THE FIRST EPISODE

How They blinded the Son of Poseidon

A warm mild wind, laden with sweet scents, blew over the sailors from the island, which now lay far astern.

In the weary west the charmed sunset still lingered over Lotus Land.

A rosy flush lay on the snow-capped mountains which were yet spectral in the last lights of the day, but looking out over the bows the sky was dark purple changing into black, and where it met the sea there was a white gleam of foam.

The companions of Ulysses sat idle from the oars, for the wind filled the belly of the sail and there was no need for rowing. A curious silence brooded over them all. No one spoke to his fellow. The faces of all were sad, and in the eyes of some the fire of an unutterable regret burnt steadily.

The heads of all were turned towards the island, which was fast disappearing from their view. Some of the men shaded their eyes with their hands in one last long look of farewell.

As the curtain of the dark fell upon the sea, the warm offshore wind died away. A colder breeze, full of the sea-smell itself, came down over the port bow; it moaned through the cordage, and little waves began to hiss under the cutwater.

Every now and again the wind freshened rapidly. The mournful whistling became a sudden snarling of trumpets. The ship and crew seemed to have passed over the limits of a tableau. Not only was it a quick elemental change of scene, but the change had its influence with the spectators.

The sad fire—if the glow of regret is indeed a fire—died out of heavy eyes half veiled by weary lids. The sea-light dawned once more upon the faces of the mariners, the bright warm blood moved swiftly in their veins.

One man ran to the steering oar to give an aid to the helmsman as the ship went about on the starboard tack, three more stood by the sheet, a hum of talk rose from the waist of the boat. Ulysses stood in the bows looking forward into the night. His tall, lean figure was bent forward, and his arm was thrown round the gilded boss of the prow. His eyes were deep set in his head, and his brow was furrowed with the innumerable wrinkles which come to the man who lives a life of hardship and striving.

Yet the long years of battle and wandering, a life of shocks! had only intensified the alertness of his pose. He seemed, as he looked out into the night, a personification of “readiness.” A crisp dark beard grew round his throat, and the veins on his bare brown arms were like blue enamel round a column of bronze.

When the ship went about again he came down into the body of the ship and helped to pull upon the brace. Though he was no taller than many of his men, and leaner than most, in physical strength as well as in intellect he was first and chief. The mighty muscles leapt up on his arms as he strained on the taut rope.

The ship slanted away down the wind into the night. The men gathered round their captain. “Comrades,” he said to them in a singularly sweet and musical voice, “once more we adventure the deep, and no man knows what shall befall us. To our island home in the west, to dear Ithaca! if the gods so will it. Our wives weep for us on our deserted hearthstone. Our little ones are noble youths ere now, and may Zeus bring us safe home at last. Yet much it misdoubts me that there are other perils in store for us ere we hear the long breakers beat upon the shores of Ithaca and see the morning sun run down the wooded sides of Neriton. Be that as the Fates will it, let us keep always courage, gaiety, and the quiet mind.”

“We are well away from there,” said one of the men, nodding vaguely towards the stern.

“That are we,” said another; “that cursed fruit is honeysweet in my mouth still. It stole away our brains and made us as women, we! the men who fought in Troyland.”

“Of what profit is it to look to the past, Phocion?” said Ulysses. “We did eat and sleep and forget, but it is over. The sea wind is salt once more upon our faces. Let us eat the night meal, and then I will choose a watch and the rest may sleep. Hand me the cup—To to-morrow’s dawn!”

Then one of the sailors took dried goat’s flesh and fruit from a locker in the stern, and by the light of a torch of sawn sandal wood they fell to eating. Great bunches of purple grapes lay before each sailor, but they had brought none of the magic lotus fruit with them to steal away their vigour and thicken their blood.

Then they lay down to sleep under coverings of skins. Two men went to the great steering oar, three men watched amidship by the braces, and Ulysses himself wrapped a woollen cloak round him and went once more into the bows.

