Free The 22 Letters by Richard; Clive; Kennedy King Page A

strange stories, that’s all,” said Nun. “I’ve never taken much note of them, and I can’t even remember what they’re about. But we shall see for ourselves now, shan’t we?”
    Suddenly, as they gazed, the wind failed them, for the first time since they left Gebal. The sail flopped heavily against the mast as the ship rolled in the slight swell, not a breath of cooling air touched their bodies, and the distant shore of the island shimmered in the afternoon heat haze. At Nun’s command the sweating sailors furled and secured the sail, got out the heavy oars and sat down on the benches. The boatswain gave the beat, and the ship forged sluggishly ahead as Nun steered a course round the steep shore of the island, looking for the harbor.
    The island stood like a pile of white bones in the blue sea, reflecting the heat and the glare of the sun. Here and there were patches of silver-green olive trees, and dried-up wisps of vegetation that might be vines, and they had to look hard to make out the scattered houses built of the same white rock as the island itself. From whichever way they looked at it, as they slowly coasted around, it looked the same—an almost perfect cone, with a blackened top and the sinister plume of smoke now rising straight into the heavens. But of life there seemed to be no sign.
    They had made a complete circuit of the isle, and the sun had dropped down the sky very little in that time, before Nun decided that a little jetty and a cluster of buildings on the eastern side was the main harbor. He turned the ship in her tracks and headed back to it.
    â€œNot much of a haven,” Nun murmured as they approached the apparently deserted quays. “But it will do in this calm.”
    Even when they were near enough to see rows of sealed wine jars standing waiting in the shade of a rough warehouse, there seemed to be no human guardians of the place. The only sound was the regular plop, groan, and splash of the oars, beating now at a dead slow pace, just enough to keep the stem gently cutting through the water. Nun raised his hand to halt the rowers, and there was only the gurgle of water along the keel and the drips falling from the raised oars. Nun looked at the Chaldean, and the oarsmen looked at each other, and no one seemed capable of breaking the silence—until the boatswain startled them all by letting out a sudden roar:
    â€œAshore there! Are you all dead, or drunk?”
    One of a stack of empty jars seemed to come to life and a human figure got to its feet, grasping clumsily at a spear and rubbing the sleep of his siesta out of his eyes. The harbor guard stared stupidly at the approaching ship, and then shouted something over his shoulder. Other figures appeared from patches of shade and moved confusedly here and there; but though the boatswain, using various shouts and signs, tried to get them to indicate where they should come alongside, there were no helpful gestures in reply. So Nun ordered the oars to be drawn in, manned the steering oar, and there was just enough way on the ship to take her smoothly alongside the jetty, where two of the crew jumped ashore and made fast.
    The harbor-guard had now got itself into some sort of military order and Nun noted that their helmets and armor were of Cretan pattern, though the bronze lacked the well-known Cretan spit-and-polish. Yet still there was no offer of help: they stood stolidly across the end of the jetty as if barring the way to the land. Then, just as Nun himself jumped from the poop on to the jetty, the soldier standing nearest to him lifted his hand in the gesture of drinking from a jar and said one word: “Water?”
    â€œSo you do speak a known tongue!” Nun remarked. “Thank you, the supplies in our water jars are low.”
    The soldier looked into the hold of the ship, looked again at Nun, and repeated with a query in his voice: “Water?”
    â€œYes, we need it