Descendants of the Scythians - Страница 3

“All right, you’ve convinced me!”

Excited applause greeted the pronouncement. The dog opened her eyes, wondering what all the fuss was about.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” the archeologist went on to say. “We’ll have a good rest and make all the necessary preparations since we’ll be facing a complicated and arduous task. And the day after tomorrow, we’ll start on our underground expedition. We’ll limit our explorations… mostly to the archeological line of our work — for a short period.”

“But the archeological line is sure to give us some geological results,” Dmitro Borisovich remarked.

“We’ll see, we’ll see.”

“Does that mean we’ll go exploring all together?” Artem asked, wishing to make things clear and definite.

“Yes, all together. And we’ll even take Diana with us. Will you join us, Diana?”

The boxer languidly opened her eyes again, but closed them in a moment: apparently the matter did not interest Diana in the least.

Thus it was that major change came about in the work of a small group of researchers who had travelled to a remote backwater in the heart of the Ukraine. But what had brought them there in the first place?

In the late nineteenth century, deposits of copper ore were discovered on the slopes of the mountain ridge. Nobody could tell for sure how much ore there was or of what quality. A certain engineer by the name of Hlebov decided to mate some money out of it. As he had the proper connections, he had managed to receive a government subsidy — quite a considerable amount of money — to build a factory. He even saw it through to the smelting of the first copper, after which he promptly disappeared. He had never really intended to turn the thing into a large-scale operation, for he was interested in only one thing — getting money from the state.

The factory quickly fell into disrepair, and it was soon reduced to a pile of bricks and odd pieces of equipment like trolleys and rails rusting here and there. The memory of engineer Hlebov, bent on having a good time drinking, and carousing with his friends well into the early hours, still lingered among the local villagers. Hearsay had it that there were deposits of copper ore inside the ridge, but whether it was true or whether there was enough to start extracting it on a commercial scale was unknown.

Some references to copper ore in the ridge could, in fact, be found in reports of various geological surveys preserved in the archives, but the evidence was vague and contradictory. This was hardly surprising since in czarist times, nobody seemed really to care about doing any further copper mining in the region.

Capitalists and businessmen, both domestic and foreign, were more interested in the coal fields located in this general area of the Donbas, for here, coal could be extracted practically from the surface. But this ridge did not have any coal so the entrepreneurs, eager to make quick and easy money, did not think it worth their while prospecting for copper along the ridge.

Neither was archeology much favored in this area. Local villagers occasionally found artifacts from ancient times, particularly at and around the Sharp Mount. But the finds, mostly objects of bronze or bone, did not attract much attention. No one suspected that the Sharp Mount might contain treasures.

In fact, there were no indications that anything valuable was hidden in the mount, as the villagers had never found anything made of gold or other precious metals or stones. Some bronze buckles and clasps, a few trinkets of very little worth — that was all. Dmitro Borisovich once said with a smile:

“As a matter of fact, we’re lucky. No one has done any excavations here; no one has explored the place as no treasures were thought to be likely to be found here. Consequently neither despoilers who grab one pretty trinket but ruin the rest nor grave robbers have ever found their way here. Everything that the cave may yield is ours to find and take.”

“Add copper ore to the list,” said the geologist.

The two men had been friends since their youth; they had travelled a great deal together and helped each other a lot, but each of them preserved an unshakable belief in the superiority of his own science. Such attitudes could be detected in their incessant light-hearted arguments.

They had been planning to explore the secrets of the Sharp Mount for quite some time, but for one reason or another the work had to be postponed several times. Thus it was only this summer that they had decided to combine work with pleasure and spend their summer holiday at the mount.

“But let’s not overburden ourselves with geological prospecting, right?” Dmitro Borisovich warned his friend in a decisive manner.

“Of course not. Neither shall we work too hard along archeological lines, right?” Ivan Semenovich replied in the same vein.

“The main thing is to get good rest,” Dmitro Borisovich added by way of explanation.

“Yes, prospecting and all that will be just to while away the time — purely for the fun of it,” Ivan Semenovich agreed.

