IV
THE BLOOD-RED SEA
A hard fight it had been and a long, and the Wanderer was weary. He tookthe tiller of the ship in his hand, and steered for the South andfor the noonday sun, which was now at his highest in the heavens. Butsuddenly the bright light of the sky was darkened and the air was filledwith 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 inthe great salt marsh of Cayster had risen from the South and had flownover sea in one hour, for the heaven was darkened with their flight, andloud 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 shonesnowy against the black cloud of their wings. At the view of them theWanderer caught his bow eagerly into his hand and set an arrow on thestring, and, taking a careful aim at the white wedge of birds, he shot awild 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 likelightning 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 bloodand all afoam! The long silver wings and snowy plumage floated on thesurface flecked with blood-red stains, and the Wanderer marvelled as hebent over the bulwarks and gazed steadily upon the sea. Then he saw thatthe 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 wastossed like foam, yet beneath, where the deep wave divided, the Wanderersaw that the streams of the sea were grey and green below the crimsondye. As he watched he saw, too, that the red froth was drifted alwaysonward from the South and from the mouth of the River of Egypt, forbehind the wake of the ship it was most red of all, though he had notmarked it when the battle raged. But in front the colour grew thin, asif the stain that the river washed down was all but spent. In his heartthe Wanderer thought, as any man must have deemed, that on the banks ofthe River of Egypt there had been some battle of great nations, andthat the War God had raged furiously, wherefore the holy river as it ranforth stained all the sacred sea. Where war was, there was his home, noother home had he now, and all the more eagerly he steered right on tosee 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 grewsmall, 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 everand again with flashes of intolerable splendour, while the bases werescrawled over with lightning like a written scroll. Never had theWanderer in all his voyaging on the sea and on the great River Oceanusthat girdles the earth, and severs the dead from the living men--neverhad he beheld such a darkness. Presently he came as it were within thejaws of it, dark as a wolf's mouth, so dark that he might not see thecorpses on the deck, nor the mast, nor the dead man swinging from theyard, nor the captain of the Phoenicians who groaned aloud below, prayingto his gods. But in the wake of the ship there was one break of clearblue sky on the horizon, in which the little isle where he had slain theSidonians might be discerned far off, as bright and white as ivory.
Now, though he knew it not, the gates of his own world were closingbehind the Wanderer for ever. To the North, whence he came, lay theclear sky, and the sunny capes and isles, and the airy mountains of theArgive lands, white with the temples of familiar Gods. But in face ofhim, to the South, whither he went, was a cloud of darkness and a landof darkness itself. There were things to befall more marvellous than aretold 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 embracesof Love, the False Love and the True.
Foreboding somewhat of the perils that lay in front, the Wanderer wastempted to shift his course and sail back to the sunlight. But he wasone that had never turned his hand from the plough, nor his foot fromthe path, and he thought that now his path was fore-ordained. So helashed the tiller with a rope, and groped his way with his hands alongthe deck till he reached the altar of the dwarf-gods, where the embersof the sacrifice still were glowing faintly. Then with his sword he cutsome spear-shafts and broken arrows into white chips, and with them hefilled a little brazier, and taking the seed of fire from the altarset light to it from beneath. Presently the wood blazed up through thenoonday night, and the fire flickered and flared on the faces of thedead 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 ofthe 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 orbound, to a land that might not be descried. Strange gusts of suddenwind blew him hither and thither. The breeze would rise in a momentfrom any quarter, and die as suddenly as it rose, and another windwould chase it over the chopping seas. He knew not if he sailed South orNorth, 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 aboy again, for the old sorrows were forgotten, so potent was the draughtof 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 worsething than this thou hast endured," and he caught up a lyre of the deadSidonians, 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 castup along the darkness like sunset on the sky of the Under-world. Forthis light he steered, and soon he saw two tall pillars of flame blazingbeside each other, with a narrow space of night between them. He helmedthe ship towards these, and when he came near them they were like twomighty mountains of wood burning far into heaven, and each was loftyas the pyre that blazes over men slain in some red war, and each pileroared and flared above a steep crag of smooth black basalt, and betweenthe burning mounds of fire lay the flame-flecked water of a haven.
