of doubt crossed her face, but suddenly she seized her cedarn rod and
smote his side, crying, "Get you to the stye, and lie there in filth
with your companions."
Ulysses drew his great sword, and held it over her with menacing eyes.
She drooped to him, a very woman! and clung round him, weeping, and he
could feel her warm heart beating, beating close to his. Her lovely
hair fell around her in a golden cloud, and tears streamed down her
cheeks as she swore by the gods on the Holy Hill never to harm him.
And looking on her sinful loveliness the brain of Ulysses burned for
her, and he took her lithe body in his strong arms and pressed the
blossom of her lips to his. Her arms stole round him, and she called
him lord and king.
Then with a soft smile she led him to the courtyard where the swine
lay sleeping in the sun. When the foul beasts saw Ulysses they set up
a horrid chorus of grunting, and he raged to see his valiant friends
so degraded. But clinging to him, the goddess raised her hand, and the
swine vanished, and the goodly mariners stood up among the straw, more
straight and tall than before, with all the marks of hardship and
travel smoothed from their faces.
That night the other mariners came up from the shore, guided by
Ulysses. And the amber lamps flared in the hall, and all night till
daybreak they made a great feast. They sang in praise of love and
wine, and Circe sat at the right hand of the King of Ithaca.
When the rosy dawn rushed up the sky, the goddess rose.
The lamps paled in the fresh new light, and the feast was over.
The mariners lay in sleep about the board, and the purple wine was
spilt about them.
Only the Goddess and the Hero were awake.
Then she said, "Lord and love, the night is over. The sun climbs the
sky, the woodlands awake. But let us go into my scented chamber, my
purple chamber where the day never comes. There will we lie in love
and sleep and forget the day."
She led him by the hand over the cool marble floor. The purple
curtains fell behind them with a soft noise of falling. All sound was
hushed in the courts of the palace, and the whole house was still.
THE THIRD EPISODE
HOW ULYSSES WALKED IN HELL, AND OF THE ADVENTURE OF THE SIRENS AND
SCYLLA
The King of Ithaca stood all alone on a gloomy barren shore, spear in
hand. The sky lowered black overhead, and from the vast yawning hole
in the terrible cliff which rose up before him he seemed to hear
strange wailings and faint cries coming, so it seemed, from a great
distance.
Had he at last broken away from the loving arms of Circe for this
horror? Stung once more by the latent manhood in his blood, he had
roused his energies and left the enchanted island to set out once more
upon the weary quest for home. He had bade the goddess farewell and
sailed away from the island of sweet lust to seek a ghostly counsellor
and to drink deep at that fountain of wisdom which was once the glory
of Thebes.
When Circe had bade him, if he would indeed get back to Ithaca and
leave her arms, seek the dead Tiresias in the place of the dead it had
seemed an easy thing.
What were pale ghosts to a warrior of Troyland and the vanquisher of
Polyphemus? If the old seer alone could tell him how to conquer the
wrath of Poseidon and win to his wife's arms once more, should he not
go with a will?
[Illustration: THEN HE WAS, IN AN INSTANT MOMENT, AWARE OF A
MORE THAN MORTAL PRESENCE.
_Page 49._]
And he had set out with his crew, and the magic wind which Circe gave
them had brought them hither over grey sad seas, while they had
touched nor oars nor helm.
And now Ulysses went slowly up to the fissure in the rock, but a long
solitary cry made him reel back trembling as his brave heart had never
done before.
Then he was, in an instant moment, aware of a more than mortal
presence. Into that dread place came the awful majesty of the Queen of
Heaven, and he fell to the ground before Athene.
The full flowing river of her speech came down upon him.
"If thou wouldst hold thy wife once more, Ulysses, and see thy rocky
western home, then must thou dare this peril. None can help thee now
save thou thyself. So it is decreed by the gods. If so be it that thy
courage fails thee now then wilt thou be a wanderer for ever."
"Lady of Heaven," he said, "I dare not go. Oh, anything but that."
"Penelope!" she murmured sweetly.
"I cannot face the dead."
"Ithaca."
"Oh, listen to those wailings in the abyss!"
"Thy father Laertes weeps yet for the wanderer."
"The dead! The dead are waiting there!"
"Men call thee Ulysses!" said the goddess, and at that word something
moved within him and his limbs began to stiffen, and once more the
hero felt the spear-shank hard and cold within his grasp.
