The Sea King’s Daughter

Chapter 3

WHEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING I DIDN’T KNOW where I was. The events of the previous day were hazy and dreamlike, as if they had happened to some character in a book I had been reading. The hallucination in the great court, when I had seemed to see a color replay of the bull games, was my last coherent memory. The rest of the day was a series of isolated fragments.

Hans and I had explored the palace, met a couple of students from Denmark, and had supper with them. I remembered their faces; the names were gone. Afterward I must have found the house where I had rented a room… Yes, one ofthe memory fragments concerned the house, and the smiling, motherly Greek lady who owned it. She had shown me the room and brought me water so I could wash. After that-blank.

Calling the experience a hallucination reduced it to terms I could accept. Mentally I added another acceptable word. Sunstroke. Too much sun, unfamiliar food, illness-hallucinations. Reassured, I looked around the room.

The window was wide open. Sunlight made the whitewashed walls so bright they hurt my eyes, and there were so many flies they sounded like a vacuum cleaner. I had a couple of little red bites I hadn’t had when I arrived in Crete, but otherwise I felt fine.

I went downtown and had breakfast. The coffee was the kind you have to strain through your teeth. We call it Turkish coffee at home, but I had been cautioned against using that term. The long Turkish occupation of Greece still rankles; the beverage is Greek coffee, if you please. Anyhow, the bread was good and the jam was a little bit like glue, and after I got my tongue unstuck, thanks to the water that is served with the smallest order in Greece, I went down to the dock and found that I could hitch a ride on a local boat that was going to Santorini that afternoon. On the way back to my boardinghouse I met Hans. He suggested I stick around for a few days and go on to Rhodes with him. I said “No, thanks.” He kissed me good-bye; and then he decided he would go with me, wherever I was going; and I had some trouble getting rid of him.

My hostess and I parted on excellent terms. I practiced my Greek on her. I already knew how to say “Thank you” and “Please” and “Where is the toilet/café/hotel/boat/dog of the innkeeper?” Then I shouldered my stuff and started out for the dock. I only had one suitcase, in addition to my backpack, but it was a big suitcase. It held my diving gear. Frederick had assured me I could rent gear on Thera, but I don’t like using secondhand stuff. I only hoped Frederick was right about getting tanks and air for them.

I had to hang around the dock for a couple of hours before the captain of the boat got back from his afternoon nap. Jim would have had fits at the sight of the boat. It was a filthy tub that looked as if it would founder in a slight breeze. The deck still showed the traces of its last dozen cargoes-animal droppings, oil, fish scales, and so on. I scraped out a spot and sat down. It’s about a hundred and twenty kilometers from Crete to Thera, and from the looks of the scow I figured she’d be lucky to make twenty kilometers an hour. I overestimated the speed. It was late the next morning before we got in.

Santorini is in the guidebooks. I had read about it, but a verbal description can’t possibly prepare a visitor for the real thing. It’s fantastic.

In an aerial view the group of islands looks like a half-eaten sugar cookie from which a giant child has taken a big bite and let the fragments fall onto his shining sea-blue plate. The main island, Thera, is the largest, crescent-shaped piece. Smaller islands lie like fallen crumbs, outlining the perimeter of the former crater of the volcano. In the center of the bay are two other islands, black intrusions on the surface of the clean sea. They are not parts of the cookie, but new volcanic cores, risen phoenix-like out of the chasm. One of them, Nea Kaimeni, is still active.

Chugging through the channel between Thera and the next-largest island, Therasia, we entered the caldera. The water was a rich teal blue, thirteen hundred feet deep. It seemed funny to think we were sailing over what had been the populated central peak of a circular island. We passed by the ominous black cone of Nea Kaimeni, a desolate heap of cinders and slag, with a trail of pale-green vapor rising from its fumarole. Ahead was a stunning view-the red, white, and black cliffs of Thera, rising sheer a thousand feet out of the blue water, as sharply perpendicular as if they had been cut by the snap of gigantic teeth. The geological strata were defined like the layers of a cake-the black of congealed lava, the pinky-red of pumice, and the awesomely thick layer of white ash that fell during the eruption of 1450 B.C., before the final paroxysm blew the guts out of the island. The cliff glistened in the sunlight, and I remembered Plato’s description of the Royal City of Atlantis, built of red and black and white stone.

