“But,” cried Dorion, suddenly interrupting himself and springing into the bow, “look, look, how the sea is falling! Holy Dioscuri! What is happening before our eyes?... I never saw the water run out so fast.”
“It is the second marvel to-day,” said Lycon. “What can it mean?”
Even while they were speaking the boat and all the other small vessels sank lower and lower, so that the lime-stone quay seemed to tower far above them. Confused shouts and shrieks echoed from one craft to another and a moment after the inner bay, except for a few pools of water, lay as dry as a heath. Where the glittering surface of the waves had just extended, nothing was now seen save the greyish sand overgrown here and there with large and small patches of sea-weed. The little vessels which a short time before were flitting about far out on the water, now lay on dry ground, keeling over upon one side, and their crews were seen like small black dots standing around them uncertain what to do.
Conops, who had watched what was occurring with less indifference and dullness than usual, now made an apt remark.
“If the bay had been a drinking cup,” he said, “and there was an invisible mouth reaching from one shore to the other, the water could not have been drained quicker—in five, six long swallows.”
“What!” cried Dorion suddenly, “if I see aright, the water is returning.”
Lycon shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out towards the bay. The mass of water was moving across the cove like a rampart nine or ten ells high, the crest and bottom white with foam, and at a velocity greater than that of a man running at full speed. He saw the billow roll under the craft resting on the ground, raise them aloft, and sweep them onward in its own mad course.
Followed by Conops, he leaped into Dorion’s boat, shouting at the top of his voice to the people in the other vessels:
“Loose the boats from the quay!... or the water will fill them and drown us all.”
These words ran from mouth to mouth.