He raised his face, and there was once more the old proud light upon
it. Athene had gone, and big with his new resolve he stepped towards
the blackness.
A voice came to him, thin, and far down.
"Ulysses! Ulysses! son of Laertes, I wait to guide thee. Hermes, son
of Zeus, is with thee. Take courage in both hands and come."
The king moved forward, and the dark swallowed him up. He stumbled
along a descending rock-strewn pathway. In the increasing gloom it
seemed to him that he was on the side of a steep hill. A moaning wind
encircled him. Now and again a slight gleam was visible from the
golden helmet of the god.
Far far down he saw the leaden livid river of death, and on the sullen
tide floated the stately funeral barge of Charon, the ferryman of the
dead.
The wind grew even more mournful and sad as they trod the meadows of
asphodel and the grey lilies of the underworld towards the marge of
Styx.
Then the god called out aloud to the ferryman. As his voice echoed
over the water, the dusky night became full of the sound of wings, and
dark shapes filled the air. The spirits of the dead flapped round them
in continual movement.
The ghosts began to call and cry to the living hero. Some had little
squeaky voices like bats, others made a louder and more hollow sound.
The howlings of the formless increased all round Ulysses.
The inarticulate found utterance in the indefinite.
The waves of weird and hopeless voices rose, fell, undulated, now loud
and shrill, now sobbing into silence. Little eager whispers filled the
hero's ear.
And to the terror of these great murmurs were added the sight of
superhuman outlines, which melted away in the gloom almost as they
appeared. Alecto and Tisiphone, the Furies, circled round Ulysses, and
Megeara flew through the dark to her sisters.
A cold hand seemed placed upon the hero's soul. Cries from precipice
to precipice, from air to water, went on unceasingly--the melancholy
vociferations of the lost!
The loquacity of Hell!
And in deadly fear, but resolute still, Ulysses struggled on through
this great twilight world, open on all sides. As he walked on, the
flying outlaws of the tomb seemed to be swarming over him and pressing
him to the ground. He struggled beneath the weight of lost souls, but
his whirling arms struck nothing but the empty air.
Fresh clouds of spirits pricked the twilight, increased in size,
amalgamated, thickened, and hurried towards him, crying.
They came to the brink of the river. Before them, as they looked out
over the water, was no horizon, but an opaque lividity like a wan,
moving precipice, a cliff of the night.
Then the old man Charon bowed to the commands of the gods and embarked
them on his barge. He gazed on Ulysses with his keen wicked eyes, and
his long white beard wagged in hideous mockery at this mortal among
the dead.
The thin pole dipped in and out of the water, and the drops which fell
from it were the colour of leaden bullets, for there is no life in the
water of Styx.
Ulysses knelt in the bottom of the boat and shut out Hell from his
eyes with his hand. He prayed to Athene for help to endure, and that
he might have an answer from the old Seer Tiresias that would lead him
safely home at last.
And now the other bank of the river began to loom up before them and
the air began to be silent.
On the bank, as it seemed to welcome them, stood a tall old man with a
golden sceptre in his hand. His face was full of an unutterable
sadness, and his eyes were horny and dim with blindness. But his magic
staff conducted him safely to the river brink, and in a high shivering
voice he hailed Ulysses.
"Why hast thou come here, O wise one, leaving the happy daylight for
this cheerless shore? Noble son of Laertes, I know thy quest, and thus
make answer. Father Zeus gave me power, which still remains, and I,
an old blind ghost, can see into the future even on the shores of
Styx. Thou seekest to know if thou wilt ever catch thy wife in thy
strong arms once more, and tread the well-beloved fields of Ithaca.
The mighty god of the sea, Poseidon, is wroth with thee and a
malevolent god. For even now his son Polyphemus stumbles a bruised and
sightless way among his native hills. But yet you may return after
long woes and heavy toil. But one thing bear well in mind, O king,
else wilt thou suffer unbelievable things. When thy ship touches at
the Island Thrinacia, great herds of cattle will be feeding there on
the fresh sweet grass which grows in the goodly upper world. These be
the beeves and steers of the divine Helios, the Sun-God, and must be
inviolate to men. But if one sacred beast is slain, then thy ship and
all thy company will perish.
"Perchance thou thyself may win Ithaca forlorn, and to find others in
thy place, but that I know not. I have spoken."
[Illustration: THEY CAME TO THE BRINK OF THE RIVER.