Alone there with the wind his thoughts once more went back to his far distant home. He thought with longing of his old father Laertes, of the child Telemachus playing in the marble courtyard of the sunny palace on the hill. A deep sigh shuddered out from his lips as his thoughts fell upon the lonely Queen Penelope. “Wife of mine,” he thought, “shall I ever lie beside you more? Is there silver in your bright hair now? Are your thoughts to mewards as mine to you? Perchance another rules in my palace and sits at my seat. Are your lips another’s now? The great tears are blinding me. Courage!”

Bending his head upon his breast, Ulysses prayed long and earnestly to his awful patroness, the Goddess Athene, that she would still keep ward over his fortunes and guide him safely home.

The night wore on and became very silent. The ship seemed to be moving swiftly and surely, though the wind had dropped and the voice of the waves was hushed. It seemed to the watcher in the bows that the ship was moving in the path of some strong current.

A curious white mist suddenly rolled over the still surface of the sea, thick and ghostly. The mast and sail, which was now drooping and lifeless, swayed through it like giant spectres. Ulysses could see none of his companions, but when he hailed the watch the voice of Phocion came back to him through the ghostly curtain, curiously thick and muffled.

“The mist thickens, my captain,” said the sailor. “Can you see aught ahead?”

“I can see nothing, Phocion,” shouted Ulysses; “the mist is like wool. But I think it is a land mist come out to meet us. There should be land ahead.”

“I hear no surf or the rolling of waves,” said Phocion. “May Zeus guide the boat, for mortal men are of no avail to-night.”

The ship moved on swiftly as if guided by invisible hands towards some goal, and still the expectant mariners heard no sound.

Quite suddenly, and without the slightest warning, a vivid copper-coloured flash of lightning illuminated the ship. For an instant in the hard lurid light Ulysses saw the whole of the vessel in a distinct picture.

Every detail was manifest—the mast, the cordage, the sleeping sailors below, the watching group by the shrouds, and, right away astern, the startled helmsmen motionless as statues of bronze.

Then with a long grinding noise the ship seemed suddenly lifted up in the water, jerked forward, and then dropped again. She began to heel over a little out of the perpendicular, and then remained still, stranded upon an unknown and mysterious shore, where the waves were all asleep. Still the white mist circled round them.

“Comrades,” said Ulysses, “we are brought here by no chance of wind and waves. Some god has done this thing, but whether for weal or woe I cannot tell. Let us land upon the beach and lie down with our weapons within sound of the sea till dawn. At sunrise we shall know where the god has brought us.”

They landed at the order, and with the supreme indifference of the adventurer lay upon the shore and slept out the remainder of the night. But Ulysses had a prescience of harm, and was full of sinister forebodings. He did not sleep, but paced through the mist all night in a little beaten track among the boulders. He prayed long and earnestly to Athene.

When the first faint hintings of dawn brightened through the mist a little breeze arose, and before the sky was more than faintly flushed with day the night fog was blown away like thistledown.

As the sun climbed up the sky the companions found that they had been carried to a scene of singular beauty. They were on an island, a small, rich place at the mouth of a great bay. Rich level grass meadows, green as bright enamel and brilliant with flowers, sloped gently down to the violet sea. Behind was a thickly-wooded hill, at the foot of which was a sparkling spring surrounded by a tall grove of poplar trees.

In the leafy wood the wild goats leapt under the wild vine trees like Pan at play, as fearless of the intruders as if they had never seen men before. All the bright morning the sailors made the wood ring with happy laughter as they speared the goats for a feast. All trouble passed from their minds, and as the spears flashed swiftly through the green wood the shrill, jocund voices of the hunters made all the island musical. Ulysses plunged into a translucent pool at the foot of the spring, and the cool water flashed like diamonds over his strong brown arms, and he looked indeed as if he were some river-god and this his fairy home.

All day long they feasted and drank wine which they had brought in skins from Lotus Land. When night was falling, very still and gentle, they saw the blue smoke of fires over the bay, on the mainland, about a mile away, and the bleating of many sheep and the lowing of herds came to them over the wine-coloured sea.

Ever and again voices could be heard—strange resonant voices. “That must be the country of some strange gods,” the sailors said to each other. “Those are no mortal voices. We are come into some great peril.” Before they slept they sacrificed a goat on the seashore to Zeus, that he might guard them from any coming harm.

