Nisos was at Odysseus’ side when the divine animal, Pegasos, flying with quite a company of people on his broad back, reached the “Teras” and therefore our young man had a unique opportunity of noting how the old king reacted to this impact. But he was so anxious to catch all the king’s feelings that he couldn’t help exaggerating much that he observed.
He exaggerated for instance many flickering changes of expression on the countenance of Odysseus. He exaggerated certain jerky and feverish gestures made by the King. The truth was that no one alive really understood the King except Eurycleia his old nurse. It was one of the results of Odysseus’ abnormal self-control that he could feel deep down in his blood and bones reactions quite different from those which he felt in his more superficial nerves or along the surface of his skin, and more different still from those expressed in his face.
The scene on the “Teras’” top deck when Pegasos arrived was indeed something that might have reduced to a wild state of hysterical excitement any traveller less self-controlled and less artful than Odysseus. The human creatures whom Pegasos now shook from his broad back and from between his wide-stretched wings were obviously so confused by the whole experience that, as the saying goes, they hardly “knew their heads from their tails”.
For the last couple of days a frantic longing to cling together like a frightened swarm of insects must have possessed them. But in spite of this they preserved their poise and endurance. Chief among these brave voyagers upon the winged horse was Zeuks the son of Arcadian Pan and along with him was none other than Spartika the Priestess of Athene’s Temple, and in addition to these and holding herself with proud dignity a little apart from the rest was none other than Arsinöe the bastard daughter of Hector, who in her childhood had been befriended by Andromache, Hector’s wife.
Nisos was astonished to see that it was not Zeuks but Spartika who held the proudest position on the back of the winged horse, nearest, that is to say, to his head, and he was still more surprised when instead of descending, as Zeuks and Arsinöe very speedily did, Spartika remained seated, and indeed began to caress the mane of Pegasos and to give that arching neck whose curves resembled a torrent of water released from rocks and roots and flowing at ease down a smooth declivity, a series of reassuring and yet authoritative pats.
Our friend Nisos, who still retained at the back of his consciousness an obstinate determination to be a real prophet before he died, and who was still alert to catch the most intimate ways of the mental rulers of our race, was deeply struck by the manner in which Spartika kept them all standing where they were, as if she had thrown a spell over each of them, while she delivered what evidently was a long-prepared and legally-involved discourse on the precise attitude she intended to take between the run-away goddess of that formidable “aegis”, whose very “tassels” could bring new life to the half-dead, and that Priest of the Mysteries who had so successfully usurped the position of Telemachos.
And suddenly Nisos noticed, and he felt that he had really made a step forward in his private self-education in the art of prophesying by having resisted Spartika’s priestess-spell sufficiently to be able to notice such a thing at all, that while with one hand she caressed Pegasos, preparatory to giving him the recognizable signal that would make him shake out his eagle wings and gather up his equine hooves beneath him, with the other hand she was active in helping some quite carefully shrouded human figure to edge itself off the horse’s back on to the deck where the others were now standing.
Nisos alone among all the onlookers was therefore spared the shock of surprise when two startling events occurred simultaneously: Pegasos suddenly spread his wings and rose into the air with Spartika leaning forward, and clinging to his mane with both hands. And like a living bundle of villainously dirty rags the figure of Enorches rolled upon the deck, and after a minute or two of absolutely solitary twisting and turning, rose to its feet, took up its wrappings and conveyed them to the rail of the ship.
Here, with what struck Nisos as a deadly curse upon the whole gamut of existence, this destructive Priest of the Mysteries flung his bundle of filthy rags into the water; and then, leaning over the edge himself, just as if he were hugging the thought of following his garments — and how had he managed to make them heavy enough to sink? — he plunged his thought, if nothing else, after what he had thrown.
And while the Priest of Eros and Dionysos was staring blindly after his own imaginary corpse, that corpse of living thought which he evidently pretended to himself he could see sinking down and down and down, till it found the slit at the bottom of the ocean which led to the slit at the bottom of the world which led to the slit at the bottom of the universe, Odysseus, whose outward nerves, equally with the imperturbable recesses of his being, were totally unaffected by any of these mental horrors, addressed a quiet request to Zeuks that he relate to him what had actually happened in Ithaca since the “Teras” set sail.
Nisos never forgot the scene that followed this natural demand. All the living persons on board save Akron the Master of the ship were gathered round the mast from which that pair of perfect sailors, Pontos and Proros from Skandeia in Kythara, had wisely lowered all but a small fold of the great sail.
Thus the “Teras”, or “Prodigy”, was running lightly, easily, freely, but comparatively slowly before a gentle and cool easterly wind; while the full moon, which was now moving with that motionless movement which is unlike any other movement in the universe, over, under, and straight through cloud after cloud, after cloud, after cloud, flooded the whole of what was visible, as well as — at least that was what came suddenly into Nisos’ head — the whole of what was invisible, with an enchantment that separated the real life of each separate living thing from the life imagined as its life by all other living things.
Nisos noted very definitely the extraordinary manner in which this flood of moonlight, which was as spiritual and mental as it was physical and emotional, held everybody at that crisis under such a spell that when the quiet voice of Odysseus called upon Zeuks to speak there came a strangely universal sigh from all present. The thoughts and feelings of Odysseus himself as he made this quiet request were more direct and simple, as they were more massively impenetrable and impervious to influence of any sort or kind, than his young follower Nisos could have believed possible.
Odysseus was prepared to humour and indulge to the limit all those who needed humouring and indulging if they were to be useful to him in the fulfilment of his purpose. He was also prepared to obliterate totally from his consideration, leaving them to go their way just as they liked, as he intended to go his way just as he liked, all those persons, creatures, tendencies, and forces, over whom or over which he had no control.
Unlike Zeuks as a man, and unlike Pegasos as an animal, there was, in spite of all the rumours to the contrary, no trustworthy evidence that any seed save that from the loins of Laertes was responsible for his begetting. What separated him from other mortal men was the adamantine weight and solid mass of what might be called Being, or Existence, or Entity, thickening out his Personality, which he put behind the purpose, whatever purpose it might be, upon which at the moment he was engaged.
The real essence of the man’s shrewdness, for it was more like the measured sagacity of some huge sea-lion than it was like the wily cunning of a fox or the crafty vigilance of a hungry hyaena or the distracted desperation of a solitary wolf, had a super-animal obstinacy in it which had the power of keeping intact, like some monumental idol, the achievement towards which he kept advancing.