THE CITY IN THE SEA

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

Author of "THE BLUE LAGOON," "POOLS OF SILENCE," ETC.

New York GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1925 BY H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

THE CITY IN THE SEA —Q— PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Island of Hyalos from a sketch map made on board the Lorna Doone, giving soundings within and without the reefs.

FOREWORD

In June of last year, 1925, long after this book was finished, the Morning Post published an account of how an Arab fisherman off the Isle of Jerba had discovered a city under the sea, giving intimate details that might have been taken from my little town Hyalos—details vouched for by Count de Prohak and Sir Dennison Ross.

Five months later—November 1925—an American reader of "The City in the Sea," then appearing serially in the States, sent me the following cutting from a Hartford Paper:

"Moscow, October 29.—Discovery of an ancient submerged city near Shikov, a sandy bank on the Caspian Sea, was made Wednesday by Alexis Atayeff, a captain in the Soviet mercantile fleet. Atayeff's ship, bound from Persia to Baku, accidentally changed its usual course, and while soundings were being made he noticed buildings on the sea floor. Atayeff asserts that under the bright sunshine he could distinguish streets and buildings of ancient Asiatic architecture. Archæologists believe the discovery reveals the lost city of Karadasheger, which is believed to have been submerged centuries ago by an earthquake."

I make no complaint at these two old cities, one from the Caspian, the other from the Mediterranean, presenting themselves like this to the public; the desire for the limelight is excusable and understandable in a way, but I think with some propriety they might have delayed their appearance. As matters stand, many readers of the Press might fancy they were first on the stage—this is not so. Hyalos was discovered by me long before these venerable antiquities thought fit to appear at the wings to be brought before the footlights by their producers, Sir Dennison Ross and Captain Atayeff.

CHAPTER I

A MODERN BUSINESS GIRL

One dry bright morning in early September, Robert Lestrange left his rooms in Cadogan Street, and, boarding a bus bound for Charing Cross climbed on to the roof.

Robert was good to look at, though as a matter of fact he was not particularly good-looking, but he was young, well dressed, well groomed and clean, innocent-seeming and light-hearted; a person one might fancy most engaging to the eyes of girls and confidence trick men.

At Charing Cross he dropped off the bus and took his way along the south side of the Strand, walking in a leisurely manner and absorbing the details around him.

The Strand is much more than a street. It is the life of many nations, the activities of many men; the past and present all made visible and audible. In the Strand walk Henry Irving and Toole, no less surely than Berry and Godfrey Tearle; Disraeli no less living than Baldwin. It is an extension of the Bund of Nagasaki, and an earthquake in San Francisco tells of itself here an hour after the event.

It has also some of the most delightful shops in the world. The shop, for instance, where the sporting guns and rifles are arranged for view and where the big game and the trees of the jungle show shadowlike behind the express rifles.

Bobby hung before this window, absorbing its atmosphere of sport and adventure; then he went on, crossing the mystic boundary line that divides the West End from Newspaperland, on down Fleet Street and up White Lion Court to the doorway of No. 1, Mortimer Buildings.

This is a bit of old London, and here, as in most bits of old London, Romance sits in gloom and, frankly, dirt: the leases have not fallen in, but the railings seem on the point of doing so, and the hall doorsteps up which Bobby went, and the steps of the stairs leading to the first floor, are hollowed out by the feet of generations.

The offices of Beaman & Hare are situated on the first floor facing the court. The principal had not arrived, but Miss Hare was in and would see Mr. Lestrange if he would wait. He agreed to this reasonable proposition, took his seat in the tiny outer office, which was furnished with the Times, two chairs, a table, and a portrait of Thomas Hardy.

Bobby was a writing man. You never would have guessed it following him down the Strand or now, as he sat nursing his knee, regardless of the literature on the table and waiting to interview Miss Hare. When old Nicholas Lestrange had gone broke over post-war industrials and died, and when the Government had done taxing the estate, his one and only child had found himself an orphan, possessed of the furniture of his room at Bibliol College, Oxford, expensive tastes, and two hundred a year to indulge them on.

