The 22 Letters (17 page)

The Sea Lord was silent and sat with a bored look on his face. Nun looked over at the Chaldean, who met his gaze, and it seemed that they were sharing the same thoughts. The members of the crew had, of course, told the truth. They had arrived at Amnisos four days after leaving Gebal, having spent two nights at sea and two in the islands. And after that self-satisfied harangue, neither of them felt inclined to convince the Cretan of the facts of star-navigation even if he would have listened.

One of the flag officers broke the silence, addressing Nun in a sneering voice. “Well, Captain? You have heard his Lordship's question. How long did you take from Gebal to Amnisos?”

“Four days,” said Nun.

The officer raised his eyebrows and turned to the Chaldean. “Is this the truth?”

“The voyage took four days,” said the Chaldean.

There was a silence. The wind had been taken out of the questioners' sails so suddenly that they were at a loss for what to do next. A weather-beaten, middle-aged man who had the looks of a real seaman broke the silence.

“If I may put a question, my Lord—” he said tentatively.

“Oh, certainly, yes,” murmured his Lordship.

The man turned to Nun. “Captain,” he began, “I'll admit that even four days from Gebal to Crete in a craft of your type was a pretty smart bit of sailing. Perhaps you'd tell us the facts now, how you planned the voyage, the course you steered on, and so on.”

“Why? Are you thinking of taking the same trip,” asked Nun pleasantly. They would like to know, so they can plan their campaign against the mainland, Nun thought. What the Queen said was true.

“Taking the same trip?” repeated the other. “No, no, not at all, why should I? Just for general interest, though,” and he tried to make his smile look pleasant.

“Oh, quite,” said Nun. “You just want the facts.” He'd give them the facts, he thought. “Well, first of all there was Balaat-Gegal—”

“Where's that,” interrupted the other.

“Where?” exclaimed Nun, pretending to be deeply pained. “I am speaking of our revered Mother-Goddess. It was a matter of beseeching her aid, and requesting favorable winds, which I must say She was gracious enough to grant us most of the way, though, indeed, I have been often neglectful of Her rites and observances—”

“Yes, of course, very pious and proper,” put in the Sea Lord. “These things have their place. But we were thinking of more material—”

“Oh, sir!” continued Nun. “Don't imagine we neglected the material offerings. Our priests are not as neglectful as that. They were kind enough to accept a gold figurine, a Cretan one indeed. I had got it here on a previous voyage, and good value I paid for it too. You see, it doesn't pay to skimp these things. And look what a lovely east wind we—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the weather-beaten seaman interrupted again. “I'm sure you did the right thing. But what about stores, and rigging, and so on. As one seaman to another, you know, I'm interested in these things.”

“Ah, there's one thing I should mention. This anchor. A good big one it was. The priests of Reshef suggested it would be a good thing to dedicate to their God, for a safe passage you know. So we lugged it up and put it among the obelisks there. And very efficacious too, not an enemy did we meet all the way. All friends …” He looked at the faces around him, all more or less bored at his pious chatter, with perhaps a hint of suspicion that he was pulling their legs.

The Sea Lord's voice sounded again. “Kindly tell us, Captain, exactly
how
you directed your ship from Gebal to Crete. And it might be better if you just related the facts of your voyage.” Now his voice carried a threat.

“Oh, the
fact,
my Lord,” said Nun without thinking, “is that we started by following the Little Dog—”

There were angry exclamations from more than one voice at this: “Following a little dog! The man's an idiot! He's mocking us!”

“I
mean,
my Lord,” Nun went on hastily, seeing that he had gone too far by telling the truth, “I beg your pardon, one of our sea-going terms. I mean I just pointed the ship toward Crete and kept going—”

But the Sea Lord was on his feet. “I think we have heard enough,” he said to the gathering, without even troubling to look at Nun. “I'm satisfied that the fellow is wandering in his wits and whatever he knows can be of little value to us. If anyone else wishes to get sense out of him tomorrow, let him try whatever method he chooses. This meeting is adjourned. Meanwhile the prisoners are to be confined to the North Tower.”

