tonnage of the _Santa Margharita_, the fact that Visconti was a really good sort--a Neapolitan gentleman whose ancestry went back to the time of Virgil--that the _Santa Margharita_ had damaged a cylinder-cover, which had been put right, and that she was off that morning back to Naples.
Bobby said nothing. He was content to let the matter rest at that and trust in the Providence that had protected them up to this.
After breakfast, when they came up on deck, the anchor winch of the _Santa Margharita_ was rousing the shore echoes. Bowler got the flag ready and ran it up and dipped it as the stranger, turning in a big curve, made for the reef opening, her siren letting off in salute of the _Lorna_ and her ugly stern showing as she cleared off down the channel.
In ten minutes she was a smoke-wreath on the far sea--a memory.
"Now fetch back that tent," said Sam, "and we'll go and scrape up that mess in the street."
* * * * *
The mess in the street, brought on board by eight bells--four o'clock in the afternoon--included the Victory, her broken wing, the little chariot-wheel and the horse's head. There were other fragments, but they were left. As it was, to use Sam's expression, they had bitten off more than they could chew. The Victory was impossible to stow. The only place for her was the fo'c'sle, and the fo'c'sle was over-crowded. Besides, the hatch was too narrow to get her down. It was the wing that did the mischief.
Sam proposed to break it off, but they could not do it. They could not break and brutally treat that living marble. Time and disaster had done enough to it. So they dumped her--and she was worth heaven only knows what.
The funeral took place after dinner, in the dark, just before the moon had time to lighten the depths of the bay. Getting into the boat which was alongside, they released her from the lowering tackle and let her slip into the darkness of the water, through which a long stream of phosphorescent bubbles rose, dissolved, and vanished.
"And that's the end of the job," said Sam, little knowing how far from them the end of the job was yet.
Next morning they filled the water tanks early and devoted the forenoon to exploring the parts of the city they had missed. Actually, notwithstanding all the time they had been there, they knew little of the place beyond the theatre, the agora, and the Street of Victory. Time being the essence of their contract they could not waste it. Never for a day, or for a moment, had they been quite free of the vague dread that someone might turn up to see what they were doing; some Greek naval boat or even some fishermen from Milo or Polykandro away to the north.
To-day they could breathe freely and look about them. It was their last day there, Sam having determined to weigh anchor next morning, and the last time, in all probability, that any one of them would see the place.
They rowed across the theatre and leaving the agora struck over the street to the right, named by Isaac Behrens the Street of Hermes. It seemed to them narrower than the Street of Victory, and the houses poorer. As for the Street of the Winds, opening on the east of the agora, it was narrower still.
There was no statuary, either standing or fallen, in these streets as in the Street of Victory, yet in the Street of the Winds they came on something more fascinating than any piece of sculpture.
The water was shallow here, only a couple of feet above the roof tops, and down below, at a depth of only five fathoms, lay a slab of stone with something written on it in Greek characters.
Sam declaring that he would dive for it, as the water was shallow, they put back to the ship and got some signal halyard line. Armed with this, he went down as he was and brought it up. It was a slab of marble about a foot by eighteen inches, and scratched roughly but fairly deep there appeared these characters:
Τὸ μέλημα τοὐμόν.
"What's the meaning of it?" asked the girl.
Bobby's classical education was enough to allow him to decipher the thing.
"It's a graph," said he. "Same as you find on the walls of Pompeii, only those are in Latin. Some fellow in love with some girl must have scratched it on the front of her house, which was probably faced with marble slabs. It means 'my darling.'"
He was probably right as to the origin of the thing, but he did not know that it was a tag taken from Sappho and possibly had some extra meaning, owing to the context of the lost poem to which it belonged.
Martia touched the words with her finger and a far-away look came into her eyes. Possibly she was thinking of the lover who had written that beneath the window of the girl he loved; on the wall of her house, or, maybe, on the wall of some public place, just to give relief to his heart; some lover whose very bones had vanished from the world but whose voice still spoke in the language of the human heart, which is older than Greek.
Bobby watched her.
He would have given a good deal to have known her thoughts.
She had cared for Isaac Behrens. Was it possible that she was thinking of him?
The vague absurd jealousy he had felt when Behrens had told him that she had been engaged to Isaac came back. He had forgotten it, almost, but Hyalos was Isaac's find, and this love message--was she possibly connecting it with Isaac's memory?
He wished that Sam had let the thing lie.
They rowed back to the ship, Martia holding the little tablet on her knee. Once on board she took it to her cabin as though she looked upon it as her own property.
Bobby could have kicked Sam.