He did not grumble. He dropped Oxford, came to London with some good introductions, and plunged into the world of newspaperland.

When you start to learn how to be a chef you have to start to learn how to wash up dishes. In Fleet Street it is the same. The great editor is great partly because he has been through the mill and knows every detail of his business; this Robert Lestrange found out after he had been a month in the Street of Adventure, also the fact that he was never likely to become a great editor. He had not the flair for news or the instinct for news values, and the morning paper that is furiously alive at breakfast time and dead at lunch seemed to him of all forms of the printed word the most ephemeral.

Then he found, all at once and by accident, that he could write stories, that he could invent news much more interesting than the news in the papers, and doings much more intriguing (anyhow, more lasting in interest) than the doings of the people of Shoreditch and Belgravia as chronicled in the Press.

He sent his first short story to a friend who was a magazine editor, and it was accepted. He sent a second, and it was refused. Challoner, the editor, explained that the first one was a story and the second was not, showed him the subtle difference between a tale and a record of events; the fact that his first effort was instinctive and right, and that in the second he had failed in a difficult theme for want of craftsmanship; gave him a little book on the art, and dismissed him.

It was a defeat, and suffering under it he did something quite distinctive. He burned his boats, dismissed his employers in Fleet Street, and sat down to this new business, sending his productions to no editor, but to Beaman & Hare, a literary agency recommended by a friend.

This was his first visit to the office, with which he had been corresponding for some months and with which he had already done fairly satisfactory business.

The place did not impress him; it seemed small and cramped, and he was still recovering from the stairs and the fact that Hare was a Miss. He had always fancied the "M. Hare" who signed the typewritten letters and also the cheques, a man; the text of the letters and the handwriting had never suggested anything else. He wondered vaguely, as he sat nursing his knee and waiting for his interview, whether the man who had recommended him to this firm had been altogether happy in his advice. He was not left long in doubt.

The office-boy returned, and he was shown down a passage into a room where a girl seated before a desk littered with papers rose to receive him. She was pleasingly dressed, her auburn hair was shingled, she wore tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, she was nice-looking—not pretty, nice-looking, in a new way.

And now, as she took off her reading glasses and they talked together, she seemed to lose her sex; it was like talking to a man, only much pleasanter.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting," said the businesslike Miss Hare, "but I am glad you have come. These are your papers and our correspondence on the desk, and I kept you waiting whilst I got them in order. That last story you sent us has been turned down by three magazines because of the deficiency of feminine interest in it. There's no woman at all in it, as a matter of fact, and that's not a fault—it's a crime—in the eyes of the ordinary magazine editor. Yet it is the best story you have written."

"I'm glad you think that," said Bobby.

"Yes, but I'm not an ordinary magazine editor," said Miss Hare. "It was not the fault of the story that it was turned down, it was the fault of our office. I have been away, and Miss Beaman has been busy and Miss Strudwick, whom I am training, sent it to those magazines, quite unsuitable for it. However, when I came back I sent it to the editor of Hoof and Horn with a strong personal note, and this morning I have a letter from him. He likes it, and will pay ten pounds—a wretched price. You see, the people who are interested in hoofs and horns are not nearly so numerous as the people who are interested in girls."

Bobby assented. This frank confession and open way of doing business came to him as a revelation pleasantly new.

"I'm afraid girls are not my strong point," said he.

"When a woman is reading a story," said Miss Hare, "she is the girl. If there are six girls in the story, she is each one of them; if she is eighty, she is still the heroine. If you make your girls pretty, and not impossible, and make them go through adventures, your women readers will supply all the rest. But there must be adventures, that is to say love interest, for love is the only adventure that counts with women readers. I know it's absurd, but there you are. I am not talking of literature, but of story-writing for profit."

The gunshop in the Strand came before Bobby's eyes, and the visionary jungle beasts that had called to him as a storyteller.

"Only half an hour ago," said he, "a shop-window in the Strand gave me a lot of ideas—open air—half-formed ideas, but I felt as if I had tumbled into a nest of stories—it wasn't a bonnet shop."

"What sort of shop?"

