* * * * *
"28 Apr. 1923 (cont.):
When the professor knocked on my stateroom door, I kept quiet. Thereby making him think I had gotten up early and gone to breakfast ahead of him. This way, I could sneak into his stateroom, and...rummage through his personal journal (may God forgive me!)."
"Being familiar with the way he personally filed things, it did not take me long to make my first discovery. But, it was not his diary. Rather, it was his transliteration of the Ishimura autobiography. And, that was what led to my second discovery."
"Namely; that Professor Phillips had not been entirely truthful with us."
"First of all; Ishimura Takeo had been no ordinary ronin. He had, in fact, been the bastard grandson of Go-Kameyama (Japan's last Southern Court Emperor)! And, 'Ishmael Murad' is what he _personally_ chose to rename himself when he married the half-Chinese daughter of Zahir Khan. A Persianized Mongol warlord who became the captain-general of a pirate fleet out of Debal, using a dromon designed and built for him (under the supervision of a Nestorian Greek shipwright named Spiros Proxenos) as his flagship."
"Furthermore, Zahir Khan's daughter had not only _never_ been the adoptive daughter of Admiral Zheng. Her given name was not even 'Lin Kuei!' "
"It was Kuen Pu."
"Lin Kuei was actually the name of the Chinese secret society with whom Ishimura and his father-in-law had secretly been in league when Zheng's treasure ship was first chased to this island."
"I had only just started to read about Ishimura's personal duel with a white man he called 'the Black Cross Gaijin,' when it happened. There was a sudden slamming sound from the direction of the stateroom door! I jumped in my seat, and instinctively looked up."
"Professor Phillips had returned from breakfast."
" 'Something I can help you with, Gustave?' "
"Yes, Herr Professor. You can tell me why you lied to us. About almost everything."
"He folded his arms, and leaned back against the door."
" 'Why? Because, among other things, that derelict dragon ship out there went down carrying...the long-lost Golden Dagger-Axe of Hsia Jie!' "
"I could not help gasping when he uttered that last part."
"What little I knew of ancient Chinese history I had learned, at Leipzig, from Professor Phillips, himself. That is how I knew that the Hsia Dynasty had allegedly preceded the much-more verifiable Shang Dynasty. That Emperor Hsia Jie, the last of that line, was said to have been a tyrant. And, that his much-illustrated symbol of power--a primitive form of halberd called a 'dagger-axe' or 'ji,' with an image of the Chinese war god Chi Yue carved on top of the axe head--had purportedly been made of solid gold."
" 'The Hsia Jie-ji truly exists?' "
"He nodded: 'I've spent nineteen of the last twenty years slowly gathering proof of it. Which is how I've learned the following. It was initially confiscated from its hiding place, in India, by Alexander the Great. It was later brought to Rome, by Julius Caesar, and stored in the Temple of Lua.* It was stolen from there, during the chaos of Nero's Fire, and smuggled to the island of Gorgona, where it was buried on the future construction site of a Benedictine abbey.' "
" 'That abbey was sacked and burned, in the sixth century A.D., by Saracen pirates from Morocco. Four hundred years later, it was stolen from them by Danish Vikings. One of whose descendants (a Norman Knight Templar) reportedly died in action, wielding it against the Mongolian invaders of Poland in the thirteenth century!' "
" 'After that, it spent the next two hundred years passing through the hands of the Templars, the Carthusians, the Maronites in Syria, and--finally--the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes.' "
"That immediately stirred a recollection in my mind."
" 'The Black Cross Gaijin,' I half-whispered.' "
"Professor Phillips nodded: 'Some of the captured documents I translated for G-2, during the World War, turned out to be German copies of French military records...dating back to the Franco-Prussian War! They mentioned certain church records being seized by Napoleon Bonaparte's forces during the French occupation of Malta in 1798. I got a look at the originals, in Malta, a month after the Armistice was signed. And, they mentioned Sir Alan Fitzmaurice D'Angleterre as the Knight Hospitaller chosen to _return_ the Hsia Jie-ji to India."
" 'Return it?' I echoed, incredulously."
"He nodded again: 'You see, by the fifteenth century, the Golden Dagger-Axe had come to be regarded as an _unholy_ relic. And, the only way to nullify the curse on it was to return it from whence it came. So, Sir Alan was given that mission. Which he attempted to carry out by posing as a Mercedarian, out to exchange himself for some hostage Nasrani Christians. But, obviously, those plans were thwarted by Ishimura, who was Zahir Khan's inside man aboard Zheng's treasure ship.' "
" 'That is all very fascinating, Herr Professor,' I declared: 'But, you have still not answered my original question. So, I shall rephrase it. Why were you not up front about all this from the start? Especially, with me?' "
"Before he could reply, there were several screams from the port bow of the ship. Followed by the unmistakable sound...of gunshots!"
tbc
Giantess World
