off after his donkey.
Finally the diagram was nearly complete, down to the last companionway. The knife flashed in the new sun as Pitt added a final humorous touch; a tiny bird on a tiny ventilator. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. He stared at it for a moment, then laughed aloud. “One thing’s certain, I’ll never be acclaimed for my artwork. It looks more like a pregnant whale than a ship.”
Pitt continued to absentmindedly gaze at the sand drawing. Suddenly his eyes took on a trance-like glaze and his rugged face lost all expression. The spark of a novel and fanciful idea lit dimly in his conscious mind. At first the idea seemed too outlandish for him to consider, but the more he dwelt on its possibilities, the more feasible it became. Quickly he traced additional lines in the sand. Completely absorbed again, he raced to match up the diagram with the picture in his mind. When the last change was finished, his mouth slowly twisted into a grim smile of satisfaction. Damned clever of von Till, he thought, damned clever.
He wasn’t tired anymore, his mind was no longer burdened with unsolvable questions. It was a new approach, a new kind of answer. It should have been discovered long before. Quickly, he gathered up the diving equipment and started to hike over the incline that separated the beach from the coastal road.
There was no thought of quitting the game now. The next inning would prove to be the most interesting.
At the top he turned and looked back at the sketch of the Queen Artemisia in the sand.
The rising tide was just washing over and erasing the ship’s funnel, the funnel marked with the big Minerva “M.”
14
Giordino lay stretched out beside a blue Air Force pickup truck, dead asleep, his head resting on a binocular case and both feet propped carelessly on a large rock. A trail of ants tramped across his outflung forearm and, ignoring the obstacle in their path, continued their uninterrupted journey toward a small mound of loose dirt. Pitt looked down smiling. If there was one thing Giordino could do, and do well, he thought, it was sleeping anywhere at anytime and under any condition.
Pitt shook his fins, letting the salty dampness dribble on Giordino’s composed face. No drowsy babble, no sudden reaction greeted the rude sprinkling. The only response came from one big brown eye that popped open, gazing straight at Pitt in obvious annoyance.
“Aha! Behold! Our intrepid guardian with the watchful eye!” There was no mistaking Pitt's sarcastic tone. “I shudder to think of the death toll if you should ever decide to become a lifeguard.”
The opposite lid slowly raised like a window shade, revealing the matching eye. “Just to set the record straight,” Giordino said wearily. “These tired old eyes were glued to the night glasses from the time you got into your packing crate to the time you came ashore and started playing in the sand.”
“My apologies old friend.” Pitt laughed. “I suppose that doubting your unflagging vigilance will cost me another drink?”
“Two drinks,” Giordino murmured slyly.
“Consider it done.”
Giordino sat up, blinking in the sun. He noticed the ants and casually brushed them off his arm. “How’d your swim go?’
“Robert Southey must have had the Queen Arteinisia in mind when he wrote ‘No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, the ship was still as she could be.’ You might say that I found something by finding nothing”
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ll explain later.” Pitt lifted the diving gear and loaded it in the truck bed. “Any word from Zac?”
“Not yet.” Giordino trained the binoculars on von Till’s villa. “He and Zeno took a platoon of the local gendarmerie and staked out von Till’s baronial estate.
Darius stayed on the radio at the warehouse, traversing wave lengths in case there was any transmission between the shore and ship.”
“Sounds like a thorough effort, but unfortunately a waste of time.” Pitt toweled his black hair, then ran a comb through it. “Where can a man find a drink and a cigarette around here?”
Giordino nodded toward the truck cab. “I can’t help you on the drink, but there’s a pack of Greek cancer sticks on the front seat”
Pitt leaned in the truck cab and removed an oval shaped cigarette from a black and gold box of Hellas Specials. He’d never tried one before and was surprised at the mildness. After his ordeal of the past two hours, rolled seaweed would have tasted good.
“Someone kick you in the shins?” Giordino asked matter-of-factly.
Pitt exhaled a cloud of smoke and peered down at his leg There was a deep red gash below the right knee and blood was oozing slowly along its entire length. For two inches in every direction the skin was a colorful combination of green, blue and purple.
“I had a bit of bad luck, a run in with a bulkhead door.”
“I’d better fix that for you.” Giordino turned and pulled an Air Force issue first aid kit from the glove compartment. “A minor operation like this is mere child’s play for Doctor Giordino, the world renowned brain surgeon. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m rather good at heart transplants too.”
Pitt tried to suppress a laugh, but failed. “Just make sure you put the gauze on before, not after the tape.”
Giordino feigned a pained expression. “Such a terrible thing to say.” The sly look returned. “You’ll change your tune when you get my bill”
There was no choice left for Pitt except to shrug in resignation and place his bruised leg in Giordino’s hands. Nothing more was said for the next few minutes. Pitt sat and absorbed the silence, gazing at the sky-dyed blue water and the shoreline that rested under the white sands of antiquity.. The narrow beach below the road stretched southward for six miles before it faded into a thin line and disappeared behind the western tip of the island. There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere along the surf’s edge; the emptiness possessed all the mystic allure and romantic charm so often pictured on South Seas travel posters. It was indeed a fragment of paradise.
Pitt noted that the surf was running at two feet with eight second intervals between crests. The waves broke low and at least one hundred yards out. Then in a final burst of fury, they surged forward in majestic Spray plumed rows, only to slowly dissolve and die in small eddys at the tideline. To a swimmer, the conditions were perfect; to a surfer, they were fair; but to a diver, the shallow sandy bottom and the dark blue water spelled barren waste. For sheer underwater adventure it is the greener, reef strewn waters that attract the diver, for it is there that the beauty of sea life abounds. Pitt panned his eyes a hundred and eighty degrees and looked to the north. Here it was a different story. High craggy cliffs, barren of all vegetation, rose out of the sea, their faces worn and etched by the endless onslaught of the breakers. Great fallen rocks and yawning fissures bore mute testimony to what old mother nature could do when given the tools of her trade to work with. There was one particular stretch of rugged cliffline that intrigued Pitt.
Strangely enough, this one sector was not pounded like the others. The waters below the sheer, straight up and down rock mass were calm and flat, a garden pond bordered on three sides by foaming swirling waters. For a hundred square yards the sea was green and still, the boiling white ceased to exist It seemed unreal.
Pitt speculated on what wonders a diver might find there. Only God alone could have observed the ageless formation of the island, the coming and going of the great ice ages, the changing levels of the ancient sea. Maybe, he thought, just maybe the mountainous breakers carved their fury into the sides of these cliffs, creating an underwater pockmarked surface of sea caves.
“There you are,” Giordino said in a humorous tone. “Another triumph for medical science by the great, Giordino.” Pitt wasn’t fooled for a second by the outward display of exaggerated vanity. Giordino’s comic dialogue was forever used to camouflage his genuine concern for Pitt. Giordino stood up, running his eyes; over Pitt’s body, and shook his head in mild wonder. “With all those bandages on your nose, chest and leg you’re beginning to look like a spare tire out of a nineteen thirties, depression era comic strip.”
“You’re right.” Pitt took a few steps to relieve increasing stiffness in his leg. “I feel more like a bum tire on a
