Chapter Twenty-seven

I TOOK PENELOPE down to a hundred and fifty feet and made her a cup of tea. She settled on a pillow beside the observation window. Hollie sat beside her and looked up at her wistfully, but she wasn’t too interested in him. We cruised outside the perimeter of Thera, hovering between one hundred and three hundred feet. Once we were under water Penelope seemed to forget completely about the rule of no diving in the Greek islands. And it was a little like taking your teacher out to play — she was bossy!

“Go here, Alfred! Go here! Go over there! Go up here! Go down there! Stop here! Go back! Go back!!”

At one point, she even reached for the controls, but I blocked her.

“You’d better not do that,” I said. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

As wild as Thera looked above water, it was stranger underneath. There were deep holes in the sea floor caused by volcanic eruptions. The holes were surrounded by perfectly round rings of soil, like giant ant holes — their centers disappearing into who knows where. Besides the rings of soil were long rows of debris, like huge waves in a city dump. It was exciting, for sure, but it really did look like a dump. It might have been a dump from the amazing city of Atlantis … but it was still a dump. I couldn’t imagine anyone digging this stuff up and sorting through it. It would take hundreds of years! But that’s exactly where Penelope got really excited.

“Oh my gosh! Look at that! Oh! Look! There’s an urn! Stop! Alfred! Stop! There’s an urn! Wait! What’s that? Is that a boat? Alfred, is that a boat? How old do you suppose it is?”

“I don’t know. Could be fifty years old. Could be five hundred. It’s hard to tell.”

“Hmm … what’s that?”

I stared down through the observation window.

“Looks like a big plate.”

“What do you think it’s made of?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. When things have been on the bottom for a while they get covered with sea muck and you can’t even tell if they’re made of metal or wood.”

“I think it’s made of metal. Look.”

I looked again. It looked like a plastic saucer I used to slide down the hill with when I was little. Penelope’s eyes grew wider.

“It looks like a shield to me.”

I didn’t think it was a shield.

“I think it’s a shield, Alfred. Oh, my gosh!”

“Umm … I don’t think …”

“Do you have any idea how important that would be?”

“Yes, but …”

“Oh! Alfred, is there any way you can pick up things with your submarine?”

“No.”

“Shoot!”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t know if it were a good idea or not, but …

“But I can dive down there. It’s just a hundred feet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean: I can free-dive to a hundred feet.”

“You mean … you can swim down there?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s so far.”

“I know, but I can. But we’re not supposed to touch anything.”

“I know, I know, but maybe you could just swim down and take a closer look at that shield. Maybe you could very gently turn it over.”

I had to confess, the thought that it might be an ancient shield was pretty exciting, although if I had been listening to my own gut feeling then I wouldn’t have gone down. But Penelope was absolutely convinced it was an important find. I brought the sub awash, the portal sticking up just a foot above the surface. Even like that we were risking being spotted by someone from the cliffs. I climbed out, did my deep breathing and went down.

The water was clear and beautiful. I was surprised how easy it was to reach one hundred feet. Sponge diving with Omar had improved my skills. I found the round object and pulled it free. It was made of metal for sure but was very light. I didn’t think it was a shield. I looked up at the sub but couldn’t see Penelope in the observation window. Back on the surface she stuck her head out the portal.

“Why don’t you just bring it up so we can have a look at it, Alfred? Then we’ll put it back.”

So, I went back down, grabbed it and brought it up. I was pretty sure it was a plate. Penelope reached down and took it from me as I climbed up. Very excitedly, she rubbed the sea muck off it.

“You were right, Alfred, it’s a plate. But look, it’s cut in relief. There are figures of warriors fighting. Look! A bull! That means it’s Minoan. The bull is a symbol of the Minoan civilization.”

“How old do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. If it’s made of bronze, then it’s very old. But it seems too light to be bronze. It might be brass. Oh, wait! There’s a stamp.”

“A stamp? What does it say?”

Penelope squinted.

“Wait. I need my glasses.”

She pulled old-fashioned glasses out of her shirt pocket and read the stamp and burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“It says, ‘Made in China.’”

