And then, evidently as much to the surprise of this terrifying Being as to that of its intended victim, Odysseus calmly stepped forward and stood between them with his broad back towards his son and his face towards the Being crouching on that pile of rotting seaweed.
Nisos experienced an extremely odd sensation as he allowed his right hand grasping his two-edged weapon to sink down by his side and contemplated the broad back in front of him. It was to him a completely new sensation and one which made him feel a little foolish. He liked to be the active one, the most active one, in any group or in any company. He had been brought up to feel it his duty to serve, guard, protect, and defend his parents; and also to serve, guard, protect, and defend his King; and furthermore to help, aid, sustain and champion the very old.
And here he was standing weakly, feebly, passively, stupidly, behind the back of a person who was both his Father and his King and at the same was a very old man. Used to analysing his feelings he found it more than a little difficult to decide whether it was better to submit and obey on this occasion, when so old a man who was both his father and his king placed himself between him and the present danger and did so too without uttering a single word, did so in fact purely by the silent and practical and significant action of facing this appalling Being himself and turning his back upon the child of his loins, or whether he ought, with one desperate leap and a wild rush, to fling the old man aside, raise high his own arm, and plunge Zeuks’ deadly double-edged dagger again and again into what he could only pray would prove to be the heart of this living Mystery of Horror.
Why he thought of her, what put her into his head, what power concealed in the depths of his own nature called upon her for help, Nisos could no more tell than he could tell whether she would have been, in any case and entirely independent of both Odysseus and himself, exploring, as many another powerful Deity might well want to do, the deserted Metropolis of a drowned world, but she who now came suddenly into our friend’s head was none other than Atropos herself, the oldest and the smallest, but far the most powerful, of the three Goddesses of Fate.
“O Atropos, O Atropos!” Nisos prayed in his heart. “Great Goddess of Fate! Thou who once didst let me struggle with Gorgons and Furies on thy behalf, help Odysseus and help me against this Horror!”
He had no sooner uttered this prayer than he was aware of a curious hush in the humming and murmuring waters around them. He shuffled sideways just a little; in fact just enough to be able to choose to see or to choose not to see, according to his wish, the magnetic eyes of the Being reclining on that foul heap of stinking seaweed. From this position he could see that the Being in front of him had got its eyes fixed steadily upon the face of Odysseus and was still making with its semi-human, semi-vulture-like finger-claws a monotonous, repetitive, ritualistic pantomime of silent motions, which clearly gesticulated what in words would have been: “Come to me! Come to me! Come to me! You and I, when once we are one, will conquer the universe!”
The Creature’s “Come to me!” was repeated over and over and while this appalling sorcery of repetition went on Nisos’ glance wandered to a half-revealed object that lay amid that rotting dark-brown seaweed. What it was, when once he caught sight of it, was evident enough, though the seaweed in which it was entangled covered many portions of it. It was the skeleton of a man or woman. Nisos didn’t know enough about anatomy to know to which of the sexes it had belonged, and the light that shone from the couple of swaying cords that emanated from the Helmet of Proteus was not strong enough to reveal with certainty whether the owner of the flesh that had once covered that skeleton was a tall or a short person; but those white bones entwined with dusky seaweed made him, as the Helmet’s flickering light fell upon them, wonder why he had never asked the all-knowing old hero how it was that considering the thousands of people who must have been drowned in that sunken city he hadn’t seen until this moment a single dead man or woman. Anyone would certainly have supposed that if the thunder-loving Son of Kronos had caused the sinking of a crowded city like this as a punishment for impiety the whole place would be full of dead people caught and drowned without warning in the midst of their daily business and profane pleasures.
If only he had the power of reading the thoughts that were passing to and fro within the living skull of Odysseus under that fantastic Helmet! What could the old hero be doing with his mind and his will to counter this gesticulated spell by which the Ruler of Atlantis was seeking to enthral him?
It was hard enough for Nisos to take his eyes away from those twining and twisting fingers, but he was too scared as well as too prudent to risk more than a series of snatching, switching, twitching glances at the appalling beauty and over-mastering power of the face above those flickering hands and that androgynous breast.
What on earth would the old hero decide to do? It was certainly a weird state of things for a person as inexperienced as he himself was to have to face. But here was his father facing it in deadly silence; and he told himself that if he intended to be a prophet when he grew older he must force himself to face what was happening now. He must in fact force himself to see himself cowering behind his father who held the Heraklean Club but who could do nothing in the presence of this Being but simply stand his ground, while round about them both, wandering up and down these towering bridges and triumphant bastions and tessellated battlements roamed the titanic Dragon-Monster Typhon who had shaken a whole Sicilian mountain from off his shoulders and who breathed such fire from his belly that no mortal man could face him, and yet, huger than he, and armed with a club not of wood, but of bronze, here also was the greatest of all the Hunters of the world, enormous Orion, threatening not only Typhon but all that lived and moved upon the earth and all that lived and moved beneath the waters! And here was he, Nisos, cowering behind the back of his father. But he must, he must without shirking his own shame, force himself to visualize this living group of heterogeneous Beings, human and divine and demonic and bestial, isolated there in drowned Atlantis, but as compared with the infinite extension of the sky, and the infinite extension of time, of no more importance or significance than if it had been a group of toads and tadpoles and newts and stickle-backs and dragonfly-grubs in the minute estuary of a small pond.
His half-conscious pride in being clever enough to think thus of himself and of the rest of them lifted his spirits considerably and once again, and this time with more faith and hope than before, he prayed to Atropos, the oldest and smallest, but by far the most powerful, of the Three Fates.
And lo! such was the regard which this aged directress of mortal lives had for our young friend, and whether he knew it or not this personal link with the old lady was the best omen and the deepest intimation that could possibly have reached him that one day he really might prove to be a prophet to the people of Hellas, — lo! there suddenly swam past them, following a straight line between Odysseus and the god-demon of the drowned City, a large and peculiarly handsome Dolphin, upon whose back, and clinging to him with a certain nervous intensity, was Atropos herself!
She gave our friend as she passed, and she looked at nobody else and took no notice of anybody else, a look he would live to remember all his days, and probably would recall on the day of his death. It was then that Odysseus swung round at last, turning his back upon the god-demon, as if the ripples made by the passing of that Dolphin had broken, independently of any effort he had to make for himself, the whole of the spell which was now in the process of being thrown over him by the twining and twisting of those appalling fingers.