The Adventures of Ulysses the Wanderer Part 6

The ship with a fair wind ran up a lane of light into the setting sun, and when at length the moon had risen and silvered all the sea, Ulysses called the men round him.

"Comrades," he said, "with the dawn, if I have kept the reckoning aright, we shall come to the island where the Sirens dwell. Now the Lady Circe warned me against the Sirens, the singers who charm all men with their song. He who listens to Parthenope, Ligeia and Leucosia must stay with them for ever, listening spellbound to the song until he dies. And the island is covered with the bones of dead men. To listen is to die. But I wish to hear the voices and to escape the enchantment, and so obey my commands. When we near the island do you all close your ears with wax so that no sound can reach your brains.

And take a stout rope and bind me to the mast so that I can in no wise loose myself. And howsoever I may order or entreat you to let me go to the Sirens, if their magic song enchants me, take no heed, but row steadily onwards until the island is far astern. Then only may you set me free."

As dawn came, a faint grey line upon the horizon showed itself on the starboard bow. At the sight, with some laughter, for it was difficult to believe in the perils of sweet music!--even for men who had seen the wonders that they had seen--the men began to press yellow wax from the honeycomb into each other's ears.

Then when no one among them could hear the flapping of the sail or the voice of the sea, nor could tell the meaning of his neighbour's voice, they went up to Ulysses, and with many light-hearted jests bound him to the mast, and because his strength was well known to them they reeved the rope with a treble hitch. No living man could have escaped from such bonds.

As sailors will, they treated the whole thing as a huge jest, making a mock mutiny of it as they bound the captain. Ulysses could not help smiling at their mirth.

After such wise precaution he had no fear, and in his heart of hearts he did not believe that the song of the Sirens would affect him much, though he followed the advice of Circe and made himself a prisoner.

But a fierce curiosity possessed him. He cursed the slowness of the wind, for, as they bound him, the island was still a low line without colour on the water, and called out to the men to row faster, forgetting that they could not hear him.

Slowly the grey island became purple, then brown, and at last showed itself a green, low, pleasant land, a place of meadows.

The wind was behind them, and until they came quite close under the lee of the island Ulysses could hear no voices but those of the wind and waves. Then faintly at first, but rapidly becoming more sonorous and sweet, he heard the magic voices which were to ring in his ears in all his after life.

No words of his at any time could express the loveliness of those voices, of the unutterable sweetness of it, nothing.

The strains floated over the still sea like harps of heaven.

All that man had known or desired in life, all the emotions which had stirred the human heart, were blended in those magic voices. The world had nothing more to give; here, here at last, was the absolute fulfilment of beauty.

Louder and more piercingly sweet, as the unconscious sailors bent to the oars in earnest, and the sweat ran down their bare brown backs.

"Whither away, whither away, whither away? Fly no more.

Whither away from the high green field, and the happy blossoming sh.o.r.e?

Day and night to the billow the fountain calls: Down shower the gambolling waterfalls From wandering over the lea."

The face of Ulysses grew wan and grey as the ship pa.s.sed a projecting point of rock. On the smooth green turf the three singers were standing. In face and form they were sweet and lovely girls.

Naked to the waist, they wore long flowing draperies below, and as they sung the rosy bosoms rose and fell with the music, and the lucid throats rippled with song.

"Mariner, mariner, furl your sails, For here are blissful downs and dales, And merrily, merrily carol the gales, And the spangle dances in bight and bay, And the rainbow forms and flies on the land Over the islands free; And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand; Hither, come hither and see."

And still the ship went on, but more slowly, as it were some force were at work deadening the arms of the rowers.

Then the shrill loveliness fired the hero's blood, and he knew that he must go to the three lovely singers on the strand. Earth held nothing better than this--to lie for ever with that music in his ears.

"Whither away? listen and stay: mariner, mariner, fly no more."[1]

[1] These few lines of the Sirens' song have been taken from Lord Tennyson's beautiful poem "The Sea Fairies."

Then, as if drawn by the long cadenced notes as by cords, Ulysses gathered up his mighty strength and strove with his bonds.

But the sailors had done their work too well, and the rope only cut deeply into the flesh.

The white arms were stretched out to him in supplication, the song grew more full of unearthly beauty than before--and the ship was slowly pa.s.sing by.

Ulysses called out to the crew in an agony of command and entreaty.

One of the men happened to look up and saw his face. He grinned, nudged his companion, and turned away.

The song grew fainter, the three tall figures dwindled. The face of Ulysses grew ashen, and when at length they came to him and cut the ropes he said no word.

He went alone to the prow of the vessel and looked out over the fair sun-bathed sea, and there were tears in his eyes, and his mouth was softer and more tremulous than it was wont to be.

So they came away from Parthenope, Ligeia and Leucosia, the Sirens.

The next day Ulysses called the crew together as before and told them of the new peril that awaited them. For the wise Circe had warned him that after the island of the Sirens he must needs encounter the terrible Scylla, for the ship must pa.s.s by her lair on its pa.s.sage towards Home.

But Ulysses knew that it was impossible to fight the monster, and that some of the crew were fated to die, but in his wisdom he did not tell them that.

He finished his speech as follows:--"And so, my friends, the G.o.ds ordain that we must face Scylla, and the whirlpool Charybdis. There is no other way. But courage! always have courage. I who brought you safe from out of the cave of the Cyclops will bring you safe from this also. And so onward and have stout hearts."

It was a misty day, and everything was shadowy and faint, but the ship moved slowly along a sheer wall of black cliff which towered up above them for a thousand feet or more. The top was lost in the mist. It was a lowering, frightful place.

One of the sailors gave a shout which echoed back to them in mournful mockery through the mist.

They rowed on steadily, hugging the cliff. Ulysses stood in the prow of the boat. He had put on armour and took two spears in his hand.

His eyes searched the face of the cliff till they ached from the minute scrutiny.

This waiting for the inevitable was terribly unnerving. Ulysses himself, knowing that some must die, was heavy and sad at heart as they glided along the side of the cliff.

To the left the great whirlpool seethed and boiled, its outermost convolution scarce a bow-shot away. When it threw up the water the spray dashed up a hundred feet and fell in showers over the sailors, and as the water ran back in the ebb Ulysses could see, far down the black and spinning sides, to where the old witch Charybdis dwelt on the dark sand of the sea bottom.

Suddenly the end came. A loud barking and howling startled them all so that each man paused on his oar. A pack of hounds were unkenneled, so it seemed, somewhere on the cliff face in the mist.

Then a sickly musky smell enveloped them, so foul and stale that they coughed and spat even as their blood ran cold with fear.

Through the curtain of mist, which had suddenly grown very thick, six objects loomed right over the boat.

Six long tentacles swayed and quivered over the sailors, and at the end of each was a grinning head set with cruel fangs and a little red eager tongue that flickered in and out.

For a moment the heads hung poised, and then each sought and found its victim.

Six sailors were slowly drawn out of the boat, shrieking the name of Ulysses for the last time in their death agony. And all the time the barking of the hounds in the obscene womb of the monster went on unceasingly.

Then the fury of flight came upon them. With bursting brains and red fire before their eyes they laboured at the great oars until the wood bent and shook and the ship leaped forward like a driven horse.

And they left the strait of death and came out of the mist into a wide sunlit sea. But still a sound of distant barking came down the wind.

So Scylla took her horrid toll of heroes.

But Ulysses called them to prayer and lamentation for the dead.