_Page 52._]
Then with a long melancholy cry the figure vanished into the dark.
But in its place came a shadowy form which made the heart of the hero
leap and beat, so it seemed all Hades was filled with the tumult.
His mother Anticlea stood before him.
Stretching out her cold, thin hands she spoke.
"My boy that I suckled, why hast thou come into Hades not yet being
dead, for I see that the flesh is still warm upon thee for which I
drank to Zeus?"
"Mother of mine, I sought Tiresias the Theban prophet. I have not
even yet won Ithaca nor seen the dear ones there. A god is against me.
So I came through the spirits of the unburied, and over the dark river
to seek counsel of the seer. Knowest thou in this beyond-earth if the
beloved Penelope still holds me in her heart? or is she perhaps here
with thee, lost to the sunlight?"
The mother of Ulysses answered, "Penelope is as faithful and true as
on thy wedding day, but she is in a peril, so haste ye home. And now
farewell." Where Ulysses had seen his mother, was but a little grey
vapour which swayed and vanished.
Then the hero called roughly to Charon, and bade him take the pole and
urge the barge back to the starting-place. This time, though the
multitude of the dead circled over him with cries, begging his help to
take them out of Hades, he felt no fear, for his mind was burning with
other thoughts.
He mounted the long cliff side, and at last in the distance saw a
faint gleam of light stealing down towards him. In the pale gleam the
figure of Hermes was manifest for a moment flitting up to the day
before him.
The cries grew fainter and more faint. The light changed from grey to
primrose, from primrose to yellow. The little star which was the mouth
of the cave became a sun and then a world, and the yellow turned into
the white hot sunshine as Hell faded utterly away.
On the beach the little blue waves sang on the yellow sand. The black
divers rose lazily on the swell, and the shields round the prow of the
ship shone like white fire.
* * * * *
Once more the vessel of heroes swam over the seas. And now there was
another quality in the wind for them, and the world was a new world.
Their leader had told them that if they obeyed his commands they would
win home once more. The news he had brought back from Hades made them
sturdy and strong of heart, and they vowed that in all things they
would trust in the king who had dared the perils of the underworld.
Their thoughts turned with a lover's thirst to images of their native
land, tranquil skies, the old-remembered meadows, cool brooks, and
eternal peace after their long wandering.
Hope beat high in the heart of Ulysses also. The grey nightmare of
Hell was over and in the past, one more memory when in his own halls
he would weave his saga.
He had been near to the awful thing Death.
He had found that after all it was only Death.
The ship with a fair wind ran up a lane of light into the setting sun,
and when at length the moon had risen and silvered all the sea,
Ulysses called the men round him.
"Comrades," he said, "with the dawn, if I have kept the reckoning
aright, we shall come to the island where the Sirens dwell. Now the
Lady Circe warned me against the Sirens, the singers who charm all men
with their song. He who listens to Parthenope, Ligeia and Leucosia
must stay with them for ever, listening spellbound to the song until
he dies. And the island is covered with the bones of dead men. To
listen is to die. But I wish to hear the voices and to escape the
enchantment, and so obey my commands. When we near the island do you
all close your ears with wax so that no sound can reach your brains.
And take a stout rope and bind me to the mast so that I can in no wise
loose myself. And howsoever I may order or entreat you to let me go to
the Sirens, if their magic song enchants me, take no heed, but row
steadily onwards until the island is far astern. Then only may you set
me free."
As dawn came, a faint grey line upon the horizon showed itself on the
starboard bow. At the sight, with some laughter, for it was difficult
to believe in the perils of sweet music!--even for men who had seen
the wonders that they had seen--the men began to press yellow wax from
the honeycomb into each other's ears.
Then when no one among them could hear the flapping of the sail or the
voice of the sea, nor could tell the meaning of his neighbour's voice,
they went up to Ulysses, and with many light-hearted jests bound him
to the mast, and because his strength was well known to them they
reeved the rope with a treble hitch. No living man could have escaped
from such bonds.
As sailors will, they treated the whole thing as a huge jest, making a
mock mutiny of it as they bound the captain. Ulysses could not help
smiling at their mirth.
After such wise precaution he had no fear, and in his heart of hearts
he did not believe that the song of the Sirens would affect him much,
though he followed the advice of Circe and made himself a prisoner.
But a fierce curiosity possessed him. He cursed the slowness of the
wind, for, as they bound him, the island was still a low line without
colour on the water, and called out to the men to row faster,
forgetting that they could not hear him.
