He stood staring at the sleeping girl in the bed with what he pretended to himself was a look of fierce dramatic reproach. The sleeping girl would have been gratified however to observe that this fierce look was directed solely at her face and that upon her incredibly well-moulded limbs, as fully exposed to his view as her extremely rustic and almost grotesquely simple features, the look that was drawn out of him was of quite a different kind.
Different or not, all that Pontopereia knew about Nisos’ expression when she crept up silently behind him from her hiding-place among the hampers and nets and wicker cases and javelin-holders and quivers made of twisted root-fibres full of feathered arrows, which Odysseus had piled up outside his cabin and which — for the lowest deck of the “Teras” was anything but spacious — did more than just impinge upon the cabin of the two girls — all indeed that Pontopereia could possibly know of the feelings of Nisos as he stood staring at her enemy-friend and incorrigible rival was the simple fact that he did stand thus staring. And so when she spoke to him and he swung round to face her as if she had pricked him with one of Odysseus’s darts, the look that was exchanged between them was one of those looks that young men and young maids exchange now and again and that are as the primeval Welsh Prose Epic expresses it, “like the colour of lightning upon a sword-blade”.
But it was at this moment that Odysseus himself appeared on the scene, emerging from his solitary cabin with bare feet, and entirely naked save for the blanket he had wrapped round him and the extraordinary Helmet of Proteus which he had just clapped on his head.
“I want one of you,” he whispered hoarsely, “to come here a second!”
“What in the name of Aidoneus,” thought Nisos, “is in the king’s mind?”
But Eione, who had already leapt from her couch so quickly that the imprint left by her head on the pillow contained a twisted couple of tiny fair hairs held together by an infinitesimal flake of cinder-dust that must have adhered to them when she was recently heating water for her bath, had not lived all her life with old Morus for nothing. She would naturally divine the sort of thing that the practical cunning of a wily old man would urge him to do at a crisis like this. She had therefore, in reading the mind of Odysseus, an advantage over both the daughter of a prophet and the young aspirant to be himself a prophet.
She therefore without a moment’s hesitation, and as if it were a dedicated dagger for some pontifical killing, offered her slender wrist to the old king; who proceeded at once, and with no more hesitation than she had shown, to make use of this small wrist. He led her after an imperative gesture to Pontopereia and Nisos to remain quiescent, to the drawn curtain that covered the threshold of the cabin occupied by Nausikaa and Okyrhöe; and the moment he got her there he made a mute sign to her to remain absolutely still, and then, drawing the curtain aside with an imperceptibly gentle movement he set himself to listen to what was going on between the two women.
“O for heaven’s sake don’t make me have to go over it all again, Princess,” Okyrhöe was saying. “I’m only telling you for the hundredth time that this whole mad voyage of this crazy old king is ridiculous; and that you who pretend to be his friend, instead of helping him, are driving him faster to his ruin and destruction! Why, my good, silly woman, before we started on this crazy voyage I talked to several of the sailors who are running this ship and I soon found out how hopeless the whole thing is. They told me that the very figure-head of this ship is enough to damn the whole business by showing the ship’s destiny. They told me that the face of that Being at the prow is enough alone to prove to whom the vessel belongs! It belongs to the Ruler of Atlantis; for the face that looks out from that dreadful neck is the face of that Ruler himself!
“They all know that; yes! all the sailors on this ship know it. And they know too that it was because of the blasphemous inventions and impious intentions of this wicked magician that the divine Son of Kronos who wields the thunder plunged the whole continent of Atlantis into the depths of the ocean. You pretend that this ship is of your land and has inherited from the skill and the craft of your people its power of prevailing over disaster and of holding onto its strength. All this is false — in fact a lie! The ‘Teras’ with its officers and the best of its crew was a pirate-ship long before it fell into the skilled hands of your people and was converted into a vessel of the shape and style of your land.
“And now, my foolish woman, you must see how ridiculous it is to encourage Odysseus in this madness of his, when the truth is—”
At this point Nausikaa boldly interrupted her. “Come, come, my dear lady, why on earth should a couple of presentable females like you and me scold each other like a pair of fish-wives in the old ‘Net-Alley’ of the Piraeus?”
But once started in her torrent of vituperation it was impossible to silence Okyrhöe. “When I began”, the woman went on, “talking to these people just now I soon realized into what a desperate and tragic business you had, with all your good intentions, betrayed this unfortunate old king. Don’t you see bow infinitely pathetic it is to watch this aged impulsive fool dressing himself up in this comical head-dress they call the Helmet of Proteus?
“What about all his fellow-countrymen who are now going to be led into such terrible peril by the pure chance that you came here with this ship? I’m not saying these things to you to torment you or to get any advantage over you. Do please, I beg you, lady, stop this vulgar abuse, and let us decide together how we can best help our mutual hero in this grand final adventure of his unequalled life!”
The two of them continued their word-battle for quite a number of minutes, though neither of them was unoccupied while their desperate dispute went on. They were both arranging their hair, their head-dresses, their robes, their jewels, and even smoothing out the creases in their soft leather sandals, to make which final adjustment they were forced to display to each other and of course, though unknown to themselves, to their three watchers, for, though the daughter of Teiresias still held herself proudly aloof, Nisos as it well may be believed, was unable to resist the temptation of joining in this espionage, the most intimate beauty of their figures.
Matters on board the “Teras” were further complicated at this critical point by the emergence from the ship’s hold, which was reached by a short ladder of no more than three rungs from the cabin occupied by Odysseus, of the two black Lybian cooks staggering under their first instalment of food and drink for everyone on board; and as this plenteous repast was to be swallowed in what was now the cabin of Odysseus it can be imagined with what rapidity these two imperious ladies of fashion hastened to complete their toilet.
Along with the two black Libyans there came up also from the hold of the good ship “Teras”, or “Prodigy”, a couple of Assyrian boys of about thirteen whose business it was to act as general scavengers and excrement-disposers for both crew and passengers. On every deck of the ship there were containers for excremental liquids and containers for excremental solids which it was the duty of these Assyrian boys to empty into the sea; and for this purpose, each day of every voyage, they went the round of the ship at sunset.
Thus it was no haphazard or random coincidence but by one of those inevitable concentrations of the normal and natural forces of life that keep the world on the move that the whole crowd of human creatures, from the Old Odysseus to the young excrement disposers, who were divided from the waters of drowning by the planks of the “Teras” or “Prodigy”, were gathered together when a clamorous shout went up, a shout that came from the throats of the general crowd and not from any professional group or any especially nervous group, a shout that was soon repeated still louder and by this time came from the deck upon which any boat-load of people coming from any direction at all would of necessity scramble on board.