He said nothing as he went.
Vergil was not used to the house-high waves of the Great Green Sea of Atlantis (what sensible man ever was?) … and no ordinary house of a man’s height plus half of a man’s height, but of those towering tenements called islands … might not waves so high sweep clear over actual islands? With such thoughts one ought not to entertain oneself in such rough weather on such rough sea; the Romans had a saying, Only Greeks and fools go much to sea. Odd that to the Romans, Greece was the epitome of sea-faring, while the Greeks themselves said Ship-shape as a Punicman: what said the Punes? perhaps they praised the ships of Tartis. Although the Carthagans, still rough-mannered colonials compared to the mellow Punic folk of Tyre and Sidon, the Carthagans were not at all likely to praise any place but Carthage … though, as any schoolboy knew, Carthage had been destroyed.
Destroyed, too: Vergil’s hope that he might in unvexed security return from Tingitayne.
Groping his hand into his budget for a clean cloth to wipe his mouth, he encountered a small bouguin, what was it but that Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne which Nephew-to-Sergius had given him to boot in Corsica. Seldom could Vergil resist the seduction of a new book and however old chronologically or corporally this one was, twas new to him: he read in it till the seas seemed monstrous rough, then slipped it back away. Every atom in his body seemed now at war with every other atom, he covered his body from the spume and spray and fell into a dull state in which he half-dreamed he was in the bough of a tree, the while drinking an infusion of sage and ginger for his stomach: there seemed a conversation going on between two men whose voices he could not then identify, familiar though they seemed. Ginger is cheap this season, one was saying; ginger is cheap, a pound of ginger now costs no more than a sheep. Cheerful and jocular was his voice. And another, graver and somedel pettish: Why should any wise man sicken or die who has sage growing in his garden-herbs?
Vergil dozed, slumbered, awoke, tossed as the ship, tossed, slumbered, awoke, and finally fell into a state in which wakefulness and doze and daze and sleep and fretful confusion were all alike mixed. All jests about sea-sickness fell into the abyss. He was wounded with a mortal wound and the first sickening shock thereof continued, shocking and sickening, without abatement. Whither did the vessel go? This was no offshore sea, rolling merely restlessly between Negroponte and the Grecian main, or between Italy and Corsica, or off the lands of the Ligurians. Something was deeply different and deeply wrong: this sea had neither bottom nor shores! He strove to leave his body and go soaring aloft to spy out where they might be and then inform and guide the sea-men of the ship; but the waves, the winds, the spume and spray, beat him back, beat him back, beat him down: and thus he continued and abode long a while.
He awoke into a different world. To his starboard spread a quiet sea; quiet but not at all sluggish like the waters of the Putrid Sea adjacent to the Paleus Maeotis and whose size — their sizes — remained a mystery: a light wind stirred the waters as it stirred his hair.
The noises of the ship — the creaking of the planks and timbers, the rattling of the ropes, the luffing of the sails — all still continued, but not loudly nor frantically. To his larboard stretched the land: now tawny, now green, trees dotted the coast and hills, and along the edge of it were white and yellow sands. The sunlight there was different: the sunlight, fractured, shattered, was reflected from a million shattered crystals (themselves not seen); the sunlight was reflected by the facets of a spadai æon of atoms; and these reflections sparkled without dazzling: unstinted … untainted … and untorn. The captain, Plauto, greeted him, in rather an abstract manner.
“What shore?” asked Vergil. “What coast of people?”
Plauto opened his mouth, closed it, shrugged. “Well, ser. It is the old story. We have been carried off our course by storm. We had intended to make for the Islands,” a slight emphasis here, “… our usual way … then to come back into the Mainland by a southwest route,” his arms and hands described a rough triangle — from the Mainland to the Islands (whichever islands they were), from the Islands to the Mainland — it was a large enough triangle, and, had it been completed, would have saved the ship from hugging quite a section of the coast. As for trading opportunities missed along that section, this, as it occurred to Vergil, must have occurred to Plauto as well. However. There was perhaps therewith those Islands which had so much made visiting them worth the while that Plauto had never ceased to do so, even though it meant that, season after season, venture after venture, never once in his life did he forbear to do so; recking nothing of the neglected possibilities of the mute commerce and the trading post, into which that curious marketing so oft developed.
“… and to speak the truth —”
“As is your invariable way of speaking,” Vergil said, gravely. He could hardly overlook this opportunity of sticking the long needle in, of reminding Plauto, now more-or-less his friend, of that trick and decept by which he had lured Vergil aboard his scummy bark in the first place; easily lying about his course and destination in order to get the stranger’s passage-fee. But Plauto, either expecting no sarcasm or accepting this description of himself — certainly the way in which he would wish to be seen — as accurate, Plauto nodded. “— to speak the truth, Ser Doctor, I don’t know this coast and shore at all. And though we shall soon need water …” Plauto did not continue the sentence. He did not need to; its implications were obvious. And — head for a green section, as likely to have water (else why and how was it green?), why … bless you … the water was as likely to flow underground as not. And Plauto and his men were not tap-roots.
Vergil scanned the coast. Then he nodded. Gestured. “That blink of white? That will be the rock called The Skull. Just past it will be a small cove, and at the head of the cove a small trickle of water. Very small. And very slow. Not enough to fill the butts. But enough to give us a drink. All of us. And then …” He paused to intensify the effect. “And then … after half a day’s sail, we come to the region called Huldah.”
Plauto’s face quickened. His face showed more nor one emotion. “Ah, ser! And here I thought that you were an entire stranger to these lands! The Skull! The region called Huldah! I have heard of them! My thanks, Ser Doctor! My thanks —” Here he seemed just a bit troubled, literally swept the look off his face with his hand, called out something to the crew. Vergil saw the helmsman’s arms and shoulders move. Presently the ship was seen to stand down the vast bay and proceed more closely along the shore.
VI
The Region Called Huldah
We should sight it, then, after that headland there,” Plauto had said, meaning The Region Called Huldah. And Vergil had nodded.