Slowly the grey island became purple, then brown, and at last showed
itself a green, low, pleasant land, a place of meadows.
The wind was behind them, and until they came quite close under the
lee of the island Ulysses could hear no voices but those of the wind
and waves. Then faintly at first, but rapidly becoming more sonorous
and sweet, he heard the magic voices which were to ring in his ears in
all his after life.
No words of his at any time could express the loveliness of those
voices, of the unutterable sweetness of it, nothing.
The strains floated over the still sea like harps of heaven.
All that man had known or desired in life, all the emotions which had
stirred the human heart, were blended in those magic voices. The world
had nothing more to give; here, here at last, was the absolute
fulfilment of beauty.
Louder and more piercingly sweet, as the unconscious sailors bent to
the oars in earnest, and the sweat ran down their bare brown backs.
"Whither away, whither away, whither away? Fly no more.
Whither away from the high green field, and the happy
blossoming shore?
Day and night to the billow the fountain calls:
Down shower the gambolling waterfalls
From wandering over the lea."
The face of Ulysses grew wan and grey as the ship passed a projecting
point of rock. On the smooth green turf the three singers were
standing. In face and form they were sweet and lovely girls.
Naked to the waist, they wore long flowing draperies below, and as
they sung the rosy bosoms rose and fell with the music, and the lucid
throats rippled with song.
"Mariner, mariner, furl your sails,
For here are blissful downs and dales,
And merrily, merrily carol the gales,
And the spangle dances in bight and bay,
And the rainbow forms and flies on the land
Over the islands free;
And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand;
Hither, come hither and see."
And still the ship went on, but more slowly, as it were some force
were at work deadening the arms of the rowers.
Then the shrill loveliness fired the hero's blood, and he knew that he
must go to the three lovely singers on the strand. Earth held nothing
better than this--to lie for ever with that music in his ears.
"Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner, fly no more."[1]
[1] These few lines of the Sirens' song have been taken from
Lord Tennyson's beautiful poem "The Sea Fairies."
Then, as if drawn by the long cadenced notes as by cords, Ulysses
gathered up his mighty strength and strove with his bonds.
But the sailors had done their work too well, and the rope only cut
deeply into the flesh.
The white arms were stretched out to him in supplication, the song
grew more full of unearthly beauty than before--and the ship was
slowly passing by.
Ulysses called out to the crew in an agony of command and entreaty.
One of the men happened to look up and saw his face. He grinned,
nudged his companion, and turned away.
The song grew fainter, the three tall figures dwindled. The face of
Ulysses grew ashen, and when at length they came to him and cut the
ropes he said no word.
He went alone to the prow of the vessel and looked out over the fair
sun-bathed sea, and there were tears in his eyes, and his mouth was
softer and more tremulous than it was wont to be.
So they came away from Parthenope, Ligeia and Leucosia, the Sirens.
* * * * *
The next day Ulysses called the crew together as before and told them
of the new peril that awaited them. For the wise Circe had warned him
that after the island of the Sirens he must needs encounter the
terrible Scylla, for the ship must pass by her lair on its passage
towards Home.
But Ulysses knew that it was impossible to fight the monster, and that
some of the crew were fated to die, but in his wisdom he did not tell
them that.
He finished his speech as follows:--"And so, my friends, the gods
ordain that we must face Scylla, and the whirlpool Charybdis. There is
no other way. But courage! always have courage. I who brought you safe
from out of the cave of the Cyclops will bring you safe from this
also. And so onward and have stout hearts."
It was a misty day, and everything was shadowy and faint, but the ship
moved slowly along a sheer wall of black cliff which towered up above
them for a thousand feet or more. The top was lost in the mist. It was
a lowering, frightful place.
One of the sailors gave a shout which echoed back to them in mournful
mockery through the mist.
They rowed on steadily, hugging the cliff. Ulysses stood in the prow
of the boat. He had put on armour and took two spears in his hand.
His eyes searched the face of the cliff till they ached from the
minute scrutiny.
This waiting for the inevitable was terribly unnerving. Ulysses
himself, knowing that some must die, was heavy and sad at heart as
they glided along the side of the cliff.
