“There they are!” cried the Priest hoarsely. “But it’s only another big ship with two tall masts!” screamed Okyrhöe. “It must be another ship! It shall be another ship! Those two things sticking up there, I say those two things there, shan’t be anything else than two thick ugly Cretan masts!”
But Odysseus had suddenly swung round and was now addressing a quiet figure whose head, emerging from the ladder leading to the lower deck, had been followed by a pair of easily-shrugged shoulders and an active mobile body, clad, for this special occasion it would almost seem, in the most conventional attire.
“Zeuks! Zeuks! My good friend! Do you mind coming here for a second!” cried the old hero; and in all this whirligig of a phantasmagoric pandemonium Nisos was so hit by the old man’s calm that while Zeuks hurried to their side he began scolding himself for the agitation he felt and for the fit of trembling that had seized him.
“Pray to Atropos, you immeasurable ass,” he muttered to himself. “Pray that you may never forget what you now see, or, by the gods! that it may be the last thing you do see, before we’re all drowned! … just a feeble old man with a pointed beard and this ‘Jack-O-Lanthorn’ on his head reducing the howling chaos of a wilderness of waters to something comparatively unimportant!”
“Can you catch,” the king was now asking Zeuks, “what this priest of Orpheus is saying as he watches us strike this island?”
And Zeuks answered: “He is confessing to you and to Eros and to Dionysos and to all those he has drawn after him that he has only used his praise of Love and Drink and his Priesthood of Orpheus and of the Mysteries to conceal his advocacy of universal Death. Life ought never, he says, to have started; and the sooner it sinks back into Nothingness the better for us all!”
CHAPTER XI
For all his good seamanship the skipper of the “Teras” or “Prodigy” was at heart, much more than his second-in-command and much more than any of his crew, whether their business was with oar or with sail, a born carpenter.
Thus it was his, Akron’s, crouching back that was the first object to arrest the attention of our friend Nisos when, not without having to overcome several physical and even a few mental impediments, he reached the bottom of the hold and was separated from the bottom of the sea by nothing but salt water and a double layer of inch-thick planks.
“More ‘Kolla’ I tell you! I must have a lot more ‘Kolla!’” was the cry that issued from beneath that hunched-over spine. “Glue! More glue!” was in fact the word that in hoarsely groaned accents emerged from that massive head and hooked nose. These were bent so low between the pair of formidable hands now at work squeezing the stuff into place, that the image presented by the red flames beneath the cauldron of melting glue as they flickered over the kneeling man and over the group of dark-skinned boys who were helping him was really like that of a huge Raven, who, with its beak and claws working together, was engaged in the construction of the Gods alone knew what sort of impregnable nest.
“O it’s you, is it?” Akron cried, straightening his back, though still remaining on his knees. “What I want now is one of those bronze hammers to smash this damned spike of rock! No! No! Heavier, much heavier than that! Go in there, where they are, Nisos, will you, and bring me the heaviest you can find!”
Nisos looked round him in some bewilderment; for the intense blackness of the shadows, and the red flickerings from the fire under the cauldron that was keeping the glue fluid, made up between them such an Hephaistian Smithy, as might well have been started by an insane as well as a lame god of fire at the bottom of the ocean!
But one of the black Libyan boys was quick to see his confusion and led him at once to the recess referred to as “in there” out of which he was soon able to extract the sort of long-handled hammer that was the instrument needed. Armed with this he returned to the bent figure of Akron, handed him the huge hammer, and watched eagerly to see what he would do.
The effect of what he saw at that moment lodged itself in his brain so deeply that always, after that, when he found himself in a place where there was anything to remind him of black protruding shadows and cavities full of whirling tongues of scarlet fire, all the impressions of that moment rushed back upon him.
It was the presence of that burning fire under the cauldron of melted glue in connection with the bottom of the ocean that hit him so hard. The element of fire, though taking up only so small a space compared with the terrific mass of water that surrounded it, drew into itself and flung out of itself, as it whirled its bloody circles round and round, an essence of existence that was at once absolute and unique.
But the master of the “Teras” straightened his back, took the long-handed hammer in his hand, and struck that up-thrusting point of rock one — two — three — terrific blows. At the first blow that rough projection of time-crumpled, space-naked rock shivered and cracked. At the second blow a fragment was whirled away. At the third blow the whole piece of rock went crashing off and was sent hurtling through the air to one of the pitch-black corners of the hold. Then there came bursting out of the hole made by that pointed rock a violent spout of sea-water; and down above this jet of brine Akron crouched again, squeezing into that jagged rent handful after handful of “kolla”, or semi-solid glue, snatched out of the cauldron. From a pile of carefully selected narrow slips of wood one of the black Libyan boys now handed Akron several freshly smoothed and rounded-off pieces of wood, by the aid of which, squeezed in with the malleable “kolla” or glue, this dangerous rent in the keel of the “Teras” was soon mended.
But they were now confronted by the yet more difficult business of getting the ship well away from the dangerous edges of the small island of Wone while they still kept within reach of it. Akron himself hurried to the oarsmen’s deck; for he had already decided that for this particularly ticklish and hazardous undertaking of getting the “Teras” clear of Wone and yet circumnavigating the island till they were well to the west of it, they would be better and safer in the hands of their oarsmen than of the men who manipulated their great sail.
One special advantage which this choice of Akron’s possessed Nisos realized to the full directly the two of them were on the oarsmen deck along with the four rowers. The crucial direction and management of the whole manoeuvre was now free from the presence of Nausikaa and Okyrhöe as well as of Eione and Pontopereia.
Zeuks however was still there, having deposited Arsinöe in the cabin of Odysseus, doubtless under the vague idea inherited from his immortal begetter, Arcadian Pan, that the only conceivable relation between a captive lady and a great sacker of cities was the sharing of a night’s sleep. Fortunately for the “Teras” and for them all the sharply-pointed rock that had pierced the keel was at the extreme end of a little promontory; so that at the first strong pull of the four long oars the ship swung clear of the island and was in deep water.
Ordering the four men to go on with an evenly-timed spell of steady rowing, Akron now ran up the ladder to the top-deck followed hurriedly by Nisos; and, once on that deck, instead of approaching the group near the mast where Odysseus was watching events with the detachment of an alert sea-lion, he strode quickly to the ship’s stern to join the helmsman. He didn’t presume himself to touch the “Teras’s” helm, as the business of steering a ship as big as she was was no light task, and required a man not only with a special training but with special endowments.