The Sea Lord made a dignified exit, the meeting broke up, and Nun and the Chaldean were marched off to confinement.

Their accommodation as prisoners was not so fine as when they had been guests of the palace. But it was by no means a prison. It was a loft in a tall watch-tower, reached by a kind of ladder, which the Chaldean climbed with some difficulty. The soldiers stayed in the room at the bottom of the ladder, satisfied that there was no other way out.

The first thing Nun did was to go to the window overlooking the sea, but the drop to the ground was too great to think of letting himself fall, and the building was of smooth stone, impossible to climb. There were two low beds in the room. The Chaldean sat down on one and Nun on the other, and they looked at each other.

“We must escape,” said Nun quietly.

“My dear young friend,” protested the Chaldean. “You may think of these things. I am too old. I must stay here and await—”

“Await what?”

“Await the destruction that will certainly overtake this palace.”

“There is no doubt, then, about this happening?” asked Nun.

“For me there is no longer any doubt. No place by the sea like this can possibly survive.”

“The more reason for us to escape,” said Nun, briskly, getting to his feet and going to the window again. He looked up and down the coast. There was a quarter-moon shining on the still waters of the bay beyond the harbor—and Nun caught his breath. But it was not the natural beauty of the scene that made him do so, it was something he had noticed. There was a little island a very short distance offshore, with a building or two on it. And moored there, and clearly outlined against the path of the moonlight, was a ship. There was no mistaking its lines. It was his own ship.

“Look, Chaldean!” he exclaimed, only just remembering to keep his voice down. “It's our ship!”

The Chaldean did not trouble to look. “Indeed, the Sea Lord told us he had brought the ship here, and her crew. But it must make you happy to see her,” he said sympathetically.

“I had forgotten. I wonder where the men are?” said Nun, and he started pacing restlessly about the chamber. How to escape from the tower? A rope, that was all he needed. The room was bare of hangings and there were only rotten pallets on the beds, nothing he could tear up to make a rope. He looked at his garments and those of the Chaldean, and thought of the long drop outside and shook his head.

He sat down despondently on the bed—and no sooner had he sat than he sprang up as if he had been bitten, and before the astonished eyes of the Chaldean flung the pallet off the low bed. He could hardly restrain an exclamation of triumph. The bed was a rough affair of wood, but the mattress was supported by a network of good strong cord, woven from side to side and from head to foot, fathoms and fathoms of it. What had been woven could be unwoven.

In feverish but systematic haste he set to work, undoing the lashings, unthreading the warp and the woof of it, cursing beneath his breath at the tangles in the kinked cord. For the more he undid the longer was the part he had to pull through each time. The Chaldean watched him remotely, not offering to help. But he wandered over to the trapdoor at the top of the ladder. And when there were only a few lengthwise strands left to undo, Nun heard his voice saying very loudly, “Welcome, soldier! It is kind of you to visit us in our comfortable quarters.”

Wildly Nun gathered up the loose cord, flung the mattress back on the bed, and by lying uncomfortably across the framework managed desperately to keep the mattress from falling through on to the floor.

“My companion is asleep,” said the Chaldean calmly, as the head and shoulders of a soldier appeared through the trapdoor. “Ah, you have brought food. You are most kind. Set it down. Please do not trouble to serve us.”

The soldier dumped a jug of water and a plate of bread on to the floor, took a look at Nun's contorted body on the bed, grunted, and retired down the ladder. And not a moment too soon, for one side of the mattress immediately flopped through the gap in the support and Nun nearly fell through with it.

Nun let out a sigh of relief, and then had to smother his laughter at this absurd episode. The Chaldean carried the food back to his bed and began to eat the bread. Nun realized he, too, was hungry, but he could not stop the work he was doing. He took mouthfuls of bread from the Chaldean and chewed them as he went on. Soon he had finished unstringing his own bed.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said urgently but quietly to his companion, “yours now.”