On top of the cliff, like a starched crocheted edging, were the sugar-white buildings of the island’s largest town, Phira. I was reminded of a model of the Taj Mahal I’d once made out of sugar cubes for a school project. The town had an Oriental look, with cupolas and domes and arched porticoes.

Other buildings, docks and warehouses and shops, clustered at the foot of the cliff. Connecting the lower and upper towns was a zigzag path that went up the sheer face of the cliff in a series of acute switchbacks.

As soon as we had docked I made arrangements to have my stuff carried up to the hotel, and then I considered my own procedure. People usually ride donkeys up the path; it’s too steep for a wheeled vehicle, and the black lava cobblestones are slippery. The donkeys looked as if they were in worse shape than I was, so I decided to walk. I had been sitting for hours and needed to loosen up.

It wasn’t a walk, it was a climb, and by the time I got to the top I was regretting not having taken a donkey. Blinded with sweat and heaving like a spavined horse, I collapsed in the shade of a fig tree, mopped my wet face, and got my eyes focused. And what do you suppose I saw first? Right. My father. He was sitting at a table at a sidewalk café, staring straight at me with an expression of icy disapproval. I paid no attention, being much more interested in the tall glass on the table in front of him. My throat was as dry as death.

I started walking toward him. Then it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t speak till I was spoken to, so I changed course, heading for one of the other tables. Two of them were taken, but the third had only one occupant. He saw me coming and pulled out a chair. I fell into it. The man grinned and shoved his glass of water toward me. I drained it, pushed the damp hair out of my eyes, and looked at him.

He was worth looking at. As tanned as the Minoan athletes in the frescoes, with brown hair sun-bleached in streaks, he had a thin face and a friendly smile. Handsome? I don’t know. After I’ve known someone for a while I can’t judge his appearance. All my friends look beautiful to me. All I remember of that first impression was that he was brown. Brown hair, tanned skin, khaki clothes. High, arched eyebrows, which peaked thickly in the center, gave him a permanently surprised look. His frayed work shirt was open down the front to show a chest as tanned as his face. The sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, and his arms were covered with the marks of heavy labor, scratches and scrapes and bruises. So were his hands.

“Health nut?” he inquired. “Animal lover? Skinflint?”

His voice was deep; the accent was western United States. I considered the questions.

“Health nut, I guess,” I said finally. “The climb didn’t look that bad from down below.”

“Live and learn.” He gestured; when the waiter came, he ordered, without consulting me. I had no objection to the result, however; it was lemonade, fresh and surprisingly cold, considering that it had no ice in it.

“You speak Greek,” I said intelligently.

“Not very well. Not the modern version, anyhow.”

“You mean you speak classical Greek?” A qualm ran through me. “What are you, an archaeologist or something?”

“Something. If you ask my boss, he’ll tell you I’m a long way from calling myself an archaeologist.”

I drank lemonade and tried to think. Frederick had mentioned that there was another expedition working on Thera. It was just my luck to run into one of the staff members before I had a chance to talk to Frederick and find out what role I was supposed to be playing.

My companion was studying me as candidly as I had studied him. He didn’t seem to dislike what he saw.

“My name’s Jim Sanchez,” he said.

“Really? My dad’s name is Jim.”

I was not trying to be sly. I spoke without thinking. Jim was my father, in every sense but the least important. I had momentarily forgotten about the man who was sitting at a nearby table, as I basked in the warmth of Jim Sanchez’s smile.

“What a coincidence.”

“Yes, I don’t suppose there are more than half a million men in the world named Jim,” I agreed solemnly; and then we both laughed immoderately, as if the silly comment had been an epigram.

Why does it happen that way sometimes, with a total stranger? Within five minutes we were talking as if we had shared years of common experiences. We laughed a lot, over things that weren’t really very funny. We caught each other’s meanings before the sentences were completed. There didn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t tell him my name, so I did. Then he told me where he went to school-he was working for a doctorate at the University of California -and I told him where I was from and what I had majored in at school. Casual conversation, nothing profound or clever; but I felt as if I had known him all my life.

That’s what people usually say when they describe such an experience. It’s a figure of speech.

Or is it? I wonder.