"A gunshop."

"I know it," said Miss Hare. "I've often looked in. At least, I think I know the one you mean."

"Do you mean to say you are interested in guns?"

"Anything that takes one's mind away from London is interesting. I was born in the country and could shoot before I was twelve, but that was in the days before the war swept everything away."

A distant look came into her eyes, passed, and putting on the tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, she turned to the table littered with papers.

"Now here," said she, "is something that I want you to do. I would have written about it had you not called. Do you know anything about Tanagra statuettes?"

"I know the things you mean," said Bobby, "but I don't know much about them."

"Well, the editor of the Paternoster Magazine has a cover design for the January number, and he wants a story written around it. Editors sometimes want this sort of thing done. It's not high-class work, but the Paternoster is important and the story will be 'featured,' of course, as representing the cover design. This is it."

She handed him a picture.

It represented a man's hand, open, and, standing on the palm, a Tanagra figurine about nine inches high, a statuette of a Greek girl carrying a jar on her shoulder.

Lestrange, holding the drawing a little distance away from him, contemplated it with his head slightly on one side, and Miss Hare, in her turn, contemplated him.

He pleased her.

Already, and before she had seen him, she had taken a liking to him. She liked the stories he had sent in and she liked, even better, his business letters addressed to the firm; modest, straightforward, unassuming letters, always to the point: his handwriting had pleased her, and she was a judge of handwriting.

"Of course," said she, "many writers would consider it perhaps infra dig to be asked for a story in this way written round a cover design, but the Paternoster is worth pleasing, and, after all, nobody will know but the editor."

"Oh, I'm not bothering about that," said he. "It's the difficulty. How on earth am I to make a story of this thing—that's the question."

"Johnson said he could write a story about a broomstick if called upon," said Miss Hare.

"Yes, but this isn't a broomstick. I know something about broomsticks, but this——Well, I'll try. I must hunt round and find out things about Tanagra statuettes. The British Museum might help me, or the South Kensington."

"Try Behrens, in Museum Street," said she. "He's sure to know, and he's a dear old man, and you'll get atmosphere there, if you get nothing else. Number Six A Museum Street is his address, and you can mention my name. He's one of my best friends."

She paused, and into her eyes came that far-away look again, as though she were gazing over the past.

"Shall I take the drawing with me?" asked he, rising to go.

"No," said the girl, "I'll send it to your address by registered post. It's the only copy, and you might leave it in a cab or something. I'm sure you are forgetful."

"Now, how on earth did she know that?" said Bobby as he came down the stairs.

CHAPTER II

A SMALL YACHTSMAN AND AN OLD DEALER

Coming down the stairs he was quite a different person from the man who had gone up only half an hour before.

Only women and wine are able to work magic like that.

He felt warmed and cheered, and his work seemed worth doing. A little appreciation goes a long way with a writer, and though Martia Hare had said little enough in the way of appreciation, what she had said was genuine. But though the appreciation had cheered, it was the woman who had warmed.

For the last three months he had been leading a pretty lonely life. When he had dropped Fleet Street he had lost touch with a great number of people, women and men, fellow-workers and fellow human beings; the smash his father had come in the financial world had made him chary of approaching the people he had known in better days, and as a result he had been living in an isolation excellent for work but bad for the worker.

If you want to find loneliness do not go to the Sahara desert. Go to London, with its population of seven million people crowded within a radius of a few miles. Here you will find the real thing as Bobby had found it, and here you will appreciate at its full value the interest of a fellow man or woman.

Out in the desolation of roaring Fleet Street he found that he was not alone. The pleasant image of the girl of the literary agency was with him. She had not only attached herself to his work, but also in some way to himself. It was not a question of love at first sight, or of love at all, but of something more subtle; even, perhaps, more mysterious—liking.

It was fifteen minutes to one, and reckoning that it was useless to call on Behrens till later in the afternoon, Bobby hailed a taxi, got in, and told the driver to take him to the Café Chianti in Old Compton Street.

