Meanwhile the Club of Herakles, one of whose personal names was “Dokeesis”, or “That which Seems”, and another was Prosdokia or “Expectation” and who had the power of thinking and feeling not only with what it called its “life-crack”, within which the Moth and the Fly had taken sanctuary but with every portion of its polished surface, contemplated Okyrhöe who now lay at the feet of Akron, the Master of the ship, though he took no more notice of her than if she had been a captive from some island-citadel, a captive whom Odysseus, the Sacker of Cities, had carelessly carried off as they sailed West. But it was not Akron’s attention Okyrhöe wished to catch, as, lightly and gracefully — but O so deliberately! — she threw back her head upon her soft white arm and drew up her limbs beneath her. And it was then, and not till then, that Odysseus heard, as long ago, in that dark Nemaean Forest, he had heard it, the voice of his Club of Herakles. The Club was in the midst of a hurried and agitated dialogue with the Sixth Pillar of that Corridor in Ithaca so well known to most of them there.
It was not Odysseus’ nature, nor was it a habit of his in accordance with his nature, to enter lightly, casually, carelessly, easily, into a conversation with his most powerful weapon. Ever since he first heard that voice in the Nemaean Forest there had come moments when it was impossible not to hear the voice of the Club without a certain awe; and equally impossible not to reply to the voice without an inward submission to the burden of its utterance.
At this particular moment, seated on that coil of rope and turning his gaze first to the wide path of the moon on the water and then to a strange and shadowy Enormity that had suddenly appeared in front of them and that Nisos took to be a foreign ship with two colossal masts, but which might well have been a portion of the vast cranium of the Titan-Giant, Atlas, Odysseus was careful not to glance at Okyrhöe’s seductive pose of slumber, nor at Nausikaa’s slender limbs and passionate arms entwined about the scaly neck of the mysterious Ruler of Atlantis.
Okyrhöe’s closed eyes above her rounded elbow might rest forever in sleepless provocation: Nausikaa’s open eyes might be down-turned to the reflection of the moon and down-turned to depths below the reflection of the moon, and down-turned to depths below all reflection: it remained that Odysseus, the son of Laertes, calmly awaited what seemed like the imminent destruction of the ship “Teras” or “Prodigy” by her collison with an island, or with a monster of the deep, or with the head of the Giant Atlas, or with another and much larger vessel.
Odysseus and Nisos, as well as Akron, became aware at this crucial moment of agitated and extremely jerky words being exchanged between Pontos and Proros as they tugged at the outstretched sail of the “Teras”. And, simultaneously with this dialogue between Pontos and Proros, Akron, the ship’s master, gave expression to a long deep-drawn weirdly hopeless whistle and clapt his other hand upon the mast, to which he now seemed to be clinging, as if expectant of some terrific shock.
Meanwhile the Club of Herakles whose private and personal name was either “Dokeesis”, “Seeming”, or “Prosdokia”, “Expectation”, translated the startling news he was getting from the Sixth Pillar for the benefit of the aged but absolutely normal human brain that now bent low above it. And the words from the Sixth Pillar that the Club of Herakles now repeated for the benefit of his King were terribly simple.
“The ship ‘Teras’ at this moment is running into extreme danger. The moon is full. And as she shines upon the water and as the water reflects her, the spirit of the Being at the ship’s bow is stirred within that Being as it remembers all the long nights it watched from the summit of the mountain Kunthorax the moon as a crescent, sharpening her horns of inversion, and rounding her horns of reversion, in creating and uncreating herself as the orb she is; and this stirring of whatever it may be of the spirit of this Being that still clings to its image is full of peril for the ship ‘Teras’, and indeed in a moment or two she may be shattered to pieces upon the Island of Wone.”
It was naturally only a weird murmuring that Nisos caught of all this; but there was something about the reverberation of the syllable “Wone” that struck his imagination as well as his ear; nor could he help being interested as well as faintly amused as he watched that familiar crack, in the very throat, as it were, of the great weapon the king was clutching, to see a beautiful moth flutter forth and fly straight to the troubled forehead of Enorches, who was now squatting on the deck, and, apparently absorbed in thought, was tearing into pieces a considerable handful of the particular kind of seaweed that has so many of those slippery little bladders growing out of it, which look as if they might explode at a touch.
Arrived at the forehead of Enorches which was such a prominent feature that it seemed to overhang the rest of the man’s face like a menacing avalanche, the moth fluttered restlessly up and down as if asking for permission to enter this recondite citadel of metaphysical mystery. Getting no apparent response it flew straight back to the club of Herakles.
And now at last our young would-be prophet was rewarded for the trouble he had taken on first catching the finger-nails of the Harpies at work on the Image of the Goddess of Order, the trouble to memorize a few words of the language of Insects.
“Moan for the Island of Wone!” was what Nisos heard. But the Fly heard more. So much did it hear that it straightway flew to the ear of Nisos to inform him and to force him to understand. This took some time. But when he did understand Nisos felt it to be his duty as a loyal adherent of the House of Odysseus to let that hero, who was already on his feet with one hand upon the shoulder of Akron and the other on the broad head of “Dokeesis”, know what he had learnt.
“When he sees,” the Fly had buzzed: and Nisos knew that it was of Enorches he was speaking, “that terrible pair from Arima, facing each other and arguing about the drowned city of Gom, he will reveal his secret.”
But it now came to pass that both Okyrhöe and Nausikaa sprang to their feet, while Akron, the master of the ship, uttering his commands to the brothers Pontos and Proros as if a great wave were at that moment hanging above their heads, joined with them to pull down the body of the sail, till it slapped the deck, as though it were slapping the back of some martial “hetairos”, or comrade-in-arms, at the start of a dangerous crisis.
It can be imagined how the brown moth awaited in their moving citadel within the “life-crack” of the club of Herakles the return of her friend the Fly. She had slipped out of his clutches to flutter to the help of Enorches so swiftly and unexpectedly, that he hadn’t been able to stop her. On his return therefore she greeted him with a protesting cry; pointing out how unfair it was that after scolding her for supporting the Priest of the Mysteries he yet should hasten to display just the same sort of partisan activity on behalf of those who were opposed to the Priest.
But the moth soon found that this particular moment was too tense with opposing currents of feeling to allow for their usual verbal dispute. “Hush, sweet fool!” cried the fly. And then, when she tried again: “Hold your tongue you flapperty twitter-thighs! Don’t you sec, little fool, that your friend the Priest is going to prick his own bubble?”
And indeed it was then that Nisos saw the Priest of the Mysteries leap up from the deck, throw away the seaweed with which he had been playing, and point with a pair of long bony arms at the flat, level, rocky Island that had suddenly risen out of the salt deep in front of them and now extended itself before the prow of the “Teras”.