Pompeii

Torquatus was trying to row them out from beneath it – and abruptly he succeeded. There was a final lash of missiles and they burst back out into the sunshine.
    He heard Pliny coughing and opened his eyes to see the admiral standing, brushing the debris from the folds of his toga. He had held on to a handful of stones and as he flopped back into his chair he examined them in his palm. All along the length of the ship, men were shaking their clothes and feeling their flesh for cuts. The Minerva was still steering directly towards Herculaneum, now less than a mile distant and clearly visible, but the wind was getting up, and the sea with it, the helmsman straining to keep them to their course as the waves crashed against the left side of the ship.
    'Encounter with the manifestation,' said Pliny, calmly. He stopped to wipe his face on his sleeve and coughed again. 'Are you taking this down? What time is it?'
    Alexion tipped the stones from his papers and blew away the dust. He leaned towards the clock. 'The mechanism is broken, admiral.' His voice was trembling. He was almost in tears.
    'Well, no matter. Let's say the eleventh hour.' Pliny held up one of the stones and peered at it closely. 'The material is a frothy, bubbled pumice. Greyish-white. As light as ash, which falls in fragments no larger than a man's thumb.' He paused, and added gently: 'Take up your pen, Alexion. If there's one thing I can't abide it's cowardice.'
    The secretary's hand was shaking. It was hard for him to write as the liburnian pitched and rolled. His pen slipped across the surface of the papyri in an illegible scrawl. The admiral's chair slid across the deck and Attilius grabbed it. He said, 'You ought to move below deck,' as Torquatus stumbled towards them, bare-headed.
    'Take my helmet, admiral.'
    'Thank you, captain, but this old skull of mine provides quite adequate protection.'
    'Admiral – I beg you – this wind will run us straight into the storm – we must turn back!'
    Pliny ignored him. 'The pumice is less like rock, than airy fragments of a frozen cloud.' He craned his neck to stare over the side of the ship. 'It floats on the surface of the sea like lumps of ice. Do you see? Extraordinary!'
    Attilius had not noticed it before. The water was covered in a carpet of stone. The oars brushed it aside with every stroke but more floated in immediately to replace it. Torquatus ran to the low wall of the deck. They were surrounded.
    A wave of pumice broke over the front of the ship.
    'Admiral –'
    'Fortune favours the brave, Torquatus. Steer towards the shore!'
    For a short while longer they managed to plough on, but the pace of the oars was weakening, defeated not by the wind or the waves but by the clogging weight of pumice on the water. It deepened as they neared the coast, two or three feet thick – a broad expanse of rustling dry surf. The blades of the oars flailed helplessly across it, unable to bring any pressure to bear, and the ship began to drift with the wind towards the waterfall of rock. The Villa Calpurnia was tantalisingly close. Attilius recognised the spot where he had stood with Rectina. He could see figures running along the shore, the piles of books, the fluttering white robes of the Epicurean philosophers.
    Pliny had stopped dictating and, with Attilius's assistance, had pulled himself up on to his feet. All around the timber was creaking as the pressure of the pumice squeezed the hull. The engineer felt him sag slightly as, for the first time, he seemed to appreciate that they were defeated. He stretched out his hand towards the shore. 'Rectina,' he murmured.
    The rest of the fleet was beginning to scatter, the V-formation disintegrating as the ships battled to save themselves. And then it was dusk again and the familiar thunder of pumice hammering drowned out every other sound. Torquatus shouted, 'We've lost control of the ship! Everybody – below decks. Engineer – help me lift him down from here.'
    'My records!' protested Pliny.
    'Alexion has your records, admiral.' Attilius had him by one arm and the captain by the other. He was immensely heavy. He stumbled on the last step and nearly fell full-length but they managed to retrieve him and lugged him along the deck towards the open trapdoor that led down to the rowing stations as the air turned to rock. 'Make way for the admiral!' panted Torquatus and then they almost threw him down the ladder. Alexion went next with the precious papers, treading on the