THE AMAZON
The country of the Amazonian women ran in deep mountain gorges back from
the sea to a tableland and certain forested peaks. At the foot of the
gorge spread salt meadows, flat and green, overbreathed by the fragrant
sea wind. Here was capital pasturage, and here on a day came down from
the plateau a dozen mounted women driving before them flock and herd.
The day was warm, the meadows bright. These gave to shining sands, the
sands to sapphire sea. Behind the level green sprang the wood. Lowing
and bleating, cattle and sheep came to the grass. The drovers saw all
disposed, then, hot and tired with much work from dawn till noon,
dismounted, fastened their horses in the wood and went down to the sea.
Having bathed, with laughter and play, they stretched themselves upon
the sand and opened a great wallet that held bread and dried meat, and
untied the mouth of a wine skin.
Their town was built three leagues away, in a cup of the mountain
excellently guarded by grey crags. They thought that it had always been
there, though indeed the old wise women said no. They said that their
mothers had told them that their mothers’ mothers had heard of a time
when there was a battle at the edge of the world, and that then fifty
women, fleeing, had climbed to these mountains and here built a town and
kept ancient customs. These were the ancestresses and divine! However
that might be, here was now the town and the people. A queen ruled
them. On certain ritual days of the year they had intercourse with men
of two neighbouring nations. Of the children born they kept the girls,
but when the boys had seen twelve summers they sent these to the father
nation. Year by year their ways of life, at first not so strange, grew
to seem strange and stranger yet to the peoples who heard of them and
elaborated and legended what they heard. To themselves it was old
nature, very right and proper, dear, familiar life!
The drovers lying upon the sand, between the blue sea and the salt
meadow, were all on the younger side of prime. Among them was Lindane,
the Queen’s daughter. The sea-wind caressed them, they heard the
contented voices and movements of the grazing beasts, they had bread and
red wine and sweet rest. When they had eaten they posted two watchers,
and the rest closed their eyes.
To the left of where they lay dipped into the sea a hook of land, a
long, crooked finger of Mother Earth. The watchers looked inland toward
the wealth in the meadows, the horses fastened in the wood. The world
hereabouts went little to sea; the sea made no danger save to small
fishing craft in rough weather. The watchers never saw until too late
the long, dark boat, fifty-oared, with sails beside, with carven prow,
that stole around the crooked finger.... The watchers heard the sails
when they rattled down, and sharply turned to see the prow touch the
sand and the men leap forth--and all so close the eyes might be seen!
“Awake! Awake!” cried the watchers and snatched bow and quiver. The ten
sprang up, seized weapons; all raced for the wood and those tied steeds.
Close after them, with shouts, came the sea-rovers.
There were fifty and five strong young men, strong and untamed as
eagles, swoopers from islands below the horizon. The chief was Sandanis.
Elsewhere upon the far-stretching mainland coast they had lifted spoil
in their talons, robbing towns that spoke a dialect akin to their own.
The long boat held wrought gold and brass, rich woven goods, strange
weapons, objects of value. Here upon this strand was stopping only to
fill the water casks. But when they saw the sleeping forms the
sea-eagles again set beak and talon.
At first they did not know the twelve for women, for they were not
habited like the women of the islands or of any country that the
sea-rovers knew, and they were tall and deeply bronzed, and they showed
a practised hand with javelin and with bow and arrow. They ran like
deer, and the sea-rovers ran at their heels. They menaced the pursuit as
they ran, then, reaching the wood, plunged past tree and swinging vines
to the tethered horses. They waited not to untie, but each stripping
knife from sheath, severed the bridle and sprang to steed. One further
minute and they might have shown clean heels, won away to their mountain
fastness. But the fifty were on them, keen as winter wolves,
knife-armed, javelin-armed, knowing their quarry now for the famed
women! A hundred hands caught at bridle and mane, or used knife or flung
javelin against the horses. Of these several sank to earth, others,
rearing, beat with their hooves at the foe. One only escaped, making
with its rider at a furious gallop for the trail, the upward-running
gorge and the crag-guarded town.