The conversation was a little embarrassing because I had to hedge about so many things-why I had come to Thera, for instance, and how long I was planning to stay. I had just about decided it was time for me to make a tactful exit-mentioning that I hoped to be staying at the Hotel Atlantis-when something came between me and the sun. The long shadow fell across the table like a bar of darkness that separated me and Jim. It was very symbolic.

I looked up at the stony face of my father and waited for him to speak first. It didn’t really matter what he said. He had ended my little tête-àtête. The look on Jim’s face was as revealing as an essay.

“So you are here at last,” said Frederick. “Where is your luggage?”

“At the hotel,” I said. “At least I hope it is.”

“Come along, then.” He moved his head in a brusque commanding gesture and started to turn away. He hadn’t even looked at Jim.

“So,” said the latter. “That’s who you are.”

“Who?” I asked warily.

“One of his protégées. No wonder you didn’t-”

Frederick turned back.

“Miss Bishop is the daughter of an old friend, who has offered to give me a hand for a few weeks-typing and recording, that sort of thing. I am extremely shorthanded. But you should know that better than anyone. Sir Christopher hired all the able-bodied men in the village before I arrived. No doubt he had been told I would be here.”

Even considering the paranoidal tone of the last sentences, this was an extraordinary speech for Frederick. As a rule he didn’t condescend to explain himself. Jim’s quirked eyebrows rose.

“Really, Dr. Frederick, he didn’t know. I’m sorry if you feel that way-”

“Your regret or lack of it is irrelevant,” Frederick interrupted. “Even if your sentiments are genuine, which I am inclined to doubt, they would be of no practical use, since it is your employer who determines your actions. Come, Sandy, I want to get back to the site this afternoon.”

Naturally enough, this piece of rudeness wiped the conciliatory expression off Jim’s face and restored his original look of suspicion and hostility. I didn’t blame him. I could have slapped my father. However, it wasn’t fair of Jim to blame me for somebody else’s bad manners. He didn’t give me a chance to apologize or explain or smile, or anything. He threw down a handful of change, pushed his chair back and walked off, fairly radiating anger with every muscle in his body. It was a nice body, too, lean-hipped and broad-shouldered, like those of the bull dancers.

Frederick was several yards away, walking fast. I trotted till I caught up with him. He didn’t slow down.

“Why the hell did you have to be so rude?” I demanded.

“I cautioned you, I believe, against speaking to anyone you met here on Thera.”

“No, you did not!”

“Then you ought to have had the elementary good sense to know it without being cautioned. It is imperative that your identity remain a secret-”

“Then why did you speak to me? I figured-”

“You did not figure, if by that you mean ‘think sensibly.’ It will be evident, as soon as you appear on the dig, that you are working with me. The important thing is to keep people from suspecting that you are planning to dive professionally. There can be no objection to your swimming or diving for pleasure, and if you are thought to be a casual acquaintance, with no training in archaeology, suspicion will not arise. That is why I explained your presence as I did.”

“Well, you might have told me that before,” I grumbled. “And I still don’t see why you had to be so nasty to-to him.”

“His name is Sanchez,” said my father obtusely. “He is the assistant to Sir Christopher Penrose, who is conducting a dig on the other side of the village. There is a Minoan town there; house remains were found almost fifty years ago. Sir Christopher is probably preening himself because he believes he has taken the area I wanted. He hopes to find a palace. He is mistaken. The palace is not east of the village, it is west, part of it is submerged, that is why it is necessary for you to dive. Must I explain in laborious detail why I don’t want that inquisitive young man hanging around you? His superior is one of my chief antagonists. He would like nothing better than to find me violating some idiotic regulation, so he can have me expelled from the island.”

I was tempted to write this speech off as incipient paranoia, but I couldn’t. The article I had read in the dentist’s office all those months ago had told me what the rest of the world thought of my father and his work. Some of the reading I had done since proved to me that scholars can be as petty-minded and vindictive as mean little kids. Sir Christopher might be like that. And if this incident was a sample of how my father behaved with his colleagues, I didn’t blame them for hating his guts.

