And why, in the name of any goddus or goddess or spirit or genii, was he, in the midst of the wild wide sea, cursing an ox? — not to stop, not to pause, his right thumb prickled, was that not enough? was that not the gift (besides the gift of her body, a good gift in itself) of the priestess of “those who make plans in the night,” back there beneath the odorous walnut-tree: that his right thumb should prickle as a warning and a guidance? aware of woe —
Spindle made, it was said, of a dead man’s rib boiled in vinegar to make it supple and limber and easy for its shape to change: a thing well-fit for the Norns, those Northish ones whose name was brought south by the Varangian guards to Micklegarth, “Great City,” as they called Byzantinople; Byzance-town; and why should the Norns not spin the fate-threads for the oxen of the isles or wherever their attention was called? … summoned thereto …?
The toiling crew peered at him out of the corners of their eyes; their arm-, leg-, and back-muscles looking like cables strained so that they might crack and snap any moment now; but out of their eyes’ corners shown now some faint lust of hope, to see the magus on his knees; hope, despite the loudening clamor of Juno! Juno! Juno!: and, intrusively, there was coming again the line from the Oracles of Maro … eh? … ah … yes … much loved by Juno, antient Carthage, stained with purple, and heavy with gold …
Not to stop nor to pause. Onward.
Now! There would happen —
Nothing happened. Except of course —
“Juno! Juno!”
And that huge, it seemed very huge now, Carthage ship grew steadily nigher.
Either the Curse was, for whatever reason (including, possibly, a lie: even dying men sometimes lie, alas; sometimes even dead men lie … alas …), futile — or, somewhere, an hundred parasangs away, a blood-red ox with pendulous dew-laps and shambling gait, lurching and straining in the furrow of the loamy earth, had of a sudden stumbled: an ox-horn, grass-tied or not, plowing of a sudden, a furrow of its own — and, if so, what good? On the ship’s sodden deck lay a blade of grass, a leaf of common green grass, as to which the Theophrast said nothing: from Abana Balm to Zenobian Zinziber the Theophrast had much to say: about the common bladed grass: nothing. On Vergil’s knee, where it had knelt beside the dying ox-thrall, a leaf of greeny grass. Of … nothing. Grass was nothing.
Vergil thought again of the tenth and twelfth lines (the eleventh was blotted and rubbed) of the viith book of Concerning Things Seen in the Summer, the provenience of which remains unknow, videlixet:
Against all Cities of the World may Cartha hope to triumph, save that against Graund Babylone may Cartha lift no Thing of Bronze nor Iron. And doth Cartha ken this well … Anent that Soldane of Graund Babylone which did eat Grass like ane Ox, a further accompt is given …[13]
The blade of green and common grass which now lay upon the deck, scanty deckling that there was in all that hollow ship, idly that morning before leaving in haste the land, he had carelessly plucked the leaf and into his hat had thrust it; forgotten, it had fallen from the hat, here it was. He imagined just such a thing falling from an ox’s wet muzzle … why had the Babylone soldane eaten grass like an ox? … someday he hoped to know … and he conjectured a vision that the ox was red. And simultaneously he concentrated on the words of the Emperor Julius II, festina (he’d said) lente. Slowly hasten. Lentor inexorable. Very careful feeling indeed, Vergil clove the leaf of grass in two, let fall the half with the rib, placed the other half sideways in the hollow formed by the apposition of his thumbs, carefully brought the arrangement to his lips: and blew. A squeak, a squawk, the leather badge dissolved to dust, there came a sharp sound, then a quite different noise — as loud a crash as the arm of a ballista or some other catapult, suddenly free from tension and striking its bar the instant before the missile was flung forth.
Every braided-leather rope holding the vast sail and heavy mast of the vasty massy Punic ship broke, flew frazzled and writhing, dissolved, vanished. Hair and horn was far now from Vergil’s ken, but Hide had Ceased to abide. The mast, unsupported by the braided-leather shrouds, the mast was down, cracking planks and timbers. The great linen sail flopped flapping every which way, uncontrolled, uncontrollable, useless: down.
The aghast and furious face of Josaias seen in the immense confusion, Vergil saw that himself was seen; seen, observed, identified: what face — Josaias — frightful in hate …!
The great Carthage ship, so suddenly fractured, floundered in the trough between two huge waves; and the tiny galley, with its tiny sail intact (intact, too, the weakling rushy ropes: papyrus, iris) crawled up the inner surface of the greater wave like an insect; climbed and clambered over its top, flowed down the other side. The winds fell and the mists closed in again, as cold and impartial as when they had opened, and from within the mists came an echo of ever-dwindling cries: “Juno! Juno!”
But it was not now the voice of them that triumph, the sound of them that feast.
The rowers rolled their eyes to their captain, he gestured. The oars on one side went up and for the next stroke did not come down, the oars on the other side went row! the small ship swerved on an angle; then both banks of oars played again, but (another gesture of Polycarpu’s) more slowly. The speed was somedel reduced, but so was the sound of the oars: an important consideration when the heavier atoms of the fog carried sound more weightily. Right now the ship of Carthage, assuming it did not sink: a mere assumption: it could not now follow, but no need was there at all to give them even a hint that the smaller craft was changing course nor hint to what direction that course might be. “I had hoped to make for Aspamia or the Baleares or even, ahap, the coasts of Frankland: but twold be belike too far,” the captain said, almost as aside to Vergil. “Right along the rhumb-lines,” is what Vergil at first thought he heard the captain directing the helmsman as he showed him the cartolan, unrolled in his hands. But in a moment he realized that — for what meant obliquities to the meridean for a seaman on such a barco as this? nought. — what Polycarpu must have said was, “Right along the wind-lines,” showing him on the cartolan how the winds … Boreas, Sirocco, Zephyro, Levanto, Septentrio, and all the others (“the Twelve Petals of the Compass-Rose”) … went from here to yon: as though any wind might be directed to follow a line, like a pullet in a spelclass="underline" they were lines of probability, and no more. But it gave a mighty strong hint to the helmsman, and he might now observe which way the waves were ruffled, and snuff the breezes for the smells of land, with greater confidence. And after no more than a blink or two, the helmsman nodded. No ship might follow a map in a mist, but the mere sight of the cartolan gave him that confidence: in his mind he followed, and he turned his helm. Polycarpu bore away the chart, and … with a deep bow and a most respectful gesture to Vergil (pulling over his head an imaginary toga, like a priest in a temple facing the king of the sacrifice) … resumed his sempiternal striding up and down the deck, up and down, again and again, back and forth.