Yet mounted or with foot upon the ground, the remaining Amazons fought
for life and freedom. They fought with knife and shortened javelin,
being unable to use bow and arrow in the close conflict. They fought
strongly, with skill, with desperation and tenacious courage. Lives were
lost from among the sea-rovers, bitter wounds were given. But the
sea-rovers were fifty and they who had brought the cattle to the salt
meadows were twelve. And one was gone and two were slain and two had
death hurts. The seven that were left were overpowered, dragged to earth
and bound with thongs and cords.
Lindane, the Queen’s daughter, fought with Sandanis, the king of the
sea-rovers, a second strong man giving him needed help. It took the two
to bind her. Sandanis’s hands upon her wrists, the other’s against her
shoulders, they forced her down the sands, they lifted and flung her
over the boat side. All the seven were brought to the boat and guarded
there while the sea-rovers gathered wood and burned their dead.
The sea-rovers drew out to no great length the details of that rite. In
their minds was a humming thought of the fled Amazon and of possible
rescue. Kindling the pyre, they left it blazing there, at the edge of
the wood. A forewind had sprung up and they took advantage. Making sail
in haste, they left behind the golden sands and the salt meadows and the
dark, mounting forests of that land.
The sun went down, the moon came up. The women yet lay where they had
been flung. Then Lindane rose to her knees, and with her two or three of
the more resilient sort. They looked astern, and by the light of the
great full moon saw, sinking from them, their country-shore and all it
held of home and friends. Lindane, straining at her bonds, broke them,
and with her doubled hands struck Sandanis that was nearest to her.
Sandanis, thinking himself conqueror, laughed. He seized the Amazon’s
wrists, struggled with her, and nodded to his helper to wrap the thong
about her arms. Enmeshed again, she turned her head and prayed to the
sea.
When the moon was an hour high they came to an islet known to be
desolate, a mere hand’s breadth of waste sand and rock, blanched by the
moon. The favourable wind had fallen, and the rowers wished not to row
through this night. They pushed prow upon the shelving sand, they left
the boat and took with them those captured women. They had store of meat
and wine. They ate and drank, sitting in the moonlight upon the sand,
above the murmuring sea, and they set food and drink before their
captives. Their tongue and the women’s tongue had one origin. Victor and
vanquished understood much of each other’s speech. “Eat, drink!” said
the sea-rovers. “Our country is going to be your country.” When they
themselves had finished their meal, then, with noise and laughter, they
cast lots. The moon shone very brightly, a soft daylight seemed to visit
the place.
Sandanis was the island king. He cast no lot, but made his choice at
once, and her he chose was for the king alone. “I take the flame-top,”
he said.
The king’s comrades laughed and clamoured. “O Sandanis, she will turn
thee red too! She is demon!”
“I am her demon bridegroom,” said Sandanis with answering laughter. “I
have come from afar to her!”
The moon climbed to her meridian, and all the islet was bathed in light.
It was light upon the beach where life lay, shaped into men and women;
it was light where the sea-rovers’ king held between his arms Lindane
whom he had bound. The dawn when it came hardly made it seem more light.
The dawn reddened, burned scarlet in sea and in sky. The wide-winged
birds sailed and circled and with harsh voices uttered their cry to the
morning. The sun sprang out of the sea, and he was red and strong.
Sandanis and his companions once more bestowed those captive women in
the boat and pushing from the desolate isle, themselves leaped in and
lifted oars. The favourable wind sprang forth again; they hoisted sails
and steered for the island that they called home.
Five days they sailed or rowed as the wind sent them on or failed them.
The second night Lindane’s teeth met in Sandanis’s shoulder. In return
he struck her so mighty a blow that she lay stunned, the moonlight
blanching her backward-drawn face. Sandanis, regarding her, felt he knew
not what of ruth. He bathed his own wound with wine and he forced wine
between the Amazon’s lips. She stirred, opened her eyes and raised
herself upon her hand. “Flame-top!” he said, “where did you learn to
bite so hard?”
But “Let me go!” was all her answer. “Let me go!” and the ruth passed
for that time from his heart.
When the sixth morning broke it showed the island. The sea-rovers broke
into a chant of rejoicing for home, but the women they had rapt away
looked on a picture of their own home, their home that the morning did
not show.
