IV
THE BLOOD-RED SEA
A hard fight it had been and a long, and the Wanderer was weary. He
took the tiller of the ship in his hand, and steered for the South and
for the noonday sun, which was now at his highest in the heavens. But
suddenly the bright light of the sky was darkened and the air was
filled with the rush, and the murmur, and the winnowing of innumerable
wings. It was as if all the birds that have their homes and seek their
food in the great salt marsh of Cayster had risen from the South and
had flown over sea in one hour, for the heaven was darkened with their
flight, and loud with the call of cranes and the whistling cry of the
wild ducks. So dark was the thick mass of flying fowl, that a flight
of swans shone snowy against the black cloud of their wings. At the
view of them the Wanderer caught his bow eagerly into his hand and set
an arrow on the string, and, taking a careful aim at the white wedge
of birds, he shot a wild swan through the breast as it swept high over
the mast. Then, with all the speed of its rush, the wild white swan
flashed down like lightning into the sea behind the ship. The Wanderer
watched its fall, when, lo! the water where the dead swan fell
splashed up as red as blood and all afoam! The long silver wings and
snowy plumage floated on the surface flecked with blood-red stains,
and the Wanderer marvelled as he bent over the bulwarks and gazed
steadily upon the sea. Then he saw that the wide sea round the ship
was covered, as far as the eye could reach, as it were with a blood-
red scum. Hither and thither the red stain was tossed like foam, yet
beneath, where the deep wave divided, the Wanderer saw that the
streams of the sea were grey and green below the crimson dye. As he
watched he saw, too, that the red froth was drifted always onward from
the South and from the mouth of the River of Egypt, for behind the
wake of the ship it was most red of all, though he had not marked it
when the battle raged. But in front the colour grew thin, as if the
stain that the river washed down was all but spent. In his heart the
Wanderer thought, as any man must have deemed, that on the banks of
the River of Egypt there had been some battle of great nations, and
that the War God had raged furiously, wherefore the holy river as it
ran forth stained all the sacred sea. Where war was, there was his
home, no other home had he now, and all the more eagerly he steered
right on to see what the Gods would send him. The flight of birds was
over and past; it was two hours after noon, the light was high in the
heaven, when, as he gazed, another shadow fell on him, for the sun in
mid-heaven grew small, and red as blood. Slowly a mist rose up over it
from the South, a mist that was thin but as black as night. Beyond, to
the southward, there was a bank of cloud like a mountain wall, steep,
and polished, and black, tipped along the ragged crest with fire, and
opening ever and again with flashes of intolerable splendour, while
the bases were scrawled over with lightning like a written scroll.
Never had the Wanderer in all his voyaging on the sea and on the great
River Oceanus that girdles the earth, and severs the dead from the
living men--never had he beheld such a darkness. Presently he came as
it were within the jaws of it, dark as a wolf's mouth, so dark that he
might not see the corpses on the deck, nor the mast, nor the dead man
swinging from the yard, nor the captain of the Phœnicians who groaned
aloud below, praying to his gods. But in the wake of the ship there
was one break of clear blue sky on the horizon, in which the little
isle where he had slain the Sidonians might be discerned far off, as
bright and white as ivory.
Now, though he knew it not, the gates of his own world were closing
behind the Wanderer for ever. To the North, whence he came, lay the
clear sky, and the sunny capes and isles, and the airy mountains of
the Argive lands, white with the temples of familiar Gods. But in face
of him, to the South, whither he went, was a cloud of darkness and a
land of darkness itself. There were things to befall more marvellous
than are told in any tale; there was to be a war of the peoples, and
of the Gods, the True Gods and the False, and there he should find the
last embraces of Love, the False Love and the True.