He had been arrogant enough when I first met him. Here, on his native turf, he was overpowering. He had my stuff collected and put into his rented Land Rover before I had time to draw a deep breath, and my feeble suggestions about lunch didn’t even win a glance of acknowledgment. His Greek sounded as fluent as his English. I wondered if the content was as rude. I couldn’t judge from the faces of the islanders he was dealing with, they were studiedly blank or studiously polite. Certainly he got results, and we were out of town before I realized that not only had I missed lunch, but I hadn’t even gotten a good look at Phira.

To complain would have been to waste my breath, so I settled back and tried to enjoy the scenery-not an easy job, since the roads were bad and the Land Rover had long ago lost any springs it possessed. Frederick drove the way I would have expected, with competence and with complete disregard for the comfort of himself or his passenger. However, the scenery wasn’t awfully scenic. The country was rough, cut by ravines and rising to mountains of considerable height. The soil was a dismal dusty gray, with big lumps of lava and pumice. Volcanic soil is richer than it looks, though; Thera produces good wine and vegetable crops such as tomatoes. The fields, outlined by low stone walls, were terraced to make the most of the uneven terrain. Rows of young vines curved around the flanks of the hills like green contour lines.

We passed a quarry that looked like a lunar ruin, ragged and silvery. I remembered reading that the hardened ash is used in making cement. And I remembered that Thera had once been called Kalliste, “the Beautiful.” The name wasn’t very appropriate now, and yet there was a kind of stark grandeur about the place.

The village was only about six miles from Phira, but it took a long time to get there because of the roads. They wound all over, skirting ravines and mountain slopes. A mile or so out of town the road I had considered rotten petered out to a goat track, deeply rutted and barely wide enough for the car to scrape between the stone walls. Finally we climbed a steep slope, bumped precariously along the top of a ridge-and down below was the village, Zoa. The white houses, with their distinctive arched roofs, were huddled together as if they needed mutual support to keep from falling down the hillside into the sea.

As we plunged downward, on no road that I could see, I asked, “Where are we staying? Is there a hotel?”

I should have known better. A hotel, even a primitive hotel, would have had some labor-saving devices, such as maids. A hotel would have had people. Frederick didn’t like people and he wasn’t particularly interested in saving me any labor. No, we had a house, a ramshackle four-room structure some distance from the village. One look at it brought out housewifely instincts I never knew I had. I even forgot about my empty stomach. I couldn’t have eaten in that house, and the courtyard was worse.

I spent the rest of the day shoveling out the debris and burying the smellier parts of it. Frederick disappeared while I was working, presumably back to his dig. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to help with the housework. I assumed that the cooking was supposed to be my province too. The kitchen was distinguished from the other rooms by the fact that it contained cases of canned goods and a camp-type Coleman stove.

There was plenty of food and enough bottled water to last for weeks. I wasn’t so sure that was good news. It implied that Frederick wasn’t planning on many outside contacts. Surely, I thought, we could get fresh provisions from the villagers-tomatoes and wine, at least. It was too late to go shopping by the time I had made the house semi-habitable, so I got into my bathing suit. There was a tiny beach below the house, separated from the village harbor by a spur of rock. The path going down to it must have been made by goats, but I managed it without too much trouble.

The water felt like a benediction. It washed away the grime of the house and most of my tiredness. When I came up, a spectacular sunset was streaking the sky, and rosy reflections shimmered across the darkening water. I could have stayed there for hours. The place was utterly silent, except for the swish of the waves. But I decided I had better get back up the cliff before it got dark. I was hungry.

When I reached the top of the cliff, I saw a light in the house. I followed it to the kitchen. Frederick was sitting there eating soup and reading, by the light of a single lamp. He glanced up at me and went back to his book.

I looked from his hunched back to the shadowy, grimy little room, and I thought pessimistically: This is going to be a long, lonesome summer.

Frederick didn’t give me time to be lonely. I was too busy. The routine began early next morning, with Frederick dragging me out of my sleeping bag. (There had been a mattress in my room, but I buried it.) We spent the morning-and it was a long one-at the dig. The area was about a block from the house, at the bottom of a ravine. There were a dozen or so bored-looking men scratching away at the ground. When we appeared they scratched a little faster. I couldn’t see that they were finding anything much.

