The Treasure of Atlantis, J. Allan Dunn [read aloud .TXT] 📗

Pygmalion’s marble Galatea slowly coming to life under the sculptor’s compelling love.

Trumpets sounded and the procession resumed its march. Leola’s litter passed. The connection established by their glances snapped as an electric current dies with the turn of a switch, and Morse gave an involuntary sigh that released the breath he had been holding in.

Beside him, he became suddenly conscious of Rana’s presence; he turned. The queen’s face was sphinxlike, and the spots of rouge she affected stood out against her pallor like crimson bruises. Her eyes were as hard and glittering as those of the anaconda at the shrine.

“So,” she spoke slowly, picking her words, “you and. my sister seem attracted by each other! It is strange, indeed, for she has disavowed men both by preference and by oath. She may change one, but do not tempt her to break the other. It would mean death for both of you—unless—”

She stopped speaking, her hands shaking like a wintry leaf, her voice trembling! “You have seen her before?” she almost hissed.

Morse answered her quietly, wondering at his own calmness.

“She rescued me last night when some of your

[paragraph continues] cutthroats set upon me. I suspect I have her to thank for my life.”

“Ah!” Rana relaxed, and some of the cruelty left her eyes, though suspicion still lurked in their depths. “Who were these men?”

“They came at me swiftly,” he replied, “and later they slunk quietly into the shadows. They were Indians, but not slaves. They wore swords.”

Rana’s brows met, and she compressed her lips. “They shall be punished,” she said aloud; and to herself: “And you, my sister, shall be watched.”

The court rose after the procession had passed, making their way, first by litter and then by boats, to a great float roofed with silken curtains. Here they feasted and watched the ceremony of propitiation. Ru and his priests descended the water stairs of the temple, and as the men chanted, cast objects into the water that glittered as they whirled and shot out colored sparks from the gems that incrusted them. Then they ranged themselves on either side, as Leola and her attendants repeated the action. The populace lined the balustrade, waiting for a signal for their share in the sacrifice.

It came with a blast of trumpets, and a shower of ornaments rained into the lake. The trumpets were repeated, and at each blast gold and gems broke the water’s surface. Kiron tossed in a miniature replica of the double ax, but Morse noticed that the nobles cast their share not overliberally.

“It is all a great waste,” said Rana, as she slipped a magnificent bracelet from her wrist. Still, it satisfies the people and keeps the artificers busy. You, too, must sacrifice, now that you are a noble of Atlantis.”

“I have nothing valuable but what you have given me,” said Morse. He spoke as a matter of fact, but Rana smiled and laid her hand upon his arm with a lingering pressure.

“That was a courtier’s speech,” she said. “Give me that fibula.”

He took the golden ornament that was strangely like an elaborate safety pin from his mantle and handed it to her. She plucked a silver cord from the fringe of her rainbow-plaided girdle and tied the pin to her bracelet, then turned and tossed the two offerings into the air

together. The knot slipped, and the offerings fell apart before they reached the water. There was an involuntary silence among the nobles, and Kiron smiled. Rana shot him a murderous look, her face distorted like that of Medusa.

“Poseidon refuses your combination, cousin,” mocked Kiron. “The omens are not favorable.”

“I hate you!” she hissed. Kiron only laughed, and Rana bent an inscrutable look upon Morse. There was tragedy here, and apprehension, and a purpose that he could not quite understand.

“The ceremonial is over,” she said abruptly. “It is useless to wait longer. Let us return to the palace.”

She rose petulantly, summoning the boats, but she did not ask him to join her for the return. With open relief, Morse took a seat beside Laidlaw.

The conclusion of the ritual was a signal for the crowd to depart. This was done in a confusion of oars and sails that produced much laughter and shouting. Somehow, a lane was cleared for the ceremonial barge of the high priestess of Pasiphae, a cumbersome, top-heavy craft with a shrine built high upon its stern. It was towed by ropes from two galleys, rowed by lesser priestesses and neophytes.

A sudden wind blew from the cliffs and sent the cluster of boats into a hopeless entanglement. Laughter was replaced by cries of consternation. Morse saw that the royal float had been torn from its moorings, and, impelled by the strong wind upon its awnings and curtains, it bore down on the overladen boats.

The float was high out of water, and heavily built; it was a formidable engine of destruction as it drove before the fury of this sudden gale. Women and children screamed, and men fought hard to clear their boats from its path. It smashed into an open shallop, driving the craft beneath the water as its occupants were dragged aboard a larger vessel. A second float was destroyed, and the float now threatened the barge of the priestesses.

The oarswomen towing the barge faltered in their stroke, undecided as to a course of action. Morse, recognizing the frail construction of the barge, urged his rowers forward. In the face of imminent danger,

[paragraph continues] Leola remained calm, but below her women huddled together in fear. The heavy float crashed into the stern of the barge, and the shrine, insecurely attached, first rocked and then toppled into the water amid the shrieks of the onlookers.

