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.