Levkas Man by Innes Hammond;

Author:Innes, Hammond;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
Published: 2016-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

Three

INTERLUDE IN THE AEGEAN

It was Sonia who gave us the first indication that Holroyd had dug up something of real significance. This was in a letter to Dr Gilmore, dated April 29, which we found waiting for us at the Port Captain’s office at Pythagorion.

But that was later, after we had had nearly a month of the most perfect sailing, and by then I had almost forgotten about my father. The demands and routine of a boat at sea, particularly in enclosed waters like the Aegean, concentrate the mind to the exclusion of all but the immediate problems of navigation and seamanship. Add to this the world that daily opened before our gaze, a world of islands and little ports and coves where life had hardly changed since the days of Odysseus, and it is little wonder that I became so engrossed in it that for a time I was scarcely conscious even of my own predicament and was able to shut out of my mind the real object of the voyage.

Once through the Corinth Canal, we seemed to sail into the past. Athens and the Acropolis, then east down the gulf to Sounion. Here, amongst the salt-white columns of Poseidon’s temple high on its promontory, we had our first glimpse of the islands, seeing them as the old Greek sailors saw them, milestones on the voyage to the Turkish coast. We said our own prayers to the god of sea and earthquake, and then we were slanting out in their wake, a full meltemi blowing from the north-east, the boat heeled, the sea hard and white, and Kithnos growing large over the bows. Tinos then and Mykonos, and Delos all to ourselves in the tiny cove of Fourni, with only just room to swing to our anchor, and Mount Cynthus, birthplace of Apollo, with its Sacred Way and the ruins of ancient cities falling to the sea, the fantastic beauty of the lionesses in moonlight. And then down through the 14-foot passage in half a gale to Naxos, the largest of the islands.

And apart from the ruins and the beauty of the villages, all newly whitewashed and spread across the high flanks of the islands like drifts of snow, and the long walks inland, there was always the sea. As the water got warmer, we were goggle fishing and Bert was diving. Even Dr Gilmore was swimming every day, and in the evenings he talked, endlessly and fascinatingly, about man’s origins, about the Greeks and the people whose ruins we were seeing daily. He was a mine of information and I envied those who had had him for a tutor, he made it all so interesting.

But after Naxos, it was time to head east to the Dodecanese. And now Samos and the object of the voyage began to loom. As a result, I was keyed-up, already a little tense, when on the afternoon of May 5, we motored into the old harbour of Pythagorion, built by a tyrant named Polycrates some 2,500 years ago.

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