Wonder Stories Part 16

When they reached the oak tree, Erisichthon's men hesitated. The tree looked like a temple, its wide spreading branches sheltering the other trees, and its great trunk towering toward the sky like a bronze pillar.

Each man remembered Ceres' bounty toward him, her gifts of apples and corn, grapes and wheat, and best of all her offering of land that would bring plenty for the ploughing and planting.

"We cannot cut it. This is a tree well beloved of Ceres," the men said to their master.

"I care not whether it be a tree beloved of the G.o.ddess or not,"

Erisichthon shouted angrily to them. "If I cut it down I shall have no more need of Ceres, for its wood will make me rich beyond the need of planting. She owes me a living on account of the past seasons in which I have worked for her. If Ceres herself were in my way I would cut her down also!" he exclaimed.

With this terrible threat on his lips, the lawless ploughman seized an axe from one of his trembling servants and began chopping the trunk of the mighty tree. He had great strength, and each blow cut a deep gash.

As Erisichthon cut in toward the heart of the oak tree, that held the Dryad, the oak began to shiver and groan, but he showed it no mercy. He ordered his men to tie ropes to the branches and pull, and he continued to cut it until the tree fell with a crash that was like the sound of a thunderbolt, and brought down with it a great part of the forest that surrounded it.

As the giant trunk lay on the ground at the feet of Erisichthon, there was a sighing of the branches like that of a summer breeze pa.s.sing through, and the leaves fluttered as if they had been stirred by the flight of a bird. It was the spirit of the Dryad whom Erisichthon had so hurt, taking her way to her family of the G.o.ds on Mount Olympus.

Those Dryads who were left in the grove hastened to Ceres with news of what had happened.

"This man must be punished!" they cried.

Ceres bowed her head in a.s.sent, and the fields of grain bowed also, and the branches of the fruit trees drooped. It was the ripe time of the harvest, but there were no crops on the farm of Erisichthon, and Ceres decreed that no neighbor should share with him.

In the northern part of Greece lay the ice topped mountains of Scythia, a bleak, unfertile region without fruit or grain. Cold, and Fear, and Shuddering lived there and one other, who was more to be dreaded than all three. This was Famine with unkempt hair and sunken eyes, blanched lips, and her skin tightly drawn over her sharp bones. She made her home in a hard, stony field where she pulled up the scanty herbage with her claw-like fingers and tried to subsist on it.

After Erisichthon had cut down the old oak tree Ceres sent to Scythia for Famine.

Erisichthon found that it was going to be a month's task to cut up his wood and carry it to his farm, so he went home to rest over night, planning to start the work in the morning. He felt hungry after his hard work of chopping down the tree, but he had not even a pomegranate for his supper. All his food had strangely disappeared. He decided to go to bed and try to forget his hunger in sleep.

"I will sell a load of wood in the morning for many gold coins," he thought, "and buy food in plenty."

So Erisichthon lay down on his couch and was soon fast asleep. Then Famine sped in through the window and hovered over where he lay. She folded her wings around him and breathed her poison into his veins. Then she hastened back to Scythia, for she had no other errand in a land of plenty.

Erisichthon did not wake but he stirred in his sleep and moved his jaws as if he were eating, for he was very hungry in his dreams. In the morning he woke with a raging hunger that was a hundred times worse than that of the day before.

He sold his load of wood and spent all the money for whatever food the earth, the air, and the sea produced. He consumed vast quant.i.ties of fish, fowl, the flesh of lambs, fruit and vegetables; but the more Erisichthon ate, the greater was his hunger. The amount of food that would have been enough for the whole of Athens was not sufficient for this man. He continually craved more.

Erisichthon sold the wood of the entire oak tree, and began selling pieces of the land that made his farm in order to get food for appeasing his terrible hunger. At last his fields were gone and he had to sell his furniture, his tools, his books, and all his vases. Still he could not get food enough to appease his gnawing appet.i.te, so he sold his house and lived in a tent that he set up beside the road. But his hunger was still unsatisfied and in his madness Erisichthon sold his only daughter to be the slave of a fisherman who cast his nets beside the Aegean Sea.

The girl loved her father very dearly and her grief, as she gathered sea weed along the sh.o.r.e for her master, touched the heart of Neptune, the G.o.d of the sea. He changed her to the form of a horse, and she went home to Erisichthon, hoping that he would look upon so fine an animal with favor, and give it a home. But her father sold the horse to a chariot racer. She escaped and went again to the sh.o.r.e where Neptune changed her, in turn, to a stag, an ox, and a rare bird. Each time she made her way home, and each time her father sold her to buy food. So the bird flew away to Mount Olympus and was never seen again.

At last there came a day when Erisichthon could feed himself no longer.

There was nothing left to him in the world that he could sell, and his hunger was so great that he went, like a raving beast, up and down the bountiful fields of Ceres demanding that food be given him.

But those whom Famine touches because they break Ceres' laws, and destroy life and property find no help unless they try to restore the order that they have hurt. Erisichthon was too weak to work, and he could never raise another oak tree like that one which had been growing for centuries. So he went, at last, to live with Famine in Scythia which was a long way from the Mount of the G.o.ds.

THE BEE MAN OF ARCADIA.

Strange things were happening in a field of the beautiful country called Arcadia. A youth who wore a wreath of green laurel leaves on his dark hair sat on a rock and held a lyre in his hands from whose strings he drew sweet music. And as he played a wolf, who had been the terror of the shepherds for many leagues around, came out of the woods and lay down like a great dog at the feet of the youth. Next, the nearby olive trees bent their heads to listen and then moved toward him until they stood in a circle at his feet. Then the hard rock on which the musician rested covered itself with soft green verdure and bluebells and violets began to lift their heads, growing out of its age-old stones.

