The Rings of Poseidon Read Online Free

journey was longer
but more convenient and more comfortable than the short crossing.
Alan Wainwright was able to take his time finishing his coffee and
his book in the ship's canteen before he went on deck to watch the
rounding of Hoy.
    It was hard to say why Stromness felt like a
Viking town. Perhaps it was the way the houses clung rather in a
Norwegian style to the sides of the steep, though not high,
hillside. Possibly it was the archetecture of the houses themselves
that had a sort of Scandinavian feel to them. In any event,
suddenly you found it hard to remember you were still in the
Northern Islands of Scotland.
    Alan watched the lorries roll off before he
wandered along the quayside to the Islands Information Centre.
    The Information Office was a newish building
on the harbour. The people in it were helpful and friendly, though
that was, Alan reflected, their job. Learning that the ferry to Hoy
for that day had gone earlier he decided to take in the sights and
sounds of Stromness.
     
    Kirkwall, which was a port of call for
sizable ships, faced north. The bus rumbled downhill towards the
centre of town and stopped in front of the cathedral of St. Magnus.
The sandy-red coloured building dominated the square where Frank
recovered his holdall and his rucksack.
    The town centre was something of a nightmare.
It looked like a pedestrian precinct but cars had the right of way.
They stopped anywhere and pulled off without warning. He was not
sorry to reach the safety of the bus which called at Skara Brae
before it went on to Stromness.
    "They drive on the wrong side of the road,"
he thought, "but you can't even tell which side they're supposed to
be driving on most of the time."
    * * *
    "Right, we'll dig from here," said Alicia, "I
think we can go down to about three feet up to this point without
treating it as part of the dig proper. From here," and she made a
sweeping movement of her hands, "I'd like to sift each bucketful of
sand with a view to seeing whether there is anything worth keeping
and recording."
    The tussocky ground was not conducive to easy
digging. In fact Gill's shovel, sharp though it was, would barely
cut through the roots of the grass. And even when the grass itself
was taken out and laid to one side, the soil was sandy and a steep
sided trench difficult to make. The soil kept slipping back into
the trench. "Throw it further!" said Alicia, a trifle
unsympathetically, when Gill mentioned it to her.
    The new trench hit the existing one at right
angles. Ali had them continue it to form a 'T' shape and extend the
old trench as well. She was pleased with the single day's digging,
but insisted they didn't rush. Manjit's back felt as if it was
breaking. She sifted out several pebbles, a fish bone that might
have been a needle, a flake of rust and what Alicia said looked
like a bronze arrowhead, also well corroded by time. But the most
exciting thing of all was the wall. It was made of the kind of flat
stones that could be picked up on the beach. Stones that bore
evidence of being smoothed and shaped by the tide as much as by the
hand of man. And yet they were fitted together skilfully, so that a
shaped dry-stone wall was not only made, but made secure.
    "How on earth did it keep from falling down?"
Manjy wanted to know. "You'd think it would collapse as soon as
anyone blew, like the little pigs' houses when the wolf huffed and
puffed." she said, surprising the Scottish diggers who were unused
to the idea of someone who looked Indian but thought (and was)
British.
    "Well," said one of the local men, "if it's
anything like Skara Brae they will have piled dirt and sand on the
outside to keep it stable."
    "That's right," said Alicia authoritatively,
"although there are complete buildings above ground that have
lasted thousands of years. There's a chapel in the west of Ireland
built the same way with dry-stone walling around 800 AD and that
one is still completely weatherproof. Admittedly that's a lot
later, but there's