The gist of Echidna’s view of what was occurring was that it was a grand revolt of the Titans, and, with the Titans of all those Giants and Dragons and Super-Animals and Super-Birds and Super-Fishes and Super-Reptiles and ancient long-forgotten insular divinities, such as Eurybia and herself, who, in comparison with the proud Olympians, must seem to some—“indeed” thought Nisos, “they seem to me”—hideous monsters and wicked antiquities — in universal conspiracy against the thunder-wielding All-Father, Zeus.
But what was probably to our friend Nisos’ ears, and certainly to those of Arsinöe, who was doing her best to disturb the sleepy head of the unconscionable son of Pan, the most alarming part of this victory-chant of the Antediluvians was that it concluded with a phantasmagoric wail of prediction, prophesying—“falsely, O falsely! let us pray!” cried the look that was being at that second exchanged between our young armour-bearer of the King of Ithaca and the daughter of Hector — that the revolt of the Titans and the Monsters was destined to prevail!
And as the prophetic hiss of Echidna, the Snake-Goddess, floated away on the moonlight, it came with a considerable shock into Nisos’ mind that it was no other than Arcadian Pan himself, the rustic god who had the horns and legs of a goat, who had carried off from Arima these two weird Beings who were like the ghosts of forgotten island Deities and had carried off Tis’s little sister Eione as well, Eione, who was now safe in the king’s cabin and would be shortly drinking the wine that contained Helen’s Egyptian Nepenthe, carried them all off together on those two immortal horses.
“Whither now, then,” the lad asked himself, “had Arcadian Pan gone? Had he dived down under the waters into the streets and temples and markets and shops and brothels of the metropolis of Atlantis? Impossible! Impossible! Who could imagine the goat-god of Arcadia playing on his flute in the fish-frequented streets of that drowned city? Impossible! Impossible! He must have made that other divine horse, the one whose mane was up-rooted by this naked wretch lying here now, dead-drunk in his blankets, under the ship’s bulwark, carry him over sea and land home to his sheep-folds!”
As these thoughts crowded, like a swarm of small gnats, into our young friend’s head he noticed that Akron, the ship’s captain, was approaching them. This fact reached his intelligence indirectly but very quickly; for he saw all those little bits of wood that Pontos and Proros had been using as toy soldiers in their game of “Pesseia” disappear with a scraping and scuffling sound into the capacious folds of their tunics.
The unavoidable though quite faint sound made by these stalwart sailors as they disposed of so many handfuls of toy-soldiers made it clear to Nisos that the natural human passion for playing games was stronger than any intellectual interest in drowned cities or in the past or future of scientific civilizations. Pontos and Proros were ready for anything; but they did not want to see their precious “Pessoi” or draughtsmen cast into the sea.
“Well, my excellent land-lubbers!” exclaimed Akron in his most genial manner. “You’ll soon have a chance to watch a little real seamanship, not un-combined, I hope, with a little unprofessional commonsense! You’ve already noticed, Nisos, my dear boy, that we’ve reached that rock—” Akron lifted his arm and pointed eagerly—“that the king calls the Atlas Rock because, so he informs us, only none of us on this old ship can corroborate his words, it resembles the giant Titan whose head, and shoulders too, you and I must have seen from this very deck beyond the Pillars of Herakles before the ‘Teras’ made for the open sea; and the king swears it does actually resemble the Titan Atlas whom the All-Father punishes forever by making him hold up the sky.
“The king says that the Titan, though no weakling, lacks the broad shoulders and muscular neck that would render his task agreeable. The king says his shoulders slope like a woman’s just as do those of this damned rock to which we’ve now got to tie up our grand old sea-eagle!”
It was clear to Nisos, if not to Zeuks, who had at last under the shock of the arrival of the skipper of the “Teras”, shaken off his shameless tendency to respond to any increase in dramatic danger by an increase in undramatic drowsiness, that the four sailors on the deck below had stopped using their oars and that the “Teras” was now doing nothing but obeying the helmsmanship of Eumolpos as she followed the urge of those four men’s final strokes.
“Odysseus told me”—and Nisos cried out his master’s name with a voice to be heard in competition with the two sounds that just then were most dominant; in the first place with the whistling of the wind in the complicated rigging beneath the mast, rigging which, though doubtless less involved than Pontos’ and Proros’ recent “pessenizing” with soldiers made of splinters and slivers and shavings of wood, would have been enough to puzzle any landsman; and in the second place with the stentorian breathing of the poor blanketed Enorches.
Nisos must instinctively have said “Odysseus” instead of “the King” because, with this incredible moonlight flooding the rocks and beaches along whose edge they were moving and with that extraordinary rock wearing a human shape and those two phantom goddesses moaning forth into the moonlight their contrarious explanations of the present world-madness, it must have struck him that what was now happening was so dramatic that it lent itself better to the romantic name of the lover of Circe and Calypso than to the clanging monosyllable “King” whose only virtue was that it was the symbol of absolute law and order.
“Odysseus told me to say that both you yourself, friend Zeuks, and you also, Arsinöe my dear, will be welcome as soon as you can reach it, at the Passengers’ Dining-Table in the King’s cabin, and he told me to accompany you both as soon as—”
“What’s the matter, baby-boy?” interrupted Zeuks, looking as if he were a human skin on the point of bursting and losing its human shape in one great bubble of laughter: “Have you got a flea in—”
“I pray it’s not a poisonous fly!” cried Arsinöe, with unmistakable sympathy in her tone. “You may laugh my Lord Zeuks,” the girl went on, coming hurriedly to Nisos’ side and raising both hands to the spot just above his collar-bone where he was now scratching himself with positively vicious intensity, “yes, you may laugh, but there may easily have been a whole swarm of poisonous insects carried from our last ‘port of call’ which was of course your — or I suppose I must now say ‘our’—island harbour.”
But to the girl’s astonishment, and indeed to the astonishment of both Zeuks and Akron, Nisos thrust away her sympathetic hand, though its delicate fingers were trembling with real concern. But Arsinöe was saved from feeling hurt at his rejection of her help by her amazement at what he proceeded to do when she withdrew her hand. Both Zeuks and Akron were as astonished as she was and all the three of them drew near to watch his antics.
Even Enorches, clutching his outer blanket with his left hand round his throat and his inner blanket with his right hand round his waist, woke up suddenly from his trance and stared with unglazed absorbed concentrated attention at what Nisos was doing. Nisos had clearly got possession now of whatever creature it was that had caused him to scratch himself to such a tune; and he now held it in his clenched fist close to one of his ears. The only sound that issued from his imprisoning fingers was an irregular buzzing; and Arsinöe smiled at both Zeuks and Akron, who were now openly smiling at each other, while the Priest of Orpheus began muttering the most formidable liturgical prayer he knew by heart that the most mystical swamp in the realm of Aidoneus should receive his purified ghost.