The City in the Sea

The City in the Sea

"The City in the Sea" by H. De Vere Stacpoole follows Robert Lestrange, a young English writer of modest means who, after leaving Oxford and attempting journalism, has turned to short story writing handled by the literary agency of Beaman and Hare. On his first visit to the agency, he meets the capable and perceptive Miss Martia Hare, who manages his work with professional frankness and immediately makes a strong impression on him. On the same day, directed by Martia to the Museum Street shop of the elderly art dealer Jacob Behrens, Bobby finds himself drawn into an extraordinary proposition. Behrens reveals that his son Isaac, a naval officer killed near the end of the Great War, had discovered during wartime submarine operations a small Greek town lying submerged at a depth of only five or six fathoms in the sheltered bay of a remote, uninhabited Aegean island called Hyalos. Isaac had mapped the sunken city in detail before his death and had intended to mount a salvage expedition with his father. Too aged and grief-stricken to undertake the venture himself, Behrens offers Bobby financial backing of three thousand pounds and a half share of profits in exchange for leading the expedition to recover the ancient artworks. Bobby accepts quickly, demonstrating a decisiveness that belies his general forgetfulness and impracticality. He travels to Poole Harbour to find Samuel Hackett, an Oxford acquaintance who has retreated from conventional life to live aboard a small yacht, and who possesses expert seamanship. Through Hackett, Bobby purchases a sound ketch called the Lorna Doone, acquires professional diving equipment from a firm in Bermondsey, and secures a reliable crew including Glastonbury, a taciturn and skilled deep-sea diver. Hackett himself, seized by a passion for the Lorna Doone, volunteers as skipper. Bobby also persuades Martia to join the expedition. Behrens, who had been engaged to Isaac himself, arranges her release from her duties and provides funds for her outfit, convinced that her business sense and intuition will be invaluable. It emerges that Martia had been engaged to Isaac Behrens before his death, a fact that casts a shadow over her relationship with Bobby, who has fallen in love with her. There is also a mysterious prior connection between Martia and Hackett, suggested by their constrained manner when they meet at Poole, and by a charged remark Martia makes about a man having ruined his life in a fit of temper, which Hackett seems to take personally. The Lorna Doone sails from Poole through the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and along the Spanish and Italian coasts to Genoa, where they take on water. During the Genoa stopover, Hackett disappears for most of the day and returns in a state of intoxication, apparently undone by the emotional strain of living in close proximity to Martia. Bobby informs Martia discreetly, and she handles the matter with composure. Continuing through the Straits of Messina and into the Aegean, the crew eventually sights Hyalos, a high and desolate rock island ringed by reefs with a single navigable passage. Entering the bay, they anchor and row out to explore. They find the sunken city exactly as Isaac mapped it, complete with streets, a market-place, a theatre with marble seating still intact, colonnade houses with tessellated courtyards, cone-shaped Hermes columns before doorways, and wheel-ruts worn into the paving of the streets. The discovery overwhelms Bobby and Martia with a complex mixture of wonder, melancholy, and unease. While exploring the island on foot, Bobby and Martia climb to a plateau above the southern cliffs, where they experience something in a hollow by a broken temple column that they never afterward discuss but that leaves them both deeply shaken and bound by a shared, wordless understanding. The salvage work begins in earnest. Glastonbury descends into the submerged courtyards and rooms, sending up nets filled with Greek pottery decorated with banquet and battle scenes, small marble sculptures including a disc-thrower and a sea-nymph on a dolphin, metal ornaments, and various household objects. Many houses yield nothing, having been stripped or plain in their furnishings, but the finer houses near the agora produce remarkable finds. A marble Hermes with winged feet, delicate enough to seem on the verge of flight, draws admiration even from the otherwise indifferent crew. The crown of the expedition is the recovery of a small, intact marble Aphrodite of extraordinary beauty, her hands folded on her breast and her feet resting on a plinth suggesting a breaking wave, which is installed in Martia's cabin bunk. Late in the expedition, a small foreign vessel called the Santa Margharita, hired by an Italian named Visconti, enters the bay to make repairs. Sam handles the encounter with quick thinking, repositioning the Lorna Doone closer inshore and setting up the tent ashore to suggest innocent cruising. He dines alone on board the stranger that evening and returns in another episode of intoxication. The Santa Margharita departs the following morning without apparent incident, though the encounter leaves Bobby and Martia uneasy. The fragments of the Victory group, too large to stow below decks because of a broken wing no one can bring themselves to shatter, are ultimately returned to the sea at night, slipping down through a trail of phosphorescent bubbles. The Lorna Doone then prepares to sail for home, laden with her extraordinary and carefully straw-packed cargo, the crew set to face the return voyage through the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay, with Genoa and the Italian customs ahead of them, and the question of safely landing the cargo in England still to be resolved.

By H. De Vere Stacpoole · First published 1907 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy · 34 chapters · 99,027 words

First lines

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.

What this Textopian page supports

The City in the Sea is listed on Textopian as a novel by H. De Vere Stacpoole, dated 1907 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Discussion starters

Genres

Tags

adventure fiction · maritime adventure · sea voyage · mystery · romance · lost world · ancient civilization · submerged city · South Pacific · island setting · treasure hunting · exploration

Contents

More by H. De Vere Stacpoole