Limestone cliffs had the island with woods climbing to mountain
pastures, and above these a rounded mountain-top. Many springs it had,
and sunny glades, and deep ravines where the shade was black. Huge
spreading trees it had, and blossomy meads and hillsides planted with
the vine, and fields of waving grain. It owned sheep and goats and oxen,
horses and herds of swine, fed by the each-year-renewed rain of
beech-nut and acorn. Coming to the human, herdsmen were there,
shepherds and shepherdesses, and tillers of the earth, both men and
women. Artisans also the island held, though not so many of these. But
carpenter, mason, and smith were there, shipwright and bowyer and others
beside. And old prowess in such lines and now old custom had given these
and like crafts to men. Certain crafts leaned to women and women were
traders-in-little. Household offices fell to women, and women ground at
the mills, and all the garments, whether for use or ornament that the
people wore, were of their weaving and fashioning, and the food they
prepared and cooked, and in their hands was the cleanliness of all, and
they kept alight the fires. Also they bore and long suckled the
children, and gave them their early training.
Above the mass of the island population, men and women, bond and free,
stood in self-seized and self-confirmed rank the warlike sort, the
fillers of long boats, the sea-eagles swooping upon other islands and
the shadowy mainland, traders-in-great on occasion, raptors of goods and
of lives when that better suited. Out of this body of war men, young and
in prime and old, had risen by degrees the elder-wise, the firm and
politic, to become a council and point the road their history should
tread, and at last from captains, chiefs, and counsellors had come the
chief of chiefs, the casting voice, the king. And all these were men,
and when they died they left to their sons. Next in caste stood the
attendants and ministers and interpreters of the gods, and these were
men and women, as the gods themselves were male and female. But, aided
by that topmost caste, the priest was gaining over the priestess, the
god over the goddess. The highest god, the ruler of the rest, was held
to be by nature male. In the island, man and woman professed to heal
the body. But the dominant wind blew for the man-physician and against
the woman. Both men and women made minstrelsy, and men and women wove
the dance. But in the island they that bore rule and heaped together the
fruit of war and directed public action were men. And the servants of
the gods that were strongest to persuade or to awe were men.
To this island came the Amazon.
The cliffs lifted higher, the green grew brighter, the sea-eagles saw
their harbour and its small white quay, and their town on the hill above
the sea, saw the folk hastening down from the gates. They raised a
home-coming song, welcoming shouts rang from the water-side. The boat
flew on with sail and oar. The sails rattled down, the oars sent it
forward, it lay beside the gleaming, landing place. Arms were
outstretched, there prevailed a leaning down, a springing up, shouts,
vaunts, welcomes, a swarm of bodies, a humming of the mind. Here was
home-in-triumph for the sea-eagles; here was land-of-captivity for the
women from that old continent.
* * * * *
The house of Sandanis! That was a very great house according to the
notions of the island and the time. It was filled with bond and free,
but with more of the bond than the free. When they reached it, built
above the town, and entered a court that enclosed for shade two vast
sycamores, forth from the inner rooms to meet her son came the widowed
woman, the old island queen. With her moved her two daughters, Lindace
and Ardis, and behind them pressed the women of the household.
The king’s men who had robbed with the king took each to his own house
his share of the spoil that had been heaped in the king’s court and
portioned there. Brass and gold had been heaped, and weapons and
implements and rich stuffs and adornments, and among these had place the
captives from that ancient strand. With a beating of voices a crowd
entered the court. Sun and shade struggled there. Women were weighed
against gold and brass. All things were parted and in the mean time the
feast was made and set in Sandanis’s hall. Bondsmen took away to each
sea-rover’s house his chosen spoil. To the six of greatest fame went the
six Amazons, companions of Lindane. But in the court, beneath the hugest
sycamore, yet rested the gold and brass, the weapons, the rich stuff and
the woman set apart to Sandanis the king. The crowd of the unconsidered
dwindled. The chief men passed with Sandanis into his kingly hall, there
to feast and carouse and recite mighty deeds.
The island folk had looked with curiosity upon those stranger women,
unlike other women, different from what the gods had created women to
be! Hands had touched them, voices had beaten against them. But now six
of the seven had been taken away, and all the crowd was dwindling. There
came and stood before the Amazon shared to the king three priests of the
island, priests of a warlike god who was become the chief deity. One was
a man past middle-age, a dark enthusiast. The other two were younger.
