He threw himself into his business just as he had thrown himself into his studies, and for years all his energies were concentrated to one end, that of making money. Once, when Memel was burned down, he gave himself up as ruined. His fortune was locked up in a cargo of indigo at the docks, and all the dock warehouses were a smoking mass. Hours later he learned that as the stone warehouses were choked so full of goods, his indigo had been stored in a wooden shed some distance away, and the direction of the wind had saved the shed. It was an ill wind for Memel, but it trebled Schliemann’s fortune. In ten short years his industry and exceptional ability, coupled with the Crimean War, brought him the fortune he had planned. He, a young man of thirty-five, was free to order his life as he chose. He gave himself up wholeheartedly to learning the tongue of his Greek heroes, and in six weeks Greek was no longer an unknown language to him. Within three months he was reading his beloved Homer in the original tongue. Schliemann, who had the phenomenal ability to learn a language in six weeks, wandered far over the world, acquiring languages as souvenirs of the lands he visited, just as modern travellers pick up souvenirs in shops. But in the end his travels brought him to Greece. Where other people regarded the songs of Homer as mere legends, Schliemann never doubted their basic truth. While many wondered whether Troy ever existed at all, Schliemann in his innermost heart knew that Troy had been a real city. The wonderful work of Layard fired his imagination, and gradually the idea formed in his mind that if Layard had succeeded in digging up the lost city of Nineveh he himself might find Troy with a spade. In 1870, filled with the knowledge of years of study, he came to the desolate Hill of Hissarlik standing on the Plain of Troy, a short distance from the Dardanelles. He climbed the hill, feeling sure that beneath his feet were buried the remains of the city of his heroes. Scholars laughed at his enthusiasm, ridiculed the idea that Hissarlik could possibly have been Troy. If Troy ever existed, the one thing certain, they averred, was that it could not possibly have been at Hissarlik. To most people Troy was merely a myth, a city of the gods created by Homer himself. Countering the ridicule with cold logic, Schliemann decided to set all doubts at rest by the test of excavation. For £300 he bought the greater part of the site from the Turkish owners and, after many vexatious delays, began digging into the side of the mighty hill in 1871. He was desperately keen to clear up the mystery of Troy. He set his labourers to work, cutting the secret out of the heart of the hill. Men, at Schliemann’s bidding, began to run away with the hill of Hissarlik in wheelbarrows.