“You’ll direct this group,” Frederick said, leading me to where three men were poking around in a cleared space about three feet square. He spoke to the men in Greek. One of them grinned at me. I grinned back. It was the first smile I had seen that day, and it looked good. Still grinning, I said out of the corner of my mouth,

“You’re crazy, Frederick. I can’t direct anything. I don’t know what they’re doing, and even if I did, I can’t talk to them.”

“You’ll learn,” said Frederick.

I learned. I had to revise my impression that he would make a rotten teacher. He wasn’t entertaining, but he was effective. For the next few days my head felt swollen with all the information he was jamming into it. But there’s nothing like experience on the job; he could explain things as they came up, and in a surprisingly short time the things made sense. Oh, I couldn’t have handled it without him right there, ready to jump in when I hit something I didn’t know about. But I got by. It’s amazing what you can communicate with gestures and goodwill. The men went home for lunch and a siesta break, but I didn’t; I stayed on the job, munching crackers while Frederick lectured and demonstrated. In the evening he lectured some more and showed me how to record and classify pottery fragments.

We found more pottery than anything else. Pottery is practically indestructible. I mean, it breaks, but the pieces don’t decay the way wood or cloth do, and it’s so cheap it isn’t worth stealing. Another reason why archaeologists find so much pottery is that it was the universal storage container in ancient times. People then didn’t have tin cans or bottles or brown paper bags. Pots were used not only to store food but all kinds of things, from clay tablets to dead bodies. The area we were working in had been a storeroom back in Minoan times. We found one jar with a few desiccated grains of cereal still in it.

The side of the ravine was a colored diagram of the geological history of the island. At the bottom was a level of brownish-black soil-ground level in 1500 B.C., before the big eruptions began. It was at this level, or just above it, that the Minoan remains were found. Above that was a pinky-red layer of pumice ten to fifteen feet thick-debris thrown out by the first stage of the eruption. The volcano had been quiescent for some years after that; a narrow sandy layer above the pumice showed signs of normal weathering. Then came a layer of white ash, thirty feet of it; thick enough to bury houses, kill crops, choke springs and fountains. It had been hot, too; earlier diggers had found burned human teeth. The ash fall was enough in itself to make the island uninhabitable, but it had only been the prelude to the final explosion. Having emptied itself, the volcanic chamber collapsed, and the sea rushed into the chasm.

Seeing the actual remains of the catastrophe made it seem very real. The work was fascinating, actually, but I was too inexperienced to see that it was also rather peculiar. There was an amateurishness about the whole business that was out of keeping with Frederick ’s reputation and temperament. The very fact that he would allow a novice like me to handle his precious antiquities, even broken pieces of pottery, should have alerted me to the truth: that the digging wasn’t his main concern. It was a blind, hiding his real interest.

I was up to my eyeballs in pots and new experiences, and I didn’t draw the obvious conclusion. Oh, I knew Frederick wanted me to dive, but I assumed the underwater work would be an extension of what we were doing on land. I was soon to learn that I had been way off base on that assumption.

One thing happened during that period of time. It was an insignificant thing in itself, but it made an odd impression on me.

I was sitting in the courtyard one evening washing potsherds. This occupation is not quite so boring as it sounds. The Minoans made some pretty painted pottery, and every now and then a scrap with a flower or shell or spiral pattern would turn up. It was like magic, seeing the vivid colors and vigorous shapes appear as the masking crust of dirt washed away.

Even painted pots can pall, however; that particular evening I was squatting there with my hands trailing in the water, staring absently at the view and thinking about how bored I was. The wall of the courtyard was in bad shape; parts of it had collapsed completely, and there was a wide gap where a wooden gate had once stood. The sun had just gone down behind the crest of the mountain, and the sky looked like one of Mother’s modern embroidery pieces, silky, shiny crimsons and oranges, with sparkles of reflected light like patches of gold thread. There were a few stunted trees on the ridge nearest the house; they made grotesque silhouettes against the garish sky.

Then I realized that there was another shape silhouetted against the sunset, that of a man on horseback. In contrast to the dwarf-sized trees, he and the animal looked larger than life. They were utterly still, so still that they resembled a monumental equestrian statue instead of creatures of flesh and blood. As I watched, they disappeared, almost as if they had melted into the darkening stones below and beyond them.

I had the impression that the man had been staring straight down into the courtyard. Straight at me.