“It’s a deal then!”

The reader may wonder at this point how Lida and Artem found themselves in the company of these two men of science. The explanation is very simple. Both the young people were students at the college where Ivan Semenovich taught: both were ardent lovers of geology. Lida, a distant relative of Ivan Semenovich, talked him into taking her along as a helper, to do some of the chores. How did Artem fit into the picture? That is also easy enough to explain. He was rightfully regarded as one of the best students at the college. Ivan Semenovich had high hopes for him and suggested that they spend their vacation together. Was there any need to say how overjoyed Artem was to accept such a proposal?.. To go on holiday in the company of his beloved and esteemed professor, and on top of it, to take part in real geological prospecting? It was nothing short of heaven!

Thus a close-knit group of two scientists and two college students had been formed; they had come to the foot of the ridge and settled in the vicinity of the Sharp Mount.

“Four people, not counting a dog,” Artem would say jokingly. The dog, a wonderful fawn boxer that Ivan Semenovich had brought along with him, could not be ignored, for Diana was large and intelligent, lacking, in the words of Lida, only the ability to speak.

It should be noted that Ivan Semenovich and Dmitro Borisovich had both broken their mutual pledges the moment they had reached the Sharp Mount. The only sense in which the trip could be called a holiday was that neither of them had any lectures to give or any thinking or writing to do. Prospecting had overstepped the bounds of mere “fun.” Very soon, there appeared prospecting shafts at the Sharp Mount that had been dug by Artem and Lida under the supervision of Ivan Semenovich. As far as Dmitro Borisovich was concerned, how could he think of anything else when he had an unexplored cave full of secrets at his disposal?

Truth to tell, the results of their prospecting and exploring had been negligible thus far. Some copper ore had, in fact, been found, but not much more. As has already been mentioned, all the copper veins broke off only a short distance from the surface, and all the hopes of the geologist rested on the unexpected finds that had been made by Dmitro Borisovich and Lida.

The archeologist had not been very lucky either until the other day, when he had managed to penetrate the rockfall barring the passage.

It would be worthwhile to say a few words about the cave if only for the reason that it had awakened an interest in archeology in Lida and Artem.

An opening to a dark underground passage half overgrown with shrubbery could be seen on the slope of the Sharp Mount among tall, thick weeds.

The locals suggested that it had served as a bandits’ hideout long ago; since then rockfalls had occurred in the cave, drastically reducing it in size and making it a very dangerous place, so that even children who enjoyed playing hide-and-seek games, generally avoided venturing into it.

During the first days after their arrival, the archeologist examined the cave. Unfortunately, he found nothing to mention except traces of copper ore veins.

Artem lucked out and chanced upon a very old man who was slightly deaf but still had a sound enough memory. From him, Artem learned that it was in this very cave that the old man’s father had once found several ancient artifacts, including broken pieces of old weapons. What had happened to the finds afterwards, the old man did not know. They had just disappeared, and that was all there was to it.

But Dmitro Borisovich, intrigued by the story, was not so easily put off. He knew from his own experience that such seemingly insignificant finds could lead to important archeological discoveries if you only looked in the right place. He willingly told the young man of such discoveries. Artem’s conversion to archeology dated from these stories. Artem wondered why he had never thought before that archeology could be such an entrancing subject!

“That’s because you’ve never had anything to do with the practical work of archeologists,” Dmitro Borisovich would say, chuckling through his moustache as he looked into Artem’s big black eyes that were burning with excitement.

When darkness fell, Artem and Lida would build a campfire. It was very agreeable to sit by the fire under the immense canopy of the starry sky. Everything around seemed full of suspense as the darkness pressed ever closer on all sides of the burning branches. Giving in to the insistent requests of Artem, Dmitro Borisovich would begin telling of things long past, and was so convincing it was as though he had personally witnessed the stirring events of ancient times. Even Ivan Semenovich was also fascinated, though he took every opportunity to reproach the two young people for their enthusiasm for “the science studying the dead” as he put it. Indeed, Dmitro Borisovich, who was a great lover of archeology, could easily inspire his listeners.