“Woman-out-of-nature,” said the first, “who is your country-god?”
Lindane sat silent among goods and weapons and cunningly wrought matters
in silver and brass and gold. “She is dumb,” said those who had gathered
behind the priests. “Maybe the king has cut out her tongue!”
“Speak, man-woman!” said the second priest, inferior to the first. “Who
is the god of your country? Whoever he be he is less than our god!”
“They have,” said one behind, “a goddess only, no god!”
“Woman and captive, answer the chief priest!” said the youngest priest,
and he turned red as he spoke.
But the Amazon did not answer. The chief priest’s look darkened over
her. “Not to us the offence, but to the god!” he said; and turning with
the two, went away.
The press in the king’s court further lessened. Came, threading her way
through the groups, an old handmaid, one named Eunica. She spoke to
Lindane. “My mistresses, the old queen and her daughters, would have
speech with you, Amazon!”
Lindane followed her across the court and by a passage to a steep stair,
and so to an upper room lined with oak. Here sat the old queen with a
silver distaff in her hands, and beside her a basket of coloured wool.
The daughters sat near her on cushions, and they, too, had distaffs, and
in the back of the room handmaids wove at a mighty loom.
Spoke the old queen. “Stranger woman, were you bond or free before my
son the king took you?”
Said Lindane, “My mother is the queen of my country.”
“Then you shall have,” answered the old queen, “an ivory distaff to spin
with. There are here three daughters of kings, and they all have ivory
distaffs. Sit down and spin.”
There was but an hour to spin before dusk fell, with supper for that
great house. All descended from the upper room, but they did not eat,
that eve, in hall, because the king and his chief men were feasting
there, and wine, wine, wine was flowing.
In Sandanis’s hall the torchlight was bright, but through the rest of
the house it flared dim. At last the Amazon came to a place where was
hardly any light, to a cell in the wall where she would sleep that night
with Eunica, the old handmaid. So near was it to the great central room
of the house that there might be heard in waves the mingled voices of
the feasting men. What light there was seemed to come from that place of
triumph, stealing through cracks in the wall.
Eunica had a bed of straw spread with sheepskins. The two bondwomen sat
upon it, in the cell narrow as a tomb.
“I was the daughter of a king,” said old Eunica. “Sandanis’s father
brought me here. Then I was young like you, but my hair was never red
like yours. The old queen was young, too. She made herself a terror to
me, but Myrtus cared more for my hand than he did for her whole body.
But Myrtus died. Long, long ago, Myrtus died.... Sandanis was to have
wed the king’s sister of the next island. But the maiden perished at
sea, being brought here by her brothers. Now there is talk of a bride
from another island. When she comes, if Sandanis yet holds you in
liking, she will hate you. She will find occasion against you. When
Sandanis likes you no longer, then, if you break a water-jar, or if
there is a knot in your weaving, she will have you beaten. And when
Sandanis likes you no longer, he will not care--he will not lift a
finger to help you!”
“Sandanis.... That is his voice now in the hall. It is as though the sea
were behind me and about and before.... Ah, Sandanis! I hate thee!”
“Hate or love, be wolf or dog--by all the dark gods, what does it
matter?” said Eunica.
“Has it been always, in your earth, that a man could do so with a
woman?”
“Always that ever I heard of,” answered Eunica. “I do not know where
time goes to, behind us.”
“Will not the women conspire and slay them?”
But Eunica laughed at that. “When creatures are tamed, the power to
bound and to rend is there and is not there!”
“Now, by the goddess! I would untame them!”
Eunica laughed again. “Then, to show the way, each must rend its own
hunter! Now I had Milon by Myrtus, and I could not rend Myrtus.--I have
wonder if you would rend King Sandanis.”
Rising, she moved to the wall and with her fingers loosened a wedge of
wood, broad as an axe-head. The cell became more light, the sound of
revel fuller and more plain. The old handmaid came back to the pallet.