“My dear friend,” said the old man mildly. “You are welcome to all I have. But let me say now, in case you have thoughts of my descending like a spider on a thread from this tower, that I have no intention of doing any such thing. It is many years since I played such boyish games, and even as a child I was far from adventurous.”

“Don't worry, sir,” said Nun. “Leave everything to me. It's not a difficult bit of seamanship, if the gear will stand it. I'll have you down there as safely as off-loading a basket of eggs.”

“But—” protested the old man.

“Why should you stay here to share the fate of Crete?” asked Nun urgently. “You have done what you can to save these people. Why should you perish with them? Besides, how can I escape without you as my navigator?”

His companion moved, still protesting, to the floor, and Nun set to work on the other bed. He worked more quickly as he got the hang of it, and soon had four or five tidy coils of cord.

“Now for testing,” he said. “Don't worry, sir, a seaman leaves nothing to chance, even if the world is coming to an end.”

The rafters of the room were not too far off the floor, and he was able to pass each length of cord over them and try his weight on every fathom of it. Doubled, it took the strain well. Single, he was not so sure of it. He looked at the Chaldean's heavy, bony frame. He could hardly trust that to a single strand. But was there enough to reach the ground doubled? The only way to be sure was to try. He carefully knotted the lengths together and lowered the doubled line out of the window, having made as sure as possible that no one was likely to be passing below. It reached, but only just. He hauled it in again, then tested each knot separately by hanging from the rafters.

He was satisfied with his rope, but then it struck him that if it only just reached from the window to the ground, there would not be enough to pass round the Chaldean and for him to hang on to at the top. He must think again. He looked at the Chaldean's flowing cloak.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “Your cloak, please.” Meekly the Chaldean took it off and handed it to him. He considered it for a while, and at last devised a kind of sling that could go under his companion's armpits and which he could wriggle out of when he reached the ground.

The beds, now deprived of their stringing, could still be useful. He stood one against the wall by the window, and the other on its side upon the first. This provided a solid bar across the window frame which could not possibly slip through it. He passed the cord several times round the bar, so that he could lower the weight of the Chaldean slowly to the ground by easing the rope out round the bar.

“We're ready, sir,” he said to the old man. Without a word, the Chaldean let himself be secured into this sling. Nun showed him how to climb through the window and lower himself from the bar until the rope took his weight. Then, muttering what was presumably a prayer to his gods, he took his hands from the bar and Nun paid out the rope as slowly and smoothly as he could, and watched the courageous old man descending, as he had said he would never do, like a spider on its thread to the ground.

Nun sweated quietly as the friction of the rope round the bar caused a groan like the rigging of a ship in a storm, and the knots threatened to snag and jam—and then he felt his heart stop as the dead end of the rope came into his hand. The strain of the Chaldean's body was still on the rope, which meant that his feet were not on the ground, and there was no more to pay out! He hung on blindly to the end of the rope, while beneath him the Chaldean seemed to be floundering like a fish on the end of the line, trying to free himself, Nun supposed. Then the rope snapped slack, and Nun leant his head against the bar and felt he would cry like a child, as he realized it had broken!

He took several deep breaths and controlled himself. Then he forced himself to look down into the obscurity below. The Chaldean was not lying in a broken heap below the window, as he had feared, but had moved away a little and was standing against the wall. Nun could see his white face looking up. Then he let his eyes follow the rope dangling down the wall. His heart settled to a normal beat again as he saw that there was still quite a length of rope, perhaps two-thirds of it, intact. There was nothing else for it, he must slide down what was left of the rope, and drop the rest of the way.

It was Nun's turn to pray to his gods as he secured the end of the rope to the bar and swung off on to it. It is not easy to slide down a thin doubled cord with knots in it. He braked himself with his legs and feet as best he could, then he was dangling only by his handhold, and then there was nothing he could do but let go. The drop was shorter than he had thought it was going to be, and he landed hard but safely on his feet.