And he said:
‘I am named Nooz Wana, the Whelmer of Ships, and from the Straits of
Pondar Obed I am come, wherein it is my wont to vex the seas. There I
chased Leviathan with my hands when he was young and strong; often he
slipped through my fingers, and away into the weed forests that grow
below the storms in the dusk on the floor of the sea; but at last I
caught and tamed him. For there I lurk upon the ocean’s floor, midway
between the knees of either cliff, to guard the passage of the Straits
from all the ships that seek the Further Seas; and whenever the white
sails of the tall ships come swelling round the corner of the crag out
of the sunlit spaces of the Known Sea and into the dark of the Straits,
then standing firm upon the ocean’s floor, with my knees a little bent,
I take the waters of the Straits in both my hands and whirl them round
my head. But the ship comes gliding on with the sound of the sailors
singing on her decks, all singing songs of the islands and carrying the
rumour of their cities to the lonely seas, till they see me suddenly
astride athwart their course, and are caught in the waters as I whirl
them round my head. Then I draw in the waters of the Straits towards
me and downwards, nearer and nearer to my terrible feet, and hear in
my ears above the roar of my waters the ultimate cry of the ship; for
just before I drag them to the floor of ocean and stamp them asunder
with my wrecking feet, ships utter their ultimate cry, and with it go
the lives of all the sailors and passes the soul of the ship. And in
the ultimate cry of ships are the songs the sailors sing, and their
hopes and all their loves, and the song of the wind among the masts and
timbers when they stood in the forest long ago, and the whisper of the
rain that made them grow, and the soul of the tall pine-tree or the
oak. All this a ship gives up in one cry which she makes at the last.
And at that moment I would pity the tall ship if I might; but a man
may feel pity who sits in comfort by his fireside telling tales in the
winter—no pity are they permitted ever to feel who do the work of the
gods; and so when I have brought her circling from round my shoulders
to my waist and thence, with her masts all sloping inwards, to my
knees, and lower still and downwards till her topmast pennants flutter
against my ankles, then I, Nooz Wana, Whelmer of Ships, lift up my feet
and trample her beams asunder, and there go up again to the surface of
the Straits only a few broken timbers and the memories of the sailors
and of their early loves to drift for ever down the empty seas.
‘Once in every hundred years, for one day only, I go to rest myself
along the shore and to sun my limbs on the sand, that the tall ships
may go through the unguarded Straits and find the Happy Isles. And the
Happy Isles stand midmost among the smiles of the sunny Further Seas,
and there the sailors may come upon content and long for nothing; or if
they long for aught, they shall possess it.
‘There comes not Time with his devouring hours; nor any of the evils of
the gods or men. These are the islands whereto the souls of the sailors
every night put in from all the world to rest from going up and down
the seas, to behold again the vision of far-off intimate hills that
lift their orchards high above the fields facing the sunlight, and for
a while again to speak with the souls of old. But about the dawn dreams
twitter and arise, and circling thrice around the Happy Isles set out
again to find the world of men, then follow the souls of the sailors,
as, at evening, with slow stroke of stately wings the heron follows
behind the flight of multitudinous rooks; but the souls returning find
awakening bodies and endure the toil of the day. Such are the Happy
Isles, whereunto few have come, save but as roaming shadows in the
night, and for only a little while.
‘But longer than is needed to make me strong and fierce again I may not
stay, and at set of sun, when my arms are strong again, and when I feel
in my legs that I can plant them fair and bent upon the floor of ocean,
then I go back to take a new grip upon the waters of the Straits, and
to guard the Further Seas again for a hundred years. Because the gods
are jealous, lest too many men shall pass to the Happy Isles and find
content. _For the gods have not content_.’