The ship neared the haven and the Wanderer saw, moving like firefliesthrough the night, the lanterns in the prows of boats, and from oneof 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, atorch 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 theiron bar, and above all, on the golden armour of the hero, and on thespear-point fast in his helm, and on his terrible face, he shrankback in dread, as if the God Osiris himself, in the Ship of Death, hadreached the harbour. But the Wanderer bade him have no fear, telling himthat he came with much wealth and with a great gift for the Pharaoh. Thepilot, therefore, plucked up heart, and took the helm, and between thetwo great hills of blazing fire the vessel glided into the smooth watersof the River of Egypt, the flames glittering on the Wanderer's mail ashe stood by the mast and chanted the Song of the Bow.
Then, by the counsel of the pilot, the vessel was steered up the rivertowards the Temple of Heracles in Tanis, where there is a sanctuary forstrangers, and where no man may harm them. But first, the dead Sidonianswere cast overboard into the great river, for the dead bodies of men arean abomination to the Egyptians. And as each body struck the wate
r theWanderer saw a hateful sight, for the face of the river was lashed intofoam by the sudden leaping and rushing of huge four-footed fish, or sothe Wanderer deemed them. The sound of the heavy plunging of the greatwater-beasts, as they darted forth on the prey, smiting at each otherwith their tails, and the gnashing of their jaws when they bit tooeagerly, and only harmed the air, and the leap of a greedy sharp snoutfrom the waves, even before the dead man cast from the ship had quitetouched the water--these things were horrible to see and hear throughthe blackness and by the firelight. A River of Death it seemed, hauntedby the horrors that are said to prey upon the souls and bodies of theDead. 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 thewater-beasts that dwelt within it. Then he remembered how the birds hadfled in terror from this place, and he bethought him of the blood-redsea.
When the dead men were all cast overboard and the river was once morestill, the Wanderer spoke, sick at heart, and inquired of the pilot whythe sea had run so red, and whether war was in the land, and why therewas night over all that country. The fellow answered that there wasno war, but peace, yet the land was strangely plagued with frogs andlocusts and lice in all their coasts, the sacred river Sihor running redfor three whole days, and now, at last, for this the third day, darknessover all the world. But as to the cause of these curses the pilot knewnothing, being a plain man. Only the story went among the people thatthe Gods were angry with Khem (as they call Egypt), which indeed waseasy to see, for those things could come only from the Gods. But whythey were angered the pilot knew not, still it was commonly thought thatthe Divine Hathor, the Goddess of Love, was wroth because of the worshipgiven in Tanis to one they called THE STRANGE HATHOR, a goddess or awoman of wonderful beauty, whose Temple was in Tanis. Concerning herthe pilot said that many years ago, some thirty years, she hadfirst appeared in the country, coming none knew whence, and had beenworshipped 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 nothingbut worship her for her beauty. Whether she was a mortal woman or agoddess the pilot did not know, only he thought that she who dwellsin Atarhechis, Hathor of Khem, the Queen of Love, was angry with thestrange Hathor, and had sent the darkness and the plagues to punish themwho worshipped her. The people of the seaboard also murmured that itwould 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 andall, than do aught but adore the incomparable beauty of their strangeGoddess. Others again, held that two wizards, leaders of certain slavesof a strange race, wanderers from the desert, settled in Tanis, whomthey called the Apura, caused all these sorrows by art-magic. As if,forsooth, said the pilot, those barbarian slaves were more powerful thanall the priests of Egypt. But for his part, the pilot knew nothing, onlythat if the Divine Hathor were angry with the people of Tanis it washard that she must plague all the land of Khem.
So the pilot murmured, and his tale was none of the shortest; but evenas he spoke the darkness grew less dark and the cloud lifted a littleso that the shores of the river might be seen in a green light like thelight of Hades, and presently the night was rolled up like a veil, andit was living noonday in the land of Khem. Then all the noise oflife broke forth in one moment, the kine lowing, the wind swaying thefeathery palms, the fish splashing in the stream, men crying to eachother from the river banks, and the voice of multitudes of people inevery red temple praising Ra, their great God, whose dwelling is theSun. The Wanderer, too, praised his own Gods, and gave thanks to Apollo,and to Helios Hyperion, and to Aphrodite. And in the end the pilotbrought the ship to the quay of a great city, and there a crew ofoarsmen was hired, and they sped rejoicing in the sunlight, through acanal dug by the hands of men, to Tanis and the Sanctuary of Heracles,the Safety of Strangers. There the ship was moored, there the Wandererrested, having a good welcome from the shaven priests of the temple.