Foreboding somewhat of the perils that lay in front, the Wanderer was
tempted to shift his course and sail back to the sunlight. But he was
one that had never turned his hand from the plough, nor his foot from
the path, and he thought that now his path was fore-ordained. So he
lashed the tiller with a rope, and groped his way with his hands along
the deck till he reached the altar of the dwarf-gods, where the embers
of the sacrifice still were glowing faintly. Then with his sword he
cut some spear-shafts and broken arrows into white chips, and with
them he filled a little brazier, and taking the seed of fire from the
altar set light to it from beneath. Presently the wood blazed up
through the noonday night, and the fire flickered and flared on the
faces of the dead men that lay about the deck, rolling to larboard and
to starboard, as the vessel lurched, and the flame shone red on the
golden armour of the Wanderer.
Of all his voyages this was the strangest seafaring, he cruising
alone, with a company of the dead, deep into a darkness without
measure or bound, to a land that might not be descried. Strange gusts
of sudden wind blew him hither and thither. The breeze would rise in a
moment from any quarter, and die as suddenly as it rose, and another
wind would chase it over the chopping seas. He knew not if he sailed
South or North, he knew not how time passed, for there was no sight of
the sun. It was night without a dawn. Yet his heart was glad, as if he
had been a boy again, for the old sorrows were forgotten, so potent
was the draught of the chalice of the Goddess, and so keen was the
delight of battle.
"Endure, my heart," he cried, as often he had cried before, "a worse
thing than this thou hast endured," and he caught up a lyre of the
dead Sidonians, and sang:--
Though the light of the sun be hidden,
Though his race be run,
Though we sail in a sea forbidden
To the golden sun:
Though we wander alone, unknowing,--
Oh, heart of mine,--
The path of the strange sea-going,
Of the blood-red brine;
Yet endure! We shall not be shaken
By things worse than these;
We have 'scaped, when our friends were taken,
On the unsailed seas;
Worse deaths have we faced and fled from,
In the Cyclops' den,
When the floor of his cave ran red from
The blood of men;
Worse griefs have we known undaunted,
Worse fates have fled;
When the Isle that our long love haunted
Lay waste and dead!
So he was chanting when he descried, faint and far off, a red glow
cast up along the darkness like sunset on the sky of the Under-world.
For this light he steered, and soon he saw two tall pillars of flame
blazing beside each other, with a narrow space of night between them.
He helmed the ship towards these, and when he came near them they were
like two mighty mountains of wood burning far into heaven, and each
was lofty as the pyre that blazes over men slain in some red war, and
each pile roared and flared above a steep crag of smooth black basalt,
and between the burning mounds of fire lay the flame-flecked water of
a haven.
The ship neared the haven and the Wanderer saw, moving like fireflies
through the night, the lanterns in the prows of boats, and from one of
the boats a sailor hailed him in the speech of the people of Egypt,
asking him if he desired a pilot.
"Yea," he shouted. The boat drew near, and the pilot came aboard, a
torch in his hand; but when his eyes fell on the dead men in the ship,
and the horror hanging from the yard, and the captain bound to the
iron bar, and above all, on the golden armour of the hero, and on the
spear-point fast in his helm, and on his terrible face, he shrank back
in dread, as if the God Osiris himself, in the Ship of Death, had
reached the harbour. But the Wanderer bade him have no fear, telling
him that he came with much wealth and with a great gift for the
Pharaoh. The pilot, therefore, plucked up heart, and took the helm,
and between the two great hills of blazing fire the vessel glided into
the smooth waters of the River of Egypt, the flames glittering on the
Wanderer's mail as he stood by the mast and chanted the Song of the
Bow.
