I
THE SILENT ISLE
Across the wide backs of the waves, beneath the mountains, and betweenthe islands, a ship came stealing from the dark into the dusk, and fromthe dusk into the dawn. The ship had but one mast, one broad brown sailwith a star embroidered on it in gold; her stem and stern were builthigh, and curved like a bird's beak; her prow was painted scarlet, andshe was driven by oars as well as by the western wind.
A man stood alone on the half-deck at the bows, a man who looked alwaysforward, through the night, and the twilight, and the clear morning. Hewas of no great stature, but broad-breasted and very wide-shouldered,with many signs of strength. He had blue eyes, and dark curled locksfalling beneath a red cap such as sailors wear, and over a purple cloak,fastened with a brooch of gold. There were threads of silver in hiscurls, and his beard was flecked with white. His whole heart wasfollowing his eyes, watching first for the blaze of the island beaconsout of the darkness, and, later, for the smoke rising from the far-offhills. But he watched in vain; there was neither light nor smoke on thegrey peak that lay clear against a field of yellow sky.
There was no smoke, no fire, no sound of voices, nor cry of birds. Theisle was deadly still.
As they neared the coast, and neither heard nor saw a sign of life, theman's face fell. The gladness went out of his eyes, his features grewolder with anxiety and doubt, and with longing for tidings of his home.
No man ever loved his home more than he, for this was Odysseus, theson of Laertes--whom some call Ulysses--returned from his unsung secondwandering. The whole world has heard the tale of his first voyage, howhe was tossed for ten years on the sea after the taking of Troy, howhe reached home at last, alone and disguised as a beggar; how he foundviolence in his house, how he slew his foes in his own hall, and won hiswife again. But even in his own country he was not permitted to rest,for there was a curse upon him and a labour to be accomplished. He mustwander again till he reached the land of men who had never tasted salt,nor ever heard of the salt sea. There he must sacrifice to the Sea-God,and then, at last, set his face homewards. Now he had endured thatcurse, he had fulfilled the prophecy, he had angered, by misadventure,the Goddess who was his friend, and after adventures that have never yetbeen told, he had arrived within a bowshot of Ithaca.
He came from strange countries, from the Gates of the Sun and from WhiteRock, from the Passing Place of Souls and the people of Dreams.
But he found his own isle more still and strange by far. The realm ofDreams was not so dumb, the Gates of the Sun were not so still, as theshores of the familiar island beneath the rising dawn.
This story, whereof the substance was set out long ago by Rei, theinstructed Egyptian priest, tells what he found there, and the tale ofthe last adventures of Odysseus, Laertes' son.
The ship ran on and won the well-known haven, sheltered from wind by twoheadlands of sheer cliff. There she sailed straight in, till the leavesof the broad olive tree at the head of the inlet were tangled in hercordage. Then the Wanderer, without once looking back, or saying oneword of farewell to his crew, caught a bough of the olive tree with hishand, and swung himself ashore. Here he kneeled, and kissed the earth,and, covering his head within his cloak, he prayed that he might findhis house at peace, his wife dear and true, and his son worthy of him.
But not one word of his prayer was to be granted. The Gods give andtake, but on the earth the Gods cannot restore.
When he rose from his knees he glanced back across the waters, but therewas now no ship in the haven, nor any sign of a sail upon the seas.
And still the land was silent; not even the wild birds cried a welcome.
The sun was hardly up, men were scarce awake, the Wanderer said tohimself; and he set a stout heart to the steep path leading up the hill,over the wolds, and across the ridge of rock that divides the two massesof the island. Up he climbed, purposing, as of old, to seek the house ofhis faithful servant, the swineherd, and learn from him the tidings ofhis home. On the brow of a hill he stopped to rest, and looked down onthe house of the servant. But the strong oak palisade was broken, nosmoke came from the hole in the thatched roof, and, as he approached,the dogs did not run barking, as sheep-dogs do, at the stranger. Thevery path to the house was overgrown, and dumb with grass; even a dog'skeen ears could scarcely have heard a footstep.
The door of the swineherd's hut was open, but all was dark within. Thespiders had woven a glittering web across the empty blackness, a signthat for many days no man had entered. Then the Wanderer shouted twice,and thrice, but the only answer was an echo from the hill. He went in,hoping to find food, or perhaps a spark of fire sheltered under the dryleaves. But all was vacant and cold as death.