In the hall they sang war the glorious, the chief exalted, the warlike
gods. They sang man-strength and what they called freedom. They sang the
rape of gold and land, the rape of women and the rape of lives. The
harp-strings were struck, wine flowed, men beat fist against board. With
flashing eyes, with eloquence of gesture, starting to their feet, men
declaimed their virtues. All through the king’s house was listening; up
and down ran an hypnotized, inner murmuring. “It must be so. It must be
so.”
The night passed, and the next day and night, other days and other
nights. Sandanis the king and Lindane from the Amazon country drew
together, dragged apart, and neither knew at times whether a passion of
love or a passion of hatred was what their souls meant....
In this island stood a principal fane, built to the god of the
sea-rovers, in a wood that topped a cliff that fell sheer to a foaming
sea. Here came Sandanis and his following to sacrifice, and to hear from
the dark priest who lived by the fane if a bride from the island that on
clear days might be seen afar would bring luck to the king’s house,
binding in amity Sandanis and the king of that land. The wood was dark,
the poplars shook in a whistling wind, the priest divined, and brought
the king an answer from the god. “The bride will bring fortune if the
prow of the ship sent to bring her is touched with the life of the
king’s latest prey.”
Sandanis heard. “That would mean,” he said, “the bulls I took from the
herdsmen of the red island.” And he sent for the bulls and sacrificed
them.
That done with due ceremonies, a fifty-oared ship, the prow smeared with
bull’s blood, quitted quay and harbour for the myriad-painted sea and
the island like a little cloud upon the horizon. No great number of days
and back it came, broken-winged, less twenty of its oarsmen. No bride
was with it, but a story of disaster, sudden inexplicable enmity of that
island folk, found arrayed against them when they landed.... There arose
a murmur in King Sandanis’s town.
Said Sandanis in council, “That island woman is not fair, and her
brother who is king much resembles a quicksand. As well not treat with
him, nor be called his friend!”
The cattle of the island fell sick. From every dell and meadow and
mountain pasture came herdsmen ominously shaking the head, bringing to
the town one tale. A solemn procession wound, men and women, and the
king at the head, up to the fane above the sea. The god was
propitiated; the priest, a poplar wand in his hand, stood as in a
trance, then opened his mouth and gave forth the words of the god. “The
cattle will grow strong when the horns of a black, a white, and a red
bull are touched with the life of the king’s latest prey.”
The crowd murmured like the sacred grove. “That would mean,” said
Sandanis, “the hare that yesterday ran through the court and was taken
from under my cloak where it lay on the ground.” And he sent for the
hare and sacrificed it, and touched the horns of the bulls with the
blood. Likewise he gave to the god three great pots of brass and an
image of silver.
That was one day. The next he took bow and quiver and with eight
companions went hunting in the forest that stretched to the
mountain-top. “I will shoot stag or doe that shall be latest prey,” said
Sandanis to himself. But, going, a prodigy occurred. The sky blackened,
then lightning rived an oak before him, and the spread of the bolt
caused the king to reel, and made as dead for an hour right arm and
right knee. The eight wove a litter of branches and brought him down
through the forest. In sight of the king’s house vigour returned, and he
stepped from the litter and made them scatter the branches. But he spoke
no more of hunting, but held silence and a knitted brow. Entering the
house, he went into his chamber and shutting out all, lay there in
darkness and strife of mind. The eight, parting from the king, were not
silent.
The cattle continued to sicken and to die. A monstrous hailstorm came
and cut down the wheat and beat into ruin the dusters of young grapes.
The fishermen of the island took few fish in their nets and those not
the ones desired. At last the people said openly, “The king’s latest
prey, that he took with his two hands, who is it but that woman from the
Amazon country?”
Sandanis, in his house, listened to the chief priest of the island, and
he listened with a hunted mind and a divided will. “Man cannot avoid the
god!” warned the dark priest. “If the god’s hand points to this
abhorrent and barbarian woman, will King Sandanis say him nay?”
“And if I did?” said Sandanis.
