THE CITY OF SILENCE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20610, 26 December 1936, Page 12

THE CITY OF SILENCE

By

lON L. IDRIESS

AUSTRALIA’S MOST POPULAR WRITER This story is woven around the queer stone pillars which Trench Louis the diver believes were the base of a bridge built by vanished people before their land sunk under the sea.

BILLY BANNER stepped clumsily overside and down the short ladder; then through many pretty bubbles he slid down, down, down and ungracefully landed in the mud. "Missed,'’ he smiled. Billy often spoke to himself when down below. He liked company, and a little conversation felt homely. He had finny company down there —their intentions were probably hostile. Of the sunlit world, all he had was the air in his diving-suit and the laughter in his heart. He stood, planning out his way. The green twilight was exceptionally clear and seemed to focus upon Billy sagging in a sea of mud. “Like a wadd-; ling duck in a thunder-storm of silence,” he mused. Ahead, apparently far distant, though really very close, he spied a queer shadow. Cautiously he lumbered on—then down to his belt sank silently. Instantly he tugged the life-line once, shut of! the air-escape valve, and hummed, “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.’’ Billy had lived a long life down below —had lived it because he never got

excited when death beckoned. So now he hummed an old-time song with submarine mud creeping to his armpits, and the air swelling out his suit; still hummed as he felt the steady pull on t e line which lifted him from the sucking mass. As he shot up he unscrewed the aid-escape valve to produce a swirl of bubble-; while he tugged two

short and two iong strokes on the line. Gradually his ascent stopped as his dress subsided to normal. Then he made a loop in his life-line in which to sit, and tugged three times. The tender above, in accord with the signals, ran up the ji h and, raising the anchor just off the bottotm, slowly moved ahead. And Billy, a suspended bundle

of ugliness, was gently carried forward over the sea-bottom, a fathom above the mud. Eerily this monster drifted, who looked so much a par. of the grim water-world and yet was not of it. He did not eye the bottom, for no pearlshell lives on the mud. He watched the shadow taking form ahead, overwhelming in its magnified mightiness, and smiled cheerfully as he saw that the course of the lugger up above was going to bum” him right into that shadow. After tugging twice and shaking the line once, he saw the trailing anchor sink into the mud. Tugging next four times he knew the lugger would not mov until “talked to” again. Two tugs and a shake and down to the bottom he went, in front of one of the unknown wonders of the sea, maybe of the world. A column of stone rose before Billy, probably sixty feet across. The top he knew to be flat and about six feet across, the whole composed of large, rounded stones. Along the coastline just out from Toori-toori (New Guinea) lay others of these columns. He liked to think of them as the “City of Silei ce.” Had the city been silent a thousand or twenty thousand years? What human hands dust very likely before the building of the Pyramids, had reared these towers? What manner of people these w! ose cities had been engulfed? Billy thought of Easter Island, with its mystery monuments, of the pottery dug from deep below the solid

earth in New Guinea goldfields; of the super-men of wondrous powers and culture still hazily preset ved in the legends of different island peoples. He lifted a leaden foot, put it upon a stone, hesitated, then, smiling delightedly, began climbing. This Silent City of his held a powerful appeal. Between the stones grew sponges and weird marine things. Billy chuckled, for wherever sponges grow there also grows the fat pearl-shell. He glmpsed pearl, and smiled as it vanished like the tail of a firefly. He reached amongst the fernery, and wrenched off a bashful shell, and chuckled again at a vanishing gleam higher amongst the rocks. He loved this game of hide-and-seek with the cunning oysters of the sea. They can hear, those big pearl-oysters, or feel the underwater vibration of a diver’s foot—no man yet knows which. They rest with lip partly open, and the pearly gleam is like a smiling girl’s teeth. Billy's finger closed around a shell the size of a dinner-plate, a heavy lump of indistinguishable stuff for sea-grass grew upon it, an ’ parasite shells. Billy wrenched it off and tucked it within his bag, while a dozen big shells, stowed among the ricks, hiding between the sponges and curtained by the grasses chuckled in their under-water language. For they had noted Billy’s coming and discreetly shut their tell-tale mouths. Billy trod upon one, unaware of its presence. Up and up he climbed, waist-deep amongst the grass. Little fishes, sporting yellow stripes across their tails, peered inquisitively into his face-glass before fleeing in mistrust. A rich rockery these pillars, fatly rewarding Billy’s search! He packed the shell in a canvas bag, jamming the shell tight with a ponderous movement I of his foot. He did not carry at his waist the net-work bag so often used. Presently he had twenty-five shell, ex-

ceedingly good work. He signalled and up slid the bag. Uncanny how quietly all things are done down below. A dream sack same gliding down, and Billy was eager to repeat his harvest. He grippel a sponge that bulged against his thigh, and, leaning well back, peered through his side-glasses to spy around the pillar. A sea-snake darted from out the sponge, and its gleaming teeth snapped upon his corslet. Utterly surprised and in painful need of a den’ist, the abashed thing back-somersaulted into the ferns. Billy chuckled and climbed on, while the expert tender above, by slow inch and inch, drew in the slack of the line and air-pipe on deck. Then Billy stood, his hand upon a rock rounded by other hands. He had reached the top, very slow work

against the water-pressure, though the physical body felt light owing to the compressed air within his suit. He gazed around, as from a peak he might look upon a city. Here he could see only a short distance through green twilight occasionally speckled by darting fishes. He signalled again, and in reply could just distinguish the anchor gliding up througi the green gloom ahead. Then twisting a loop in the life-line, he sat within it, and as the vessel gathered way he was lifted gently off the pillar and went slowly trailing through the sea, as serenely as if he was part of it.

By and by he distinguished stone and sea-grass, and signalled to down anchor and lower—a little manoeuvre which can be awkward for the diver if

the tender on deck above is not thoroughly experienced. Billy landed gently and peered over one of the blue mountains of the sea. Only the blue was not there, except in patches where walled rocks queerly reflected filtered sunlight from the sky above. A weird trick this reflected light played, far down in the murky green; for as invisible fish sped across one grass-krown crevice, they coloured to quick purple before vanishing again. Chasms were there, too, falling right down through the dark water. Here stretched a sea-ledge miles long, caused by earth-torments when the world was young, which tore away the crust and left this jagged ledge. To win more shell in safety Billy should drift back and prospect through the twilight waters over shallower and proved ground. But here, though obviously dangerous, what riches might he not find! Besides he was of pioneer stock, and bubbling over with that wonder and curiosity which impels man onward into the unknown. In the precipitous clefts below, before the dull shadow green that defied vision, but betrayed unguessable depths and things, he glimpsed vines trailing with phosphoric flowers and bulbous sponges, and intriguing shadow-phan-tims. He marked a phantom zigzag shading a guessed-at ridge down which he might walk, but, being a careful diver, he sought long and earnestly until lie had discoverer a way by which he could come back again, and believed he found it, though he could only return thus while the tide remained stationary. Then cautiously he began the descent of that narrow ridge, noting where apparently, away below, it ran back upon itself like a winding stair disappearing into a dark inner room (Concluded on following Fage)