In the morning the king prepared for action. It was necessary to find upon what shores they had arrived, to get direction of Ithaca, and if treasure was to be won by force or guile, to take the opportunity which chance or the gods had sent.

Ulysses chose twelve of his men, tried veterans with nerves of steel, old comrades who had fought with him for Helen on the windy plains of Troy. With these old never-strikes he embarked on the ship. He left Phocion as leader of the remainder of the crew, and taking Elpenor with him as second in command, they got out six sweeps, three on each side of the ship, and rowed slowly over the glassy bay.

The mainland, on the shore where they landed, was a wild rocky place, and there was a broad road winding away up to the higher pasture lands. The road was made of great rocks beaten into smoothness, and fresh spoor of cattle showed that not long since a great herd had passed to the upland feeding grounds.

Directly in front of them as they landed was a high cave. It was fringed with laurel bushes, which grew on ledges in the cliff side.

Before the cave a great wall had been built in a square, forming a courtyard. The wall was built with enormous masses of rock, and fenced with a palisade of pine trunks and massive boles of oak. There was no sign of any living thing. Slowly and cautiously the party crept up to the wall. Their weapons were in readiness as they stole through the gateway. Within the square formed by the wall they could see that it was a vast cattle pen. “This must be the dwelling of some giant,” said Elpenor; “men do not build like this. On what strange place have we chanced?” He looked inquiringly at Ulysses when he had spoken, and a ring of eager faces turned towards him whose wisdom was never at fault, the favourite of Athene.

“I think, comrades,” said Ulysses, “that we have been driven to the shores of the Cyclopes. They are mighty giants, who work in the forge of Vulcan making armour for the gods. Now this cave must be the dwelling of one of them, and I like not where we are. Let us but go within for a short time and take what we can find, and then hasten back to the island. The Cyclopes have no boats and cannot follow us. But it would go hard with us were we found, for they are crafty and cruel monsters.”

With hasty, curious footsteps they crossed the echoing flags of the courtyard and entered the cave. As the shadow of the entrance fell upon them and the chill of the air inside struck on their faces, more than one would have gladly stayed in the warm outside sunshine. It was an ill-omened, sinister place this lair of giants.

A pungent ammoniacal smell made them cough and shudder as they crossed the threshold. Ulysses turned with a grim smile to his followers. “Thank the gods we are seamen and sons of the fresh wind. This Cyclops lives like a swine in a stye.” The large entrance to the cave gave a fair light within, and their eyes soon became accustomed to it. Along one side of the cave were folds of fat lambs and kids who bleated lustily at them. At the end of the cave was a great couch of skins by the ashes of a pine fire. Bones and scraps of flesh were piled round, relics of some great orgy, and a sickly stench of decay came from the débris.

Piles of wicker baskets were loaded with huge yellow cheeses, and there were many copper milk pails and bowls brimful of whey.

The sailors rejoiced at such an abundance of good cheer, and they killed one of the fattest of the lambs and lit a fire to roast it.

“The giant will not return till even,” said Elpenor, “and by then we shall be far away. We will make a good meal now, and then load the ship with cheeses and drive off the best of the lambs. Our comrades will welcome us home this night, for we shall be full-handed!”

So, careless of danger, they sat them down in that perilous place and made merry on the giant’s cheer. They had brought skins of wine with them, and they drank in mockery to their absent host.

In the middle of the feast one of the men suddenly laid down his cup. “Hearken,” he said uneasily, “do you hear anything, friends?”

“I hear nothing,” said Ulysses. “What sound did you hear?”

“A distant sound, I thought,” answered the man, “as if the earth shook.”

“There is nothing,” said a third at length; but a certain constraint fell upon them all, and anxiety clouded their faces.

“Let us begone,” said Ulysses at length. “There is what I do not like in the air. I fear evil.”

He had but hardly made an end of speaking when all of them there were struck rigid with apprehension. A distant but rapidly-nearing sound assailed their ears, a heavy crunching sound like the blows of a great hammer upon the earth, save that each succeeding blow was louder than the last. They stood irresolute for one fatal moment, and then started to run towards the mouth of the cave.