Then, by the counsel of the pilot, the vessel was steered up the river
towards the Temple of Heracles in Tanis, where there is a sanctuary
for strangers, and where no man may harm them. But first, the dead
Sidonians were cast overboard into the great river, for the dead
bodies of men are an abomination to the Egyptians. And as each body
struck the water the Wanderer saw a hateful sight, for the face of the
river was lashed into foam by the sudden leaping and rushing of huge
four-footed fish, or so the Wanderer deemed them. The sound of the
heavy plunging of the great water-beasts, as they darted forth on the
prey, smiting at each other with their tails, and the gnashing of
their jaws when they bit too eagerly, and only harmed the air, and the
leap of a greedy sharp snout from the waves, even before the dead man
cast from the ship had quite touched the water--these things were
horrible to see and hear through the blackness and by the firelight. A
River of Death it seemed, haunted by the horrors that are said to prey
upon the souls and bodies of the Dead. For the first time the heart of
the Wanderer died within him, at the horror of the darkness and of
this dread river and of the water-beasts that dwelt within it. Then he
remembered how the birds had fled in terror from this place, and he
bethought him of the blood-red sea.
When the dead men were all cast overboard and the river was once more
still, the Wanderer spoke, sick at heart, and inquired of the pilot
why the sea had run so red, and whether war was in the land, and why
there was night over all that country. The fellow answered that there
was no war, but peace, yet the land was strangely plagued with frogs
and locusts and lice in all their coasts, the sacred river Sihor
running red for three whole days, and now, at last, for this the third
day, darkness over all the world. But as to the cause of these curses
the pilot knew nothing, being a plain man. Only the story went among
the people that the Gods were angry with Khem (as they call Egypt),
which indeed was easy to see, for those things could come only from
the Gods. But why they were angered the pilot knew not, still it was
commonly thought that the Divine Hathor, the Goddess of Love, was
wroth because of the worship given in Tanis to one they called THE
STRANGE HATHOR, a goddess or a woman of wonderful beauty, whose Temple
was in Tanis. Concerning her the pilot said that many years ago, some
thirty years, she had first appeared in the country, coming none knew
whence, and had been worshipped in Tanis, and had again departed as
mysteriously as she came. But now she had once more chosen to appear
visible to men, strangely, and to dwell in her temple; and the men who
beheld her could do nothing but worship her for her beauty. Whether
she was a mortal woman or a goddess the pilot did not know, only he
thought that she who dwells in Atarhechis, Hathor of Khem, the Queen
of Love, was angry with the strange Hathor, and had sent the darkness
and the plagues to punish them who worshipped her. The people of the
seaboard also murmured that it would be well to pray the Strange
Hathor to depart out of their coasts, if she were a goddess; and if
she were a woman to stone her with stones. But the people of Tanis
vowed that they would rather die, one and all, than do aught but adore
the incomparable beauty of their strange Goddess. Others again, held
that two wizards, leaders of certain slaves of a strange race,
wanderers from the desert, settled in Tanis, whom they called the
Apura, caused all these sorrows by art-magic. As if, forsooth, said
the pilot, those barbarian slaves were more powerful than all the
priests of Egypt. But for his part, the pilot knew nothing, only that
if the Divine Hathor were angry with the people of Tanis it was hard
that she must plague all the land of Khem.
So the pilot murmured, and his tale was none of the shortest; but even
as he spoke the darkness grew less dark and the cloud lifted a little
so that the shores of the river might be seen in a green light like
the light of Hades, and presently the night was rolled up like a veil,
and it was living noonday in the land of Khem. Then all the noise of
life broke forth in one moment, the kine lowing, the wind swaying the
feathery palms, the fish splashing in the stream, men crying to each
other from the river banks, and the voice of multitudes of people in
every red temple praising Ra, their great God, whose dwelling is the
Sun. The Wanderer, too, praised his own Gods, and gave thanks to
Apollo, and to Helios Hyperion, and to Aphrodite. And in the end the
pilot brought the ship to the quay of a great city, and there a crew
of oarsmen was hired, and they sped rejoicing in the sunlight, through
a canal dug by the hands of men, to Tanis and the Sanctuary of
Heracles, the Safety of Strangers. There the ship was moored, there
the Wanderer rested, having a good welcome from the shaven priests of
the temple.