The Wanderer came forth into the warm sunlight, set his face to the hillagain, and went on his way to the city of Ithaca.
He saw the sea from the hill-top glittering as of yore, but there wereno brown sails of fisher-boats on the sea. All the land that should nowhave waved with the white corn was green with tangled weeds. Half-waydown the rugged path was a grove of alders, and the basin into whichwater flowed from the old fountain of the Nymphs. But no maidens werethere with their pitchers; the basin was broken, and green with mould;the water slipped through the crevices and hurried to the sea. Therewere no offerings of wayfarers, rags and pebbles, by the well; and onthe altar of the Nymphs the flame had long been cold. The very asheswere covered with grass, and a branch of ivy had hidden the stone ofsacrifice.
On the Wanderer pressed with a heavy heart; now the high roof of his ownhall and the wide fenced courts were within his sight, and he hurriedforward to know the worst.
Too soon he saw that the roofs were smokeless, and all the court wasdeep in weeds. Where the altar of Zeus had stood in the midst of thecourt there was now no altar, but a great, grey mound, not of earth, butof white dust mixed with black. Over this mound the coarse grass prickedup scantily, like thin hair on a leprosy.
Then the Wanderer shuddered, for out of the grey mound peeped thecharred black bones of the dead. He drew near, and, lo! the whole heapwas of nothing else than the ashes of men and women. Death had been busyhere: here many people had perished of a pestilence. They had all beenconsumed on one funeral fire, while they who laid them there must havefled, for there was no sign of living man. The doors gaped open, andnone entered, and none came forth. The house was dead, like the peoplewho had dwelt in it.
Then the Wanderer paused where once the old hound Argos had welcomed himand had died in that welcome. There, unwelcomed, he stood, leaning onhis staff. Then a sudden ray of the sun fell on something that glitteredin the heap, and he touched it with the end of the staff that he had inhis hand. It slid jingling from the heap; it was the bone of a forearm,and that which glittered on it was a half-molten ring of gold. On thegold lambda these characters were engraved:
IKMALIOS MEPOIESEN
(Icmalios made me.)
At the sight of the armlet the Wanderer fell on the earth, grovellingamong the ashes of the pyre, for he knew the gold ring which he hadbrought from Ephyre long ago, for a gift to his wife Penelope. Thiswas the bracelet of the bride of his youth, and here, a mockery and aterror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then his strength wasshaken with sobbing, and his hands clutched blindly before him, and hegathered dust and cast it upon his head till the dark locks were defiledwith the ashes of his dearest, and he longed to die.
There he lay, biting his hands for sorrow, and for wrath against God andFate. There he lay while the sun in the heavens smote him, and he knewit not; while the wind of the sunset stirred in his hair, and he stirrednot. He could not even shed one tear, for this was the sorest of all thesorrows that he had known on the waves of the sea, or on land among thewars of men.
The sun fell and the ways were darkened. Slowly the eastern sky grewsilver with the moon. A night-fowl's voice was heard from afar, it drewnearer; then through the shadow of the pyre the black wings flutteredinto the light, and the carrion bird fixed its talons and its
beak onthe Wanderer's neck. Then he moved at length, tossed up an arm, andcaught the bird of darkness by the neck, and broke it, and dashed it onthe ground. His sick heart was mad with the little sudden pain, and heclutched for the knife in his girdle that he might slay himself, buthe was unarmed. At last he rose, muttering, and stood in the moonlight,like a lion in some ruinous palace of forgotten kings. He was faint withhunger and weak with long lamenting, as he stepped within his own doors.There he paused on that high threshold of stone where once he had sat inthe disguise of a beggar, that very threshold whence, on another day, hehad shot the shafts of doom among the wooers of his wife and the wastersof his home. But now his wife was dead: all his voyaging was ended here,and all his wars were vain. In the white light the house of his kingshipwas no more than the ghost of a home, dreadful, unfamiliar, emptyof warmth and love and light. The tables were fallen here and therethroughout the long hall; mouldering bones, from the funeral feast, andshattered cups and dishes lay in one confusion; the ivory chairs werebroken, and on the walls the moonbeams glistened now and again frompoints of steel and blades of bronze, though many swords were dark withrust.