Leola moved suddenly as the platform tottered, springing to clear herself. As she reached the water, weighted down as she was by her heavy, silvered robes and ritual ornaments, she fought to swim away from the wreck, but the supports of the silken awning struck her and she sank below the surface.

A score of boats raced to the rescue of the high priestess, and the one which carried Morse and Laidlaw was as close as any. Morse flung off his outer garment and dived into the water. An oar struck him a glancing blow on the side of his head as he leaped, but it did not deter him. He surfaced, wiped the mingled blood and water from his eyes, and sought his direction.

The blue-and-silver awning floated thirty feet away, and there beyond it he made out a gleam of silver tissue And the clutching fingers of a hand that barely showed above the surface; then disappeared. Morse pushed himself through the water with frantic strokes, and, nearing the point where he had glimpsed the hand, he dove. Below him he saw a confused mass of garments outspread in the current, and streaming from them a mass of golden hair. He reached for the hair, seized it finally, and struggled upward. His lungs seemed about to burst before he broke the surface into the world of bright sunlight. For half a minute there was silence about him, and then a roar of excited cheers.

Morse turned on his back, paddling with his legs and one hand, letting go of the girl’s hair and managing to throw his free arm about her shoulders. Leola’s body, heavy with the soaked robes, dragged down, but her head was securely on his shoulder. Her face, pale as the petals of a water lily, dark eyes closed, lay turned toward his chest.

Laidlaw suddenly loomed above the couple, anchored squarely in the stern of the boat. A moment later, his powerful arms gathered in the limp form of Leola, and Morse was pulled over the side by two oarsmen.

“Row to the float!” Morse ordered gaspingly, as he

fought for his breath. The sudden gale was over, and the big platform that had caused the damage had been secured. Now it swung on its broken cable, held by men in boats who had come up too late for the rescue.

Morse stepped onto the float and took Leola from Laidlaw’s arms, laying her gently on the rugs and cushions that had been provided for the royal party. He knelt over her. There were no visible bruises. The support had struck the mass of her hair, tearing it from its combs and fastenings, but the thick pad of it had caused the blow to stun and not injure her. And her insensibility had prevented her from swallowing a dangerous amount of water.

As Morse knelt down, the blood from his scalp wound dropped upon her robe. He gently raised the ivory arms above her head and lowered them again to promote respiration. After a dozen motions, he was rewarded by a quiver of her eyelids and the slow, perceptible heave of her breast. Someone handed him a crystal flask, and he dropped a little of the pungent liquid between her slightly parted lips that disclosed the even, pearly teeth. Her eyes opened and gazed into his, blankly at first, before the light suddenly shone in them. She sighed.

Morse thought he distinguished some syllables and bent lower. He was not mistaken. It was his name that she murmured for a second time—not the harsh surname—but his first name, softened by the Greek tongue to “Stan-na-li.” Then her eyes closed as he whispered her name in return. A faint tinge of rose appeared in her cheeks.

A group of protesting priestesses surrounded them. Two of them knelt, and Morse remembered one as the girl who had glanced up at Kiron from her litter. She pillowed Leola’s head upon her lap and attempted to make her comfortable. Morse was surprised at the angry voices and glances that he drew, and allowed Laidlaw to draw him to one side where Kiron spoke to him.

“Come into my boat, both of you. You have done all you can; at least, all they’ll let you do.”

The barge had sunk. The priestesses had been taken in by the boats that had towed them, and they were now

on the float seeking to shield their high priestess from the gaze of men.

“They seem to be angry that you saved her life,” said Laidlaw, helping Morse bind a strip of linen about his head.

Kiron chuckled.

“They are,” he said. “You have profaned the person of Pasiphae’s representative. They will have-to hold votive ceremonies for a month to wipe out the ignominy of the touch of a man. I wish I’d had your chance, though,” he added ruefully.

“With Leola?” asked Laidlaw.

“Not with Leola,” admitted the king. And he went on: “Rana looks furious. I watched her during the rescue and I think she sensed your anxiety. If I were you, I’d make that wound of yours an excuse for staying away from the banquet tonight. Otherwise the praise that you are bound to receive from those who do not share the priestesses’ view of profanation is going to provoke Rana into a display of temper. You’re not hurt are you?”

“Nothing but a scrape,” replied Morse. “Sorry if I called down the wrath of Pasiphae.”

But he did not look very unhappy as he said it, and Kiron rallied him.

“Leola didn’t raise any objection when she revived,” he said with a smile.

Morse grinned in reply. “I’ll send my excuses to Rana. Laidlaw, will you take them?”

Laidlaw grunted. “You need a nurse,” he said.

Later, an hour after Laidlaw had departed for the banquet, Morse rose suddenly from the lounge on which he had been lying. Strange thoughts had been running through his mind—thoughts of Leola. Since their meeting, his nature seemed to have changed, developed into a condition that left him feverish and uncertain. He had never been in love; he avoided it;