Here when he had paid and dismissed the driver, he found that he had left his walking-stick in the cab, a fact that, so far from annoying him, made him chuckle. How did Miss Hare know his bias in this respect? And what an amazingly fortunate thing it was that he had not left the picture behind in the cab instead of a half-crown walking-stick. The picture that carried with it the good-will of the editor of the Paternoster Magazine.

She had saved him from the effects of his own forgetfulness, and it was as though another little bond had been tied between them.

The angel who looks after lonely young men was busy that day with the affairs of Bobby, for, as he took his seat at a table to the right of the doorway and picked up the menu, a man at the next table on the left leaned across and touched him on the arm.

It was Hackett, unseen for several years. Samuel Hackett, otherwise known as Sam, who had been sent down from St. John's for screwing a tutor so firmly up in his rooms that a carpenter had to be called in.

Sam looked just the same, rather disreputable—no tailor could ever dress him—just the same, but for an attempt at a beard and the deep bronze of an out-of-door man.

"I've got a boat," said he, after greetings had been exchanged and in answer to inquiries as to his doings. "I used to keep her up the Hamble, but I've shifted to Poole Harbour. Do you know Poole Harbour?"

"No I don't," said Bobby; "only that it is near Bournemouth. But what are you doing with the boat?"

"Living in her," said Sam. "It's the only life. No rates and taxes, only harbour dues; no servants, only one man; fishing as much as you want, and the whole Channel to cruise in."

"You're not married?"

"No," said Sam. "You don't want to be married if you have a boat. She wants all your attention, and women are a nuisance, anyway, at least on board a boat."

"Well, I'm jolly glad to see you," said Bobby. "What are you doing to-night? Let's have some dinner somewhere and go to a theatre afterwards."

"No," said Hackett. "I only came up to get some gadgets and a spare suit of oilskins in the East India Dock Road. I'm going back by the five train; but I'll always be glad to see you at Poole. Anyone will show you my boat—she's the Sandfly—everyone knows me at Poole."

A feeling had come to Bobby that the joyous Sammy of other days must have encountered strange influences to make him like this, so indifferent to pleasure, so different from his old self. He did not know the type yet, or the fact that he was talking to an almost perfect specimen of the full-blown small yachtsman; a being for whom towns existed only as suppliers of mast-winches and oilskin suits, and in whose eyes God made the ocean as a practice ground for five to forty tonners.

They parted outside the café, Hackett making east for the delights of the Dock Road and Bobby north for Museum Street and the shop of Behrens.

Museum Street is the conduit that leads from Oxford Street and to-day to where antiquity sits sheltered by the roof of the Museum and amidst the well-preserved ruins of the world she once knew as young.

Miss Hare was right. Museums are destructive to inspiration, and hunting for mushrooms in Labrador would be a fruitful occupation compared to hunting for a living story amidst the marbles.

But Museum Street is a different matter, and Behrens' shop, which stands half-way down on the right hand side, is another matter still.

I have never seen anyone pass Behrens' without stopping to look in. By "anyone" I mean of course strangers to the street and people not in too great a hurry.

Behrens is the man who beat Wangenheim at the great Sale of Japanese Surinomo held in London in 1912, securing the whole of a Baron Kamekura's collection for the British Museum.

Surinomo are Japanese Christmas cards, the newest craze among collectors, and invaluable, some of them, especially when signed by Hokuga, whose signature looks like a corkscrew, or Korinsai, whose device suggests three five-barred gates and a gridiron. It was Behrens who outbid the Americans for the Hispano Mauro lustre-ware at the Huth sale, a collection which beats even that at Warwick Castle; and it was he who declared the wax bust of the hunting Diana, attributed to Benvenuto Cellini by a certain great critic of art, to be an impudent fake.

But in the windows of his shop there is little to indicate these activities of mind and purse; a chair of Beauvais tapestry, an arquebus inlaid with silver, a set of crystal vases, always something attractive without ostentation, and appealing to the sense of form or colour.

Bobby pressed the latch and entered the shop of Behrens, releasing as he did so a bell that rang wildly in the back premises and fell dumb when the door closed on the street.

Then he stood in the silence, looking around him and waiting for someone to come.