"Yes—though interest is a relative word too, I expect."
"Quite so!" agreed the Brazilian. "I have rather a mania for that sort of thing, myself. Wait. Let me show you." And he went into the inner cabin. When he came back he held up an alabaster cup. "A Greek kylix!" he cried. "Pure Greek! What an outline, eh? This is what keeps me from putting on my slippers! I have no doubt Alexander left it behind him. Perhaps Hephaistion drank out of it, or Nearchus, to celebrate his return from India. And some rascally Persian stole it out of a tent!"
Matthews, taking the cup, saw the flicker brighten in the Brazilian's eyes.
"Nice little pattern of grape leaves, that," he said. "And think of picking it up out here!"
"Oh you can always pick things up, if you know where to look," said Magin. "Dieulafoy and the rest of them didn't take everything. How could they? The people who have come and gone through this country of Elam! Why just over there, at Bund-i-Kir, Antigonus fought Eumenes and the Silver Shields for the spoils of Susa—and won them! I have discovered—But come in here." And he pushed wider open the door of the inner cabin.
Matthews stepped into what was evidently a stateroom. A broad bunk filled one side of it, and the visitor could not help remarking a second interior door. But his eye was chiefly struck by two, three, no four, chests, which took up more space in the narrow cabin than could be convenient for its occupant. They seemed to be made of the same mysterious dark wood as the "ark," clamped with copper.
"I say! Those aren't bad!" he exclaimed. "More of the spoils of Susa?"
"Ho! My trunks? I had them made up the river, like the rest. But I wonder what would interest you in my museum. Let's see." He bent over one of the chests, unlocked it, rummaged under the cover, and brought out a broad metal circlet which he handed to Matthews. "How would that do for a crown, eh?"
The young man took it over to the porthole. The metal, he then saw, was a soft antique gold, wrought into a decoration of delicate spindles, with a border of filigree. The circlet was beautiful in itself, and astonishingly heavy. But what it chiefly did for Matthews was to sharpen the sense of strangeness, of remoteness, which this bizarre galley, come from unknown waters, had brought into the familiar muddy Karun.
"As a matter of fact," went on the Brazilian, "it's an anklet. But can you make it out? Those spindles are Persian, while the filigree is more Byzantine than anything else. You find funny things up there, in caves—"