"A. E. Merritt - The Ship of Ishtar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

THE SHIP OF ISHTAR
A. A. Merritt

Copyright 1924 by The Frank A. Munsey Company.


PART I
1. The Coming of the Ship

A TENDRIL of the strange fragrance spiralled up from the great stone
block. Kenton felt it caress his face like a coaxing hand.
He had been aware of that fragrance-an alien perfume, subtly troubling,
evocative of fleeting unfamiliar images, of thought-wisps that were gone
before the mind could grasp them-ever since he had unsheathed from its
coverings the thing Forsyth, the old archaeologist, had sent him from the sand
shrouds of ages-dead Babylon.
Once again his eyes measured the block-four feet long,a little more than
that in height, a trifle less in width. A faded yellow, its centuries hung
about it like a half visible garment. On one face only was there inscription,
a dozen parallel lines of archaic cuneiform; carved there, if Forsyth were
right in his deductions, in the reign of Sargon of Akkad, sixty centuries ago.
The surface of thestone was scarred and pitted and the wedge shaped symbols
mutilated, half obliterated.
Kenton leaned closer over it, and closer around himwound the scented
spirals clinging like scores of tendrils, clinging like little fingers,
wistful, supplicating, pleading-- Pleading for release! What nonsense was this
he was dreaming? Kenton drew himself up. A hammer lay close at hand; he lifted
it and struck the block, impatiently.
The block answered the blow! It murmured; the murmuring grew louder;
louder still,with faint bell tones like distant carillons of jade. The
murmurings ceased, now they were only high, sweet chimings; clearer, ever more
clear they rang, drawing closer, winging up through endless corridors of time.
There was a sharp crackling. The block split. From the break pulsed a
radiance as of rosy pearls and with it wave after wave of the fragrance-no
longer questing, no longer wistful nor supplicating.
Jubilant now! Triumphant! Something was inside the block! Something that
had lain hidden there since Sargon of Akkad, six thousand years go! The
carillons of jade rang out again. Sharply they pealed, then turned and fled
back the endless corridors upwhich they had come. They died away; and as they
died the block collapsed; it disintegrated; it became a swirling, slowly
settling cloud of sparkling dust.
The cloud whirled, a vortex of glittering mist. It vanished like a
curtain plucked away.
Where the block had been stood-a ship! It floated high on a base of
curving waves cut from lapis lazuli and foam-crested with milky rock crystals.
Its hull 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 the bows.
Where the hull drew up to form this cabin, a faint flush warmed and cloudy
crystal; it deepened as the side slifted; it gleamed at last with a radiance