They were both silent, listening intently; and it is clear that the club of Herakles, now held tight in the old hero’s hand, must have been putting some very crucial questions to the Sixth Pillar; and it struck both our listening insects, not to speak of the club itself, that it was really a masterpiece of technical triumph this invention of the “Son of Hephaistos”, whoever he was, who divulged the open secret of the long-hidden language, whereby the four elements, earth and air and fire and water, could hold converse together.
At this moment Pyraust and Myos had not to wait a second before they could hear it, the clear unmistakable voice, so familiar to them in that old corridor of their royal cave, of the Sixth Pillar.
“No,” came the voice. “There is not a word, not a sign from Pallas Athene. It is universally accepted that she is in one of her shrines among the blameless Ethiopians; but how long she will remain there or what particular thing it was that roused her wrath against us all in Hellas, nobody has the faintest idea.
“As to the other gods, news has come that the rumour was true which declared that Typhon, the most powerful and monstrous and terrifying of all the titanic brood of the Great Mother, Typhon whom Zeus only just managed to overcome by means of the thunder and lightning given him by that weird Cyclopean race of one-eyed half-gods, to which Polyphemus belonged, Typhon who was buried under Etna, had truly and indeed broken loose from his dungeon.
“It is said he is now confronted by Herakles himself, Herakles the son of Zeus, and has been stopped by Herakles from advancing more than a few miles from the fiery crater out of which he has burst.
“There is no need for you, O great Club of Herakles, who have lived with us so long, and whom we of the palace-corridor have come to regard as one of ourselves, to feel hurt that it is not yourself who are now in the strong hand of Herakles as he holds back this monstrous Demigod from destroying the whole population of Italy and Greece and from advancing upon Asia and Africa.
“They say that the Three Fates have long ago decided that it is only by the metal iron that Typhon can be defeated and they further tell me that Hephaistos has now forged for Herakles out of iron a weapon as deadly if not as shapely and supple as you are yourself! If you ask me what has happened to great Hermes, the cunning messenger of Zeus, and the subtle intermediary between men and gods and between the living and the dead, I can only tell you what my messengers tell me; and as you know my messengers are the fiery, aqueous, aerial, terrestrial, magnetic quiverings through the elements that are swifter than the feet of Hermes or the wings of Iris, the murmur, that is to say, of element to element, and, where the earth is concerned, the whisper of rock to rock, and of grain of sand to grain of sand!
“And from these I have learnt the startling news that Father Zeus is no longer served by Hermes the Messenger; but on the contrary that Hermes has gone back to his birth-place in Mount Kyllene, whither his mother, Maia, the loveliest of the Pleiades, is still drawn down from the sky by the poets who worship her; so that she, along with her son’s music, shall enable countless generations of unborn men and women to embrace the dark spaces of life’s dubious experience with pleasure instead of pain!
“You, old corridor-companion, keep on telling me about this devilish priest of Orpheus with his mad incantations and his mania for Eros. Well, my friend, let me now tell you what I hear about this young Eros of the Mysteries. I hear he has recently mutilated himself so that he can make love to both sexes and be loved by both.
“My messengers are obscure as to the precise harm — if harm it is that he has done to himself; but that he has done something very serious to himself they do most strongly affirm, assuring me that the old Eros that gods and men have known until this hour is no more; and that a new and different Eros has taken his place. The elements also tell me that the goddess Aphrodite after being unfaithful to him with both mortals and immortals for so long has now fallen in love again with her crippled lord, Hephaistos, and is struggling to keep him to herself with every art she knows and all this in the Island of Lemnos!
“As to the Father of the Olympians, the great son of Kronos himself, the elements tell me that he is still on Mount Gargaros, but without his thunder and lightning which have been taken back by that same Cyclopean race from whom he originally received them. What makes it worse for this poor Thunderer, deprived of thunder, is that not only has his own son Hermes deserted him, but his other messenger and emissary, Iris, the Rainbow, has been entirely pre-empted, appropriated, and taken possession of, by Hera, the Queen of Heaven, who is now left alone on the summit of Olympos, with only a handful of frightened attendants, and surrounded by the empty palaces and the deserted pleasure-halls of the once-crowded City of the Gods.
“Under these conditions, as you may easily imagine, O great lion-slaying Nemean Club, to still possess a messenger like Iris is an indescribable relief, and you may be sure that Queen Hera makes the most of it, and despatches the luckless Iris on the most difficult quests. For example I happen to know that at this very moment this youthful immortal is wandering through the uttermost lands of the blameless Ethiopians searching for Pallas Athene.
“You ask me what I learn from the elements about Hermes since he no longer serves the Father of Gods and Men? Well, old companion of so many years, you who along with me have seen so many strange faces in our corridor to the palace of the king, what I have gathered from over-hearing these communications between the elements, which of course simply means the contact of air with water, water with fire, fire with earth, is so startling that I myself have difficulty in believing it. But what I’ve learnt I’ll tell you at once, old friend, if my voice still reaches you, as your un-winged Pegasos and your un-maned Arion whirl you to the end of the isle; and it is this.
“All the spirits of all the mortals who ever lived on earth have defied Aidoneus; and, following the ghost of Teiresias, have broken loose from Hades and are wandering at large over the whole earth. It is now Persephone who is searching for her mother, searching frantically, searching desperately for her, through all their familiar abodes, through all their ancient haunts, by every public way, along every well-known river.
“Hast thou seen my mother?” is her cry. “Hast thou seen a stately woman with a mantle over her head and a staff in her hand?”
“But the most astonishing part of the news the elements have brought me is this. By the advice of Hermes, who it appears has been down to Hades to find the mysterious and awful Aidoneus who carried off Persephone and made her swallow those honey-sweet seeds of the fatal pomegranate, this dark ruler of a deserted Hades has summoned his brother Poseidon to meet him at the utmost limit of the West where the Titan Atlas, as a punishment for opposing Zeus, holds up the sky.
“Here Aidoneus and Poseidon together may be able to persuade the Son of Kronos to join them in leaving Olympos to Hera and in restoring and building up again the shattered order of the world; in forcing the ghosts of the dead back to Hades, the Titans back to their punishment in Tartaros, and with the help of Atropos, the oldest of the Fates, getting both Eros and Dionysos under such complete control that the entire—”
It was at this crucial moment that the two insects within the bosom of the club of Herakles had to clutch each other in sheer panic. The whole cortège had stopped with a terrific jerk. There was a ghastly sound of eight equine hooves scraping against some flinty floor of rock.