The noise filled all the air, which hummed and trembled with it. They reached the entrance, but too late. Even as the first man came out into the afternoon sunlight, a great herd of cattle came pouring into the courtyard. Behind them, towering over the wall, as tall as the tallest pine on the slopes of Hymettus, strode Polyphemus, the giant king of the Cyclopes, son of the God Poseidon.

The giant was naked to the waist, where he wore a girdle of skins. One great eye burned in the centre of his forehead, and a row of sharp, white teeth were framed by thick dribbling lips, like the lips of a cow.

Under his arm Polyphemus carried a bundle of young sapling trees, which he had brought for faggots for his fire. He threw them on the floor of the courtyard by the mouth of the cave with a great crash. The adventurers crouched away at the back of the cave in the darkness as the giant entered.

He drove all the ewes of his flock before him, leaving the rams outside in the court. Then he took a great hole of rock, which scarce twenty teams of horses could have moved, and closed the mouth of the cave.

With a great sigh of weariness, which echoed like a hissing wind and blew the silent bats which hung to the roof this way and that in a frightened eddy of wings, he sank down upon his couch of skins. The giant had brought some of the firewood into the cave with him and he threw it into the embers.

A resinous piece of wood suddenly caught the flame and flared up, filling the cavern with red light. One of the sailors dropped his spear with a loud clatter as the flames made plain the figure of the monster.

Polyphemus turned his head and saw them.

He stared steadily at them with his single eye for full a minute. A cruel smile played on his face.

“Who are you, strangers?” he said at length, in a thick, low voice like the swell of a great organ. “Merchants, are you? Pirates? And whence come you along the paths of the sea?”

Then Ulysses spoke in a smooth voice of conciliation. “We are Greeks, oh lord, soldiers of Agamemnon’s army, bound for home over the seas from Troy. Bad weather has driven us out of our course, and so we have come to you and beg you to be our honoured host. Oh, great lord, have reverence for the gods, for Zeus himself is the god of hospitality.”

Then the giant smiled cunningly. “You are a man of little wit, stranger,” he said, “or else you have indeed come from the very end of the world. I pay no heed to Zeus, for I am stronger than he. But now, tell me, where is your ship?”

But Ulysses, the wary one, saw the snare and answered humbly, “The great Poseidon, god of the deep, wrecked our ship upon the rocks, and we alone survive of all our company.”

The giant looked fixedly at the trembling band for a moment. Then, with a sudden movement, he snatched among the mariners and grasped two of them in his mighty hand.

The swift horror remained with them in all their after life. He stripped the clothes from each like a man strips the scales from a prawn with one quick twirl of his fingers.

Then he dashed the quivering bodies upon the ground so that the yellow paste of the brains smeared the stone—save for the horrid crunching of bone and flesh, and the liquid gurgle of the monster’s throat as he made his frightful meal, there was no sound in the cave.

Then he fell into a foul sleep.

Three times during the long night did Ulysses draw his sword to plunge it into the monster’s heart, three times did he sheathe it again. For in his wisdom he knew that if he killed Polyphemus no one could ever move away the great stone which shut them from the outside world.

In the morning Elpenor and one other died, and the giant drove his flocks to pasture and closed up the heroes in the cave.

Then Ulysses comforted the dying hearts of his men, and as Polyphemus strode away over the hills whistling to his cattle, he made a plan for one last bid for freedom.

Leaning against the wall of the cave was a great club of hard wood which the monster had put there to dry. It was an olive-tree trunk as big as the great spar of a ship.

This they took and sharpened with their swords, and hardened it in the flame of the fire and hid it carefully away. Then very sadly the sailors cast lots as to who should be the four to help the captain. All day long they sat in the fœtid cave and prayed to the gods for an alms of aid. And their hearts were leaden for love of their valiant comrades.

At eventime two more heroes died.

Then Ulysses rose, and though his knees were weak and his face blanched with agony, he spoke in a smooth voice. “My Lord Cyclops,” he said, “I have filled this bowl with wine which we brought with us. I pray you drink, and perchance your heart may be touched and you will let us go.”