There was no reason why this should have disturbed me even if it had been true. Nor was there any reason why the sight of him should bring back memories of those unnerving hours in Crete. I hadn’t exactly forgotten that experience, but I had rationalized it as the result of sunstroke or illness. I had not felt a single twinge of discomfort since I arrived on Thera, and if my problem in Crete had been an upsurge of ancestral memory, I ought to have experienced it again here, when my fingers actually touched the baked clay those long-dead hands had fashioned.

But the man on horseback was an archaic figure, out of the old legends with which I was now familiar. I couldn’t remember whether the Homeric heroes had ridden horseback or not; but they had used horses to pull their chariots. Poseidon was also Hippios, the horse god. The old gods seemed to linger on, here in the regions where they had once been supreme. It was fitting that Poseidon should haunt Thera, for he was both a sea god and a maker of earthquakes.

Frederick came out just then, grousing because I wasn’t washing pots fast enough, and I forgot my fantasies. I forgot about the horseman, too-for a while.

Toward the end of the week I had learned more about ancient Crete than I wanted to know. My brain was reeling and my body was cramped with squatting among broken pots. I might have rebelled anyway, but something happened that gave me a good excuse for changing my routine.

We went up to the dig as usual that morning. As a rule the men were there waiting for us, but that morning the place was deserted. I expressed surprise, and Frederick explained that they weren’t coming. It was a holy day, a saint’s day or something. He added a few comprehensive curses on the Greek Christian pantheon.

It was cool down there in the ravine, and deeply shadowed; but when I looked up I could see a slash of blue sky and a bird soaring high and free. I stood up, brushing dirt off my knees.

“I’m taking the day off, too,” I said, breaking into his anathemas. “God knows I deserve it, the hours I’ve been working. See you later.”

I left without waiting for an answer. We’d just have gotten into an argument, and arguing with Frederick was the most useless activity known to man. He never listened to a word anybody said. I went straight back to the house and changed into my bathing suit.

I know I shouldn’t have gone swimming alone. But I was young and confident, and I really had very little choice; either I swam alone, or I didn’t swim. I could imagine what Frederick would say if I suggested he join me, especially after I’d walked out on a day’s work. He had already turned down several invitations to come for a swim, saying he wanted me to gain some experience with archaeological techniques before I started working underwater. When I pointed out that people did occasionally swim for pleasure, he gave me a blank look.

As I climbed down the cliff, carrying my fins and mask, I promised myself I would be careful. I wouldn’t go out far or stay in long, and I would keep an eye out for monsters. But I couldn’t wait any longer. It was warm and bright and the blue water drew me like a magnet. It slid over my body like a silken robe as I went in.

In a way, it was like coming home after a long absence. Water is not our natural element. We die if we stay in it too long. But we came from the water, if the theory of evolution is right. Millions and millions of years ago, our remote ancestors were spawned in the seas, and they lived there for more millions of years before some foolish fish wriggled up onto dry land and turned into an amphibian. Maybe that’s why some of us keep trying to go back. I don’t know. All I know is, I love it. There’s a whole world down there, and if some of its denizens are killers, they are less vicious than their two-legged descendants.

Actually, I wasn’t too sure what kinds of killers I might run into in these waters. Sharks were a possibility; they inhabit most of the seas. Some jellyfish are unpleasant customers, and they too are common all over the world. I had read about a fish called a weever, which is “capable of inflicting a painful sting.” But I figured the chance of encountering anything like that was pretty slim. I was dying to meet a dolphin. I had read about them, how intelligent they are, and how friendly. I also wanted to see an octopus, not a little squid, but a big Kraken-type monster eight feet across. Not that I intended to get familiar with an enraged octopus, but I know most predators are unlikely to attack if you don’t bother them.

I didn’t see anything particularly interesting that day. I’d never been in water so clear, though; I suppose anything around the United States is bound to be contaminated. The water shimmered with refracted sunlight, and magnified details. I could see the separate, delicate strands of seaweed on the bottom twenty feet below. There wasn’t a lot of weed, but it was a rough bottom, covered with rocks and lava fragments. The terrain lacked the spectacular colors of coral and vegetation that I was used to, but it looked fine to me.

