Kismet screwed the regulator valve down several notches before nodding to Anatoly. The big Russian switched on the compressor, and immediately air from the surface began trickling down to the golden ship.
"How do we know if this is working?" Irene inquired.
Kismet shrugged. "I don't know. I've never done this before."
Anatoly raised a sincere eyebrow. "I have difficulty believing there is anything you have not done, Nikolai Kristanovich."
Kismet laughed. "Thank you, I think."
He twisted the valve half a turn, and watched the needle on the gauge slowly creep. He let it build for several minutes, and then tightened the valve. The compressor immediately began to bleed off the excess, and he shut it off to avoid wasting fuel. "Anything?"
Irene stared into the inky depths. The golden light was less visible because of the tarpaulins Kismet had secured over its exposed decks, but she located it without difficulty. "I don't think so."
"Okay, let's try something else. Anatoly, fire up the engine. We'll give her a little tug."
As the Russian throttled forward, Kismet switched on the air a second time. Irene continued her vigil at the stern. The trawler glided forward a ways, and then stopped, as if caught on something. The engines roared louder, churning up a spray of foam, but no further movement was evident.
"I see bubbles!" Irene squealed.
Kismet immediately turned off the compressor and yelled for Anatoly to back off the engines. He then joined Irene. Large eruptions were indeed rising from the depths; bubbles of air from the submerged ship. He placed a hand on the cable, stretched tight between the two vessels, and could feel a tremor in the metal. "Something's happening."
Indeed, the boiling on the surface grew more intense, while the taut cable fell slack. A close examination unquestionably revealed that the source of the golden light was moving, getting closer.
An enormous bubble broke the surface, and Kismet intuitively guessed that one of the inner-tubes had burst. He had attempted to regulate the airflow to the enormous rubber bladders, trying to fill them only partway, so that the reduction of pressure caused by the ascent would not rupture them, but apparently one of them had failed. Nevertheless, the shape beneath the waves did not recede. The surface continued to churn as the air he had pumped down into the golden ship expanded and overflowed.
Suddenly, the surface erupted in a foaming mass that dwarfed even the explosive depth charges. A wave lifted the trawler, heaving Kismet and Irene across the deck, where they remained prone until the turbulence calmed. Kismet heard the engines shut down, but did not attempt to rise until Anatoly appeared and beckoned. The big Russian seemed unable to speak; he gazed astern, gesturing weakly for the two of them to look. Kismet got to his feet and went to see what had so amazed the fisherman.
“I don't believe it," gasped Irene, gazing at the spectacle, which bobbed in their wake. "Nick, you actually did it."
Kismet was inclined to echo the former sentiment, but instead chose to grin and bask in a moment of pride. Rocking gently in the becalmed waters of the Black Sea, attached to huge, bloated inner-tubes and covered by bulging, inflated canvas tarpaulins, was the golden ship, sailing once more after untold millennia below the waves.
PART FOUR:
THE GOLDEN VOYAGE
FIFTEEN
Using the winch, they drew the two boats closer together. Kismet leapt over to the deck of the golden ship, tying a second line in place so that trawler was fixed firmly to the galley, which rode slightly higher in the water than Anatoly's trawler. As he turned, surveying the golden ship for the first time under normal circumstances, he was overcome by the knowledge of where he was. Bold adventurers, kindred spirits who lived thousands of years before his birth, had stood aboard this vessel. There was nothing to compare with what he was feeling.
Science had no real knowledge about the design of ancient, pre-Hellenistic sailing vessels. It was all conjecture, really. Even the seafaring Phoenician culture had not been survived by as much as a single ship. Only a few incomplete wall murals and the words of ancient historians, who had given little thought to the fact that those ships would someday crumble to dust, remained to reveal how the ancients had roamed the seas.
While it would have been far simpler to just enter the enclosure and grab the Fleece, that would have meant abandoning the galley and all its other secrets to Severin. And since the galley was completely intact and relatively small, raising it in its entirety was only a matter of hard work, not technical know-how. The fact that it now bobbed a few feet away seemed to bear witness to his abilities as an amateur marine salvager.
The canvas blankets concealed much of the ship from his view, but he immediately began comparing the suppositions of contemporary scholars with what he was seeing. The colonnaded superstructure was inconsistent with theory, but other features were right on the mark. A girdle of ropes, now gilded, encircled the hull like a net. Kismet recalled that the purpose of this arrangement was to add strength to the overall structure, especially when battle conditions required the sailors to ram another vessel.
The bow of the ship-a galley, and not an early Bronze Age explorer scout as the Argo would have been-rose high above the gangway, even above the roof of the enclosure. Kismet could make out a gilt ladder ascending to the bowsprit and the carved foremast. The latter, an ornate spar that protruded out over the water ahead of the vessel, had been crafted to resemble a woman both delicate and fear-inspiring. Remembering the altar stone he had first viewed in Harcourt's photograph, Kismet wondered if he wasn't looking at a likeness of Medea herself. Directly below the bowsprit, the hull swept ahead at the waterline and continued forward beneath the surface to form the galley's ram.
Irene crossed over to stand beside him. "I'm really very impressed, Nick."
"You're not the only one. Come on; let's clear some of this stuff away."
As they started removing the three remaining makeshift float bladders from the net slings, Irene noticed something that Kismet had missed. "It's not glowing anymore."
Kismet stood up and scanned the golden surface. He could see the impressions of their footprints, stamped in the soft metal overlay, but there was no hint of the illumination that had pierced the undersea darkness. A sudden wind came up, blowing against the tarps and causing them to flap noisily. "That's strange." His words were lost in the clamor.
Anatoly crossed over to join them. "May I see it?"
Kismet nodded and led the way back to the entrance to the hold. The interior was dark, no longer illuminated by the glowing metal. "I guess we'll need a light or something. Wait here."
Before either of them could protest, Kismet had ducked out of the hold and jumped back over to the trawler. Anatoly quickly followed, but Kismet waved him off.
"I'll just be a minute. Stay there."
He knew exactly where his flashlight was; tucked in his waist pack, the batteries still relatively fresh. But he had another purpose for returning to the fishing boat; a detail which had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since the failure of his previous attempt to recover the Golden Fleece. It was a matter that he had not been able to resolve, primarily for lack of an opportunity, but now a chance had presented itself.
The instruments were basic; the trawler was almost as much an antique as the golden galley. He quickly located the bulky marine band radio transmitter and laid a hand on the case; it was still warm. The radio had been used recently. He drew back his hand and stared at the metal box, as though it had confirmed his suspicions. There was nothing he could do about it now.