So the giant took the bowl from the king, and as Ulysses went near him his breath reeked of carrion and blood. He drank the wine, which was a sweet and drowsy vintage from the Lotus Island. “Give me more,” he cried thickly, “and say how you are named, for I will grant you a favour.”

Ulysses filled the bowl for him three times. “Oh, my lord,” he said, “my friends and parents call me Noman, for that is my name. Now, great lord, your boon.”

The giant leered at the hero with drunken cunning. “Noman, since that is your name Noman, you shall die last of all, and the others first. That is your boon!”

And once more he sank into his sleep, gorged with blood and wine.

The hours wore on and the flames of the fire sank into a bright red glow. The loud stertorous breathing of the monster became more deep and regular. Very silently the five rose from among the rest and stole towards the fire with the great stake. They pressed it into the heart of the white hot embers and sat watching it change from black to crimson, while little sparks ran up and down the sides like flies upon the wall.

When the spar was just about to burst into flame they drew it out, and with quick, nervous footsteps carried it to where Polyphemus lay sleeping. The glow from the hot hard wood played upon that vast blood-smeared countenance and the yellow wrinkled lid which veiled the cruel eye.

Ulysses directed the point to the exact centre of the foul skin, and then with their old battle cry of “Helen!” the five heroes pressed it home through the hissing, steaming eyeball, turning it round and round until everything was burned away.

They had just time to leap aside when the giant rose in horrid agony. His cries of rage and pain were like the cries of a thousand tortured beasts, and the din was so great that pieces of rock began to fall from the roof of the cave. He spun round in his torture, beating upon the walls with his arms and head until they were a raw and bleeding wound.

At this awful sound mighty footsteps were heard outside the cave as the other giants rushed down from the hills. There came great and terrible voices shouting together, and it was as though a great storm was racing through the world.

“What ails you, brother, that you call us from sleep in the night?” cried the giants.

“Help! help! brothers. Noman is murdering me. I die!”

A chorus of thunderous laughter came rolling back. “If Noman harms thee, then how should we aid thee, brother? ’Tis the gods who have sent thee a sickness which thou must endure.”

And now, through an aperture high up in the cave, the light began to whiten, and showed day was at hand. The footsteps of the Cyclopes grew faint and ceased, but Polyphemus lay moaning by the great stone which closed the entrance.

The morning light grew stronger, and a breeze stole in, fresh and clean, and played upon the faces of the prisoners.

The ewes began to bleat, for their milking time was at hand, and the rams cried out for freedom and the green pastures of the hill.

The giant moved aside the stone to let them go and in the morning sunlight the sailors could see that he felt over them with his hands so that no men should mingle with them and so escape.

First the ewes went out and then the young rams, and last of all the great old rams, patriarchs of the flock, began to move slowly towards the door.

Then courage came back to Ulysses, and with it all his cunning. Stooping low under the belly of a great beast, he motioned to his friends to do likewise, and, slowly, in this way, holding to the fleece of the rams, they moved out of the cave. They could feel the rams tremble when the giant’s hands ranged over the wool of their backs, but nevertheless they came safely out into the light, and stole down to where their ship yet lay at anchor.

The air of the morning was like wine to them, and the face of the water as dear as the face of a well-beloved wife as they ran over the bright yellow sand.

Then from the stern of the boat Ulysses cried out in a great voice of triumph. At that sound the monster came stumbling from his cave, reeling like a drunken man, and calling on his father Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, to avenge him on his enemies. He took up the stone that had barred the cave and threw it far out into the water, but it overshot the boat and did not harm the heroes, though the wave of its descent flung the ship from side to side as if it were a piece of driftwood. The mariners bent to the oars, and the vessels moved away from that accursed shore, slowly at first but more swiftly as their tired arms grew strong with the chance of safety, and the wine of hope flowed in their veins once more.

They saw the sightless face of Polyphemus working horribly, his mouth opening and shutting like a dying fish as he looked heavenwards and implored his mighty father’s aid.

And after a space of mourning for the brave dead the heroes set out again over the sad grey seas, seeking Ithaca.

But the heart of King Ulysses was sick and weary, for he dreaded the wrath to come, and most of all he longed for home.