The Freeing of the Ship

Chapter Two

The substance of the block was singularly hard and dense. It resisted him: it seemed to fight against the steel. Bit by bit he drilled and chiseled away the stubborn matrix, working along the edges of the crack through which streamed the prisoned radiance.

Suddenly the block shuddered like a living thing. Rang out again that carillon of bells of jade. Sharply it pealed, then turned and fled back through the corridors of time. Fainter became the chiming, fainter still. It died: and as it died the block collapsed, disintegrated; became a swirling, slowly settling cloud of sparkling dust.

Out of that cloud the alien, unfamiliar fragrance swarmed; leaped on Kenton, clung to him. For another instant the cloud whirled, a vortex of glittering mist. It vanished like a curtain plucked away.

There on the floor where the block had been, stood a ship! It was a jeweled craft of enchantment; such a bark as jinn of Aladdin’s day might have made for elfin princesses to sail ensorcelled seas!

It floated high on a base of little lace-tipped waves, billowets fragile and delicate, carved from turquoise, crested with milky rock crystals. Three feet in length from bow to stern, its hull, too, was of crystal, creamy and faintly luminous. Its prow was shaped like a slender scimitar, bent backward. Under the incurved tip was a cabin whose seaward sides were formed, galleon fashion, by the upward thrust of port and starboard bows. Where the hull drew up to form this cabin, a faint flush warmed the cloudy crystal; deepened as the sides grew higher; gleamed at last with a rosy radiance that turned the cabin into a great jewel.

In the center of the ship, taking up more than a third of its length, was a pit. Down to its railed edge from the bow sloped a deck of ivory as fallow as the yellow of a rising moon upon a night in spring. But the deck that sloped from the stern was a jet black; another cabin rested there, smaller than that at the bow, and squat and ebon. Both decks continued on each side of the pit in two wide platforms. At the exact center of the ship—and with an odd suggestion of contending force—the ivory and the black decks met. They did not fade into each other; they ended there abruptly, edge to edge: hostile.

Up from the pit arose one tall mast; tapering; green as the carven core of some immense emerald. From its cross-sticks a wide sail of peacock iridescence stretched, ruffled as by a carven breeze, shimmering like silk turned to opal. From mast and yards fell stays of twisted dull gold.

Out of each side swept a single bank of seven great oars, their scarlet blades dipped deep within the white-crested azure of the waves. At the ship’s bow hung golden chains and at her stern swung chains of jet.

And the jeweled craft was manned. Why, Kenton wondered, had he not seen the tiny figures before! It was as though they had arisen from the deck. One had just slipped out of the rosy cabin’s door, an arm was still outstretched in its closing. It was a woman. And there were other women shapes upon the ivory deck, three of them, crouching; their heads were bent low; two clasped harps and the third held a double flute. Little figures, not more than two inches high.

Toys!

It was most odd that he could not distinguish their faces, nor the details of their dress. The toys were indistinct, blurred, as though a veil covered them; a veil like that which had so obscured the cuneiform inscription. He thought that the blurring might be the fault of his eyes. The freeing of the ship had not been easy; had demanded unwavering attention; his eyes might well be weary. Or perhaps it was that rose pearl radiance from the bow that dazzled him?

Kenton looked down upon the clouded stern. His uneasy, groping perplexity deepened. The black deck had been empty—this he could have sworn. But now four manikins clustered there, close to the rail of the pit!

He tried with all the strength in his fingers to lift one of them. He could not move it; it seemed part of the deck itself. Methodically he tugged at each of the other toys, and with the same result. He stared into the pit. There were toys in there, too—oarsmen; many of them. He counted two at each oar, one standing and one sitting; twenty-eight of them, and each in chains.

A detail of the cabined bow struck him. It was indeed astonishing, he thought again, how he kept missing these details—how, like the little figures, they seemed suddenly to strike into sight!

There was a ledge halfway up the cabin. On it were dwarfed trees blossoming with hundreds of tiny jewels. Birds were nestling along the ledge, scores of them; there were other scores clustering in the gemmed branches. They were white birds with ruby bills and scarlet feet and shining ruby eyes. What were they? Why—they were doves, of course.

The doves of Ishtar!

And this—this—

This was the Ship of Ishtar!

He caught himself up, wonder deepening. Whence had come that thought? What did he know of any Ship of Ishtar?

The haze around the toys was growing thicker. Certainly it must be that his eyes were tired. He would lie down a while and rest them. He walked to the door; assured himself that it was locked; turned.

All the side of the room beyond the ship was hidden by swirling silver mists that, thickening swiftly, closed in even as he stared, unbelieving, upon the mystery he had freed!

And as the mists touched it, enveloped it, the ship rocked and swayed and swiftly as the thickening of those vapors began to grow!

He glimpsed a movement upon the decks. The figures, the toys—were stirring!

The oars were lifting; were sweeping through the waters!

The gleaming hull shot up, carrying the moving shapes high above his vision.

And now there was a shrilling as of armies of storm, a roaring as of myriads of tempests, a shrieking chaos as though down upon him swept the mighty torrent of the winds that race between the stars. The room seemed to split into thousands of fragments; to dissolve.

Kenton had one fleeting, incredible glimpse of the turreted skyline of New York vanishing beneath the onrush of a vast blue, rushing sea whose gigantic, foam-flecked combers were surging over it; were drowning it!

For a heart beat, towers and turrets stood sharp against the flood like a picture on a screen.

Then—they were gone!

Down upon Kenton raced the azure, unbelievable ocean.

Clear through the howling clamor came the chiming of a bell—one—two. It was his clock ringing out the hour of six. The third note began; was stilled as though cut in twain.

The solid floor on which he stood melted away. For an instant he felt himself suspended in space. In front of him loomed the bow of the ship. Its crescented prow leaped toward him, then dropped as though the ship slid down the valley of a wave.

The shrieking, roaring voices of those tempests whose breath he heard, but did not feel abruptly ceased to be.

The crescented prow swept under him; a score of feet below him the ivoried deck was flashing by.

Kenton dropped!

As though to meet him, the deck rose swiftly. He felt a numbing shock, a fiery pain through his head. Splintered lightnings veined a blackness that wiped out sight both of ship and sea.

Then only the blackness.