But there, in its gleaming case, lay one thing friendly and familiar.There lay the Bow of Eurytus, the bow for which great Heracles had slainhis own host in his halls; the dreadful bow that no mortal man but theWanderer could bend. He was never used to carry this precious bow withhim on shipboard, when he went to the wars, but treasured it at home,the memorial of a dear friend foully slain. So now, when the voices ofdog, and slave, and child, and wife were mute, there yet came out ofthe stillness a word of welcome to the Wanderer. For this bow, whichhad thrilled in the grip of a god, and had scattered the shafts of thevengeance of Heracles, was wondrously made and magical. A spirit dweltwithin it which knew of things to come, which boded the battle fromafar, and therefore always before the slaying of men the bow sangstrangely through the night. The voice of it was thin and shrill, aringing and a singing of the string and of the bow. While the Wandererstood and looked on his weapon, hark! the bow began to thrill! The soundwas faint at first, a thin note, but as he listened the voice of it inthat silence grew clear, strong, angry and triumphant. In his ears andto his heart it seemed that the wordless chant rang thus:
Keen and low Doth the arrow sing The Song of the Bow, The sound of the string. The shafts cry shrill: Let us forth again, Let us feed our fill On the flesh of men. Greedy and fleet Do we fly from far, Like the birds that meet For the feast of war, Till the air of fight With our wings be stirred, As it whirrs from the flight Of the ravening bird. Like the flakes that drift On the snow-wind's breath, Many and swift, And winged for death-- Greedy and fleet, Do we speed from far, Like the birds that meet On the bridge of war. Fleet as ghosts that wail, When the dart strikes true, Do the swift shafts hail, Till they drink warm dew. Keen and low Do the grey shafts sing The Song of the Bow, The sound of the string.
This was the message of Death, and this was the first sound that hadbroken the stillness of his home.
At the welcome of this music which spoke to his heart--this music he hadheard so many a time--the Wanderer knew that there was war at hand.He knew that the wings of his arrows should be swift to fly, and theirbeaks of bronze were whetted to drink the blood of men. He put out hishand and took the bow, and tried the string, and it answered shrill asthe song of the swallow.
Then at length, when he heard the bowstring twang to his touch, thefountains of his sorrow were unsealed; tears came like soft rains on afrozen land, and the Wanderer wept.
When he had his fill of weeping, he rose, for hunger drove him--hungerthat is of all things the most shameless, being stronger far thansorrow, or love, or any other desire. The Wanderer found his way throughthe narrow door behind the dais, and stumbling now and again over fallenfragments of the home which he himself had built, he went to the inner,secret storehouse. Even _he_ could scarcely find the door, for saplingsof trees had grown up about it; yet he found it at last. Within the holywell the water was yet babbling and shining in the moonlight over thesilver sands; and here, too, there was store of mouldering grain, forthe house had been abundantly rich when the great plague fell upon thepeople while he was far away. So he found food to satisfy his hunger,after a sort, and next he gathered together out of his treasure-chestthe beautiful golden armour of unhappy Paris, son of Priam, the falselove of fair Helen. These arms had been taken at the sack of Troy, andhad lain long in the treasury of Menelaus in Sparta; but on a day he hadgiven them to Odysseus, the dearest of all his guests. The Wandererclad himself in this golden gear, and took the sword called "Euryalus'sGift," a bronze blade with a silver hilt, and a sheath of ivory, whicha stranger had given him in a far-off land. Already the love of lifehad come back to him, now that he had eaten and drunk, and had heard theSong of the Bow, the Slayer of Men. He lived yet, and hope lived in himthough his house was desolate, and his wedded wife was dead, and therewas none to give him tidings of his one child, Telemachus. Even solife beat strong in his heart, and his hands would keep his head if anysea-robbers had come to the city of Ithaca and made their home there,like hawks in the forsaken nest of an eagle of the sea. So he cladhimself in his armour, and chose out two spears from a stand of lances,and cleaned them, and girt about his shoulders a quiver full of shafts,and took in hand his great bow, the Bow of Eurytus, which no other mancould bend.
Then he went forth from the ruined house into the moonlight, wentforth for the last time; for never again did the high roof echo to thefootstep of its lord. Long has the grass grown over it, and the sea-windwailed!