When I finally came out of the water I saw that I was not alone. The straight, lean body of the man on the beach gave me a momentary thrill, but almost immediately I realized it couldn’t be Jim. His back was turned to me, and it was bleached white in color, not tanned, as Jim’s back surely must be. The man turned. I recognized my father.

Half amused and half annoyed I walked toward him. Like his face, his body was younger looking than it ought to have been. I suppose an ascetic, physically active life accounted for that. So far as I could tell, he didn’t suffer from any of the temptations of the flesh.

I expected him to be annoyed at my defection, but he greeted me without anger-without emotion of any kind.

“Thanks for coming down to keep an eye on me,” I said.

He looked surprised.

“Why should I do that? You are supposed to be an excellent swimmer.”

“Even an excellent swimmer can get a cramp,” I said, angered at his indifference-and pleased that I could tell him something he didn’t know. “I do swim alone sometimes, but I know it’s stupid. When I start diving for real, you’ll have to stick around.”

“I will certainly be on hand, to direct your actions.”

“I didn’t see anything interesting out there. No pots, no walls-”

“I doubt that you would recognize them if you found them,” he said dryly. “In any case, this is not the area in which I am interested. We’ll swim around the headland and I’ll show you the spot. It’s not far.”

I followed him into the water, and then north along the coast. He swam with the same economical power all his other actions displayed, but he was a little awkward; I could tell that his technique was the result of concentration, not of training. I turned over onto my side and took a look around. We had rounded the headland and were a long way from shore.

Ahead and to the left, another miniature bay had opened up. Perched on the cliff top was a house. It wasn’t a small cottage, like the houses in the village, but an honest-to-God villa, almost a mansion. The walls gleamed white in the sunlight, and the red-tiled roof stood out against the blue sky.

Frederick was slowing down. I moved in closer, blaming myself for not checking him out before we started. He might be well preserved, but he was certainly no chicken, he had to be in his fifties, and for all I knew he might have a heart condition or something. By this time I could see bottom down below, although we were still some distance from the inner wall of the bay. Though the water wasn’t deep, there was no beach, only rough rock all around.

Frederick caught hold of a rock, one of several that poked its head up out of the water. He clung there, breathing hard, and I joined him, hanging on with one hand.

“You’re out of condition,” I said.

“I have one bad lung,” Frederick replied, as calmly as I would have announced, I have a pimple on my nose. “I punctured it some years ago.”

“You fool, why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have let you-”

“Let me? I can’t imagine how you would have prevented me.”

We were both bobbing gently up and down with the motion of the waves, and in spite of myself I started to laugh.

“Look,” I said, after a moment. “I take all the orders you hand out, don’t I, when it comes to digging? On this subject I’m the expert. I’m familiar with all the life-saving techniques, but I’d prefer not to use any of them on you. Let me do the swimming from now on, okay?”

Frederick ’s reaction was meek, for him.

“Why do you suppose I’m not doing the underwater work myself? The techniques do not seem difficult; I could have mastered them in a few months if I had been physically able to do so. I shall certainly leave the diving to you as soon as I have instructed you as to what you are looking for.

“As we know, the Minoans were the greatest navigators and sailors of their age. Cretan experts were responsible for the massive harbor installations near Alexandria, in the Egyptian Delta, discovered by divers in 1910, and a few Minoan harbors have been explored. Five years ago, following certain clues which I need not enumerate to you, I did some diving near here. I found…”

He stopped. The rest had restored his color and slowed his breathing, but I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.

“If you can’t trust me, whom can you trust?” I asked. “You found traces of the harbor installations, I suppose. What’s so unbelievable about that? I don’t see why you couldn’t tell the antiquities people; they might have given you permission to dive, or even supplied money and equipment. You shouldn’t be so damn suspicious of-”

I stopped speaking, because he was shaking his head violently.

“You little fool, what do you know about life? Especially my life! This is a cutthroat world, and I have been persecuted more cruelly than most men. Five years ago my career was over. My enemies controlled Greece; not only was I unable to dig, but my very life was in danger. It was a miracle, nothing less, that Mistropolous should have become head of the antiquities department; he is probably the only man in my field who still has some regard for me and my ideas. But he is only one man, and his own position is precarious. If it were known that I had made this discovery, a discovery so astounding, so unprecedented-”

“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.”