“Oh.”

“It probably just fell off a cruise ship.”

Penelope handed the plate back to me, meaning, I guessed, that I should get rid of it. Well, I wasn’t going to swim down and put it back exactly where it had been, if it was worthless, although maybe in a thousand years it would be valuable, and people would be amazed that it came all the way from China. I tossed it into the sea and watched it sink. Penelope’s mood changed.

“Oh, well, that was silly. I’m surprised at myself for getting so worked up. It’s going to be dark soon. Do you think you could take me back to where I was?”

“Sure.”

So, we went back down. Penelope took her seat at the observation window again. A few minutes later she saw something else.

“Alfred?”

“Yah?”

“Can you come and look at this?”

I stopped the sub. She was pointing at something and her face looked shocked. I came over.

“What,” she said, “do you suppose that is?”

I took a peek.

“It looks like an arm to me.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

She looked up at me like a child who really wanted something.

“Do you think you could dive down and take a look?”

I stared at the arm sticking up from the bottom. It looked kind of creepy. But I was curious too.

“Yah, I guess so.”

We surfaced and I went down. It was getting dark so I brought a waterproof flashlight. At first I couldn’t find the arm, and then there it was, as if it were reaching up to grab me. I touched it. It felt like stone. I moved some of the debris away from it. The arm was connected to a head and part of a torso. I tried to get a good look but had to surface.

“Well?” said Penelope.

“It’s part of a statue.”

“Does it seem really old?”

“Yah, I think so.”

“Oh my gosh!”

“I’ll go back down.”

This time I got a pretty good look at the face. It was a beautiful young woman. She was probably made of marble or something like that. There was just the upper part of the body, and only one arm. I felt around for other pieces but didn’t find any. I had to surface.

“Well? Well? What did you see?”

I described everything.

“Could you lift it?”

“No way, it’s too heavy. You would have to raise it with a rope.”

Penelope looked all around the sub. “Do … you … have a rope?”

So I went back down with a rope, tied it around the broken torso and swam back up. Carefully, we raised it. I did the pulling and Penelope wrapped the rope around the portal, in case it slipped from my hands. For only part of a statue, it was really heavy. When we brought it alongside the sub, it was almost dark. Penelope was extremely excited. She clapped her hands together.

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!”

“Shhhhhh!”

I wanted her to be quiet because people might hear us on the water.

“I’m sorry! I’m just so excited. Oh my gosh, it’s ancient! I can’t believe it!”

We raised the statue out of the water but it would not fit through the portal.

“Quick, Alfred! Take me back to the little island. I will say I found it there.”

“Really? But that’s just a rock. How will you explain how it got there?”

“There’s a little sandy spot on one side. I’ll say I found it there, just under the water. I’ll say … I stumbled on it there.”

It was completely dark when we returned to the spot where I first met Penelope. It took both of us to carry the statue and put it down on the little sandy spot. Then it seemed to take forever to position it so that it looked like Penelope had just found it. If ever there was a time that I felt like a real outlaw … this was it.

Penelope was all over the statue like a dog with a bone. She seemed to forget I was even there.

“Do you think it might be from Atlantis?” I asked.

“What? Oh … maybe. It’s very beautiful, isn’t it? We don’t have any statues of this size from the Minoan period, only frescoes. If it is Minoan, well, then, maybe it could be from Atlantis. We’ll have to date it of course, and …”

She drifted away in thought. It was time for us to leave. I didn’t want to get caught. I coaxed Seaweed onto the sub.

“I think we’re going to go now.”

I wasn’t sure if she had heard me. “Good luck!” I called out.

“What? Oh. Oh, good luck, Alfred! Happy sailing! Thank you! Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

I wondered if she had really found a piece of Atlantis. I knew one thing for sure: if the sea beneath Thera were the ancient site of Atlantis, it was now nothing but a dump. And it would take a lot more than a few archaeologists to reconstruct it. As Penelope disappeared into the dark, we waved one last time. I couldn’t help wondering if being a professor of archaeology was not really her thing. Maybe she should have been a treasure hunter.