The priest rose and stood in the shadowy place. The king of men, the
priest of the gods--these two were, or seemed to be, the greatest of the
shapes that trod the earth! The king-shape appeared to have sinew and
bulk, the priest-shape height. Sometimes the king-shape twisted the neck
of the priest-shape, but ever the next hour it rose the same. Sometimes
the priest-shape made the king-shape creep upon the earth, but never
could it keep it there. Sometimes the two were friends, and though they
used differing darts, pursued the same quarry. Sometimes the two were
one, priest-kings. In the countries where that was so the ruler-shape
had power indeed.... In this island of the blue sea king and priest were
two. But the priest had in his quiver awe of the huge supernatural. And
all shapes, king-shapes and others, deeply feared those arrows, dipped
in juices not of earth.
When now the chief priest stood in the dusk of the king’s chamber,
Sandanis saw the bow in his hands and the arrow headed against himself.
“King Sandanis! King Sandanis! The god will part your house from you,
all your friends and your island--”
Sandanis, sitting upon his couch, clenched hands upon the wrought cedar.
The chief priest felt for and found a master arrow, and found it the
sooner for that he, also, at times, knew lands deeper than the land of
worldly loss. He towered, he became the invulnerable Archer. “Are you
more great, O man! than God? Are you more wise than the Immortal? Do you
withstand? Then your part in him will dissolve like a cloud! It will
pass like a cry when he is not listening!”
A seabird went by the king’s door with a whistling cry. Rose the
priest’s voice, “A portent!--A portent!--”
Men took and bound the Amazon in the king’s house. The priests made
proclamation of a great and solemn procession to the fane and the altar
above the sea. That was to be in the morning. In the deep middle of the
night stole King Sandanis to the room hollowed in stone where there was
wont to be kept the sacrifice until the east was red.
The two men without the door said naught, but rested on the earth, their
heads wrapped in their mantles. The king went in, and there were two
torches, burning gold-coloured and straight, and between them, bound to
a stone sat Lindane.
Sandanis took station opposite. “Lindane! Lindane!”
Lindane opened her eyes. “Thou who would slay me! Are there no queens
and priestesses to draw breath and cry ‘Save’?”
“Queens are but kings’ wives or mothers. If the god says ‘Sacrifice!’
will the priestesses say him nay?”
“The god! O Thou-who-bringest-forth! where art thou, my goddess?”
“Lindane, I love thee--and yet thou must die!”
“O Earth! this love!”
“Such as love is on earth, I have it for thee.”
“Maybe so,” answered the Amazon. “I have been weary of the sun since
you took me by numbers on my own sea-strand.”
“By strength of my own arm, also!”
“Strong arm, dull wit, unjust heart!”
“O woman, are you so different from me?”
“If I had here an apple,” said Lindane, “I would cut it in two, and give
Sandanis half, keeping half myself. The two halves would not be
different, but the king would have one, and a slave for the sacrifice
the other!”
Sandanis came nearer to her. They kept silence in the rock-hewn place,
then the island king uttered a cry. “When we fought that day in the wood
by the salt meadow, yea, by the god! when I sent a javelin through the
neck of your great white horse and dragged you down, it was as though
many times we had fought and loved before!”
“Much fighting, little loving.--O my mother! O my queen!”
“Thou art for the sacrifice. I may not touch thee to help thee. The god
has said it.”
“O Earth! This love that a god can make to be put off and on like a
garment!”
“Unless a king were god, he could not help--”
“And would he then?... O my goddess, hear me!”
“The god’s word is over every goddess.... Lindane that diest, live if
thou canst!”
“The grey rock town upon the grey mountains--”
“I that thought it was sweet, find it bitter to be king--”
“O my goddess! Back to me comes every sin.... The cock is crowing!”
The door was opened by the men without. King Sandanis hid head and face
in his mantle and went from the rock chamber, hallowed to the
sacrifice. The cock crew again, the dawn opened slowly, like a red
flower.
The processions formed in the town, in the countryside, before the
king’s high house. The participants carried a sacred torch, they carried
images of the god, they carried baskets of flowers and burning incense.
Music went with them. The priests and King Sandanis walked at the head,
and behind them walked the Amazon. “Now the god will smile upon us!”
sang the people. “For here is the king’s latest prey!”
In the wood, before the image of the god, upon the altar, they took the
life of the sacrifice, and they touched with it the prows of the ships
in the harbour, and the horns of bulls, red, white and black.