To the left the great whirlpool seethed and boiled, its outermost
convolution scarce a bow-shot away. When it threw up the water the
spray dashed up a hundred feet and fell in showers over the sailors,
and as the water ran back in the ebb Ulysses could see, far down the
black and spinning sides, to where the old witch Charybdis dwelt on
the dark sand of the sea bottom.
Suddenly the end came. A loud barking and howling startled them all so
that each man paused on his oar. A pack of hounds were unkenneled, so
it seemed, somewhere on the cliff face in the mist.
Then a sickly musky smell enveloped them, so foul and stale that they
coughed and spat even as their blood ran cold with fear.
Through the curtain of mist, which had suddenly grown very thick, six
objects loomed right over the boat.
Six long tentacles swayed and quivered over the sailors, and at the
end of each was a grinning head set with cruel fangs and a little red
eager tongue that flickered in and out.
For a moment the heads hung poised, and then each sought and found its
victim.
Six sailors were slowly drawn out of the boat, shrieking the name of
Ulysses for the last time in their death agony. And all the time the
barking of the hounds in the obscene womb of the monster went on
unceasingly.
Then the fury of flight came upon them. With bursting brains and red
fire before their eyes they laboured at the great oars until the wood
bent and shook and the ship leaped forward like a driven horse.
And they left the strait of death and came out of the mist into a wide
sunlit sea. But still a sound of distant barking came down the wind.
So Scylla took her horrid toll of heroes.
But Ulysses called them to prayer and lamentation for the dead.
THE FOURTH EPISODE
HOW ULYSSES LOST HIS MERRY MEN AND CAME A WAIF TO CALYPSO WITH THE
SHINING HAIR
The crew sat round a fire of driftwood.
There was shelter where they sat, in a natural alcove of rock, but
outside the great winds thundered and the wrack flew before the storm
and a mighty unceasing roar filled the air.
The faces of all the sailors wore a sullen look. Hunger had begun to
suck the colour from their cheeks, their eyes were prominent and
strained, their movements without energy or vigour.
A rude shelter of sailcloth and various _débris_ that was scattered
about seemed to show that for some time, at least, they had made their
home in this place where the winds did not come.
Ulysses was not among them. They were talking in low, discontented
tones among themselves.
"A whole month," said Eurylochus, "a whole month have we been sea
bound in this accursed island. I am sick of islands!"
"Never have we put to shore without some evil thing befalling," said
another. "Oh, for Ithaca!"
"I doubt we shall ever see Ithaca again," said a third. "We will be
wanderers till we die; that is what I think. And this place is like to
be the grave of all of us. I never knew a wind so furious to blow so
long. We should sink in an hour did we but put out."
"There is only food for one day more, and that sparse," said
Eurylochus. "For my part, my limbs are heavy as brass and the strength
is all gone from me. I could not move an oar now. Man needs meat and
wine or the fires of hunger burn the sinews and dry the blood. Brown
meat and red wine! I could fill my belly till the skin cracked!"
"The rich brown meat, mate! Dost mind the soft kids on Circe's island?
By Zeus, I can taste them now!"
"Ay and the fat cows, roast till the blood ran out of them like liquid
life."
"I can even smell the smell of the roasting meat now. A welcome smell
to a hungry man."
"Would that we had never left Circe. 'Twas a kind queen, meet for our
master! but her girls were kindly in love also."
"To Hades with the girls!" said Eurylochus. "Thy talk of meat makes me
heave with desire."
He looked round cautiously before he continued.
"Friends," he said in a low, rapid whisper, "tell me, are ye purposing
to starve in the midst of plenty? Saw ye ever such fat oxen and cows
as graze in the pastures above?"
"Never did I see such cattle," answered another hungry wight. "Gods!
they would make a feast for kings."
"And yet pain and sickness is all over us, and we lust for food till
we know not what we do!"
"Captain's orders!"
"Ulysses has lost his cunning for sure, and hunger has turned his
brain. He is no more the brave leader of old. He goes wandering alone
among the rocks and sleeps all day. And his eye is clouded and courage
has left his voice. Friends, shall we die thus? No man of ye loveth
Ulysses better than I love him. Is he not my kinsman indeed? He
brought us from the Cyclops' cave and dared the perils of Hell. All
this I know and say before you now. But the king is distraught and
moody. He does not know what he is doing. He would be the first to
join us with the merry and grateful word were he to come back and find
the good red beef roasting on the fire and smell the savoury smoke."
"Ay, captain was never one set against a feast! He loves good cheer,
as becomes a proper fighting man."