This was what always happened when Orpheus, the son of Apollo, played the lyre that his father had given him and had taught him to use.

Nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only the farmers and shepherds, the nymphs and fauns of Arcadian woods and fields were softened and drawn by his tunes, but the wild beasts as well laid by their fierceness and stood, entranced, at his strains.

Orpheus touched his lyre again and played an even lovelier song. And out of the forest glided the nymph, Eurydice, taking her place near Orpheus.

His music had won her devotion and Hymen, the G.o.d of marriage, had made the two very happy. Their deepest wish was that they might never be separated.

The whole of Arcadia was charmed by Orpheus' lute. No, there was just one person in that beautiful country who positively disliked music, and that was the bee-man, Aristaeus. In fact, Aristaeus could not see the value of anything beautiful, the statues and vases in the temple of Apollo, the tapestries the weavers decorated with so many soft colors, the tints of the wild flowers, or the arch of the rainbow in the sky after a shower. This bee-man could find no interest in anything except his combs of yellow honey, their number, and how many gold coins he would be paid for them. Not only did Aristaeus dislike beautiful things, but he did not want others to enjoy them. A cross old Arcadian, was he not?

He was feeling particularly disagreeable on the morning when Orpheus began playing his lute near his farm. And when Eurydice, whom Orpheus so loved, approached him to ask for a comb of his delicious honey for dinner for the two, Aristaeus entirely lost his temper. He not only refused the nymph, which no one but a very stingy person could have done, for she smiled at him so winningly and asked for it so politely; but he chased Eurydice off his farm.

No one had treated Eurydice so rudely in all her life before. Even Pan had gathered flowers for her to twine into garlands and had refrained from teasing her as he did almost all the other nymphs. And here she was, a long distance from Orpheus and pursued by an ugly tempered country man! Eurydice ran like the wind, the bee-man coming fast behind her. She was much fleeter than he and would have reached the woods safely, but she stepped suddenly on a snake that she had not seen as it lay coiled up in the gra.s.s. The snake stung Eurydice's bare feet and she dropped down on the ground.

"It serves her right!" the bee-man said, not going to see how badly she was hurt. And with that he went back to his bees.

Aristaeus was the very first bee-man, the myths tell us. When the G.o.ds made the little creatures of the earth they made also the honey bees and taught them how to build themselves homes in hollow trees or holes in the rocks, to find the nectar in the flowers, and make from it their thick, golden honey. Aristaeus was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene, and he came to Arcadia with the remembrance of the music of the waters and the brightness of the sun in his heart, but when he discovered how to attract the bees to his farm and take their honey away from them and sell it, he forgot everything except his business. That was when he began to dislike Orpheus and to become blind to the fair country in which he lived.

"Three hives are swarming to-day," the bee-man thought as he came home.

"I ought to be able to get a good sum for the honey." Then, as he reached the orchard where his hives were placed on the wall, he looked about him in amazement. Hives, bees, all were gone. Not a buzz, a sting, or a single drop of honey was left!

Aristaeus looked throughout the entire countryside for his bees for days, but he could not find a single one. At last he gave up the search and did what a good many boys and girls would be apt to do in the same emergency. He went to ask the advice of his mother, the sea-nymph Cyrene.

He went to the edge of the river where he knew she lived and called her.

"O mother, the pride of my life is taken away from me. I have lost my precious bees. My care and skill have availed me nothing. Can you turn from me this blow of misfortune?"

His mother heard these complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom of the river with her attendant nymphs around her. They were busy spinning and weaving beautiful designs in water weeds and painting pebbles while another told stories to amuse the rest. But the sad voice of the bee-man interrupted them and one put her head above the water.

Seeing Aristaeus, she returned and told his mother, who ordered that he be brought down to her.

At the command of Cyrene, the river opened itself and let him pa.s.s through, as it stood curled like a mountain on either side. The bee-man descended to the place where the fountains of the great rivers lie. He saw the enormous rock beds of the waters and was almost deafened by their roar as he saw them hurrying off in all their different directions to water the face of the earth. Then Aristaeus came to his mother's palace of sh.e.l.ls and stone and he was taken to her apartment where he told her his troubles.

Cyrene, being a dweller of the waters which are the fountain of life, was very wise. She understood at once that her son had made a mistake in not seeing that it was possible to combine beauty and usefulness.

Arcadia needed bees, but it needed Orpheus and his lute also, and the G.o.ds had punished the bee-man for his sordidness. Still, he was her son and Cyrene decided to try and help Aristaeus out of his difficulty.

"You must go to old Proteus, who is the herdsman of Neptune's sea-calves," Cyrene said. "He can tell you, my son, how to get back your bees, for he is a great prophet. You will have to force him to help you, however. If you are able to seize him, chain him at once; he will answer your questions in order to be released. I will conduct you to the cave where he comes at noon to take his nap. Then you can easily secure him, but when he finds himself in chains he will cause you a great deal of trouble. He will make a noise like the crackling of flames so as to frighten you into loosing your hold on the chain. Or he may become a wild boar, a fierce tiger, a lion with ravenous jaws or a devouring dragon. But you have only to keep Proteus fast bound and when he finds all his arts to be of no avail he will return to his natural shape and obey your commands."

So Cyrene led Aristaeus to the cave by the sea and showed him where to hide behind a rock while she, herself, arose and took her place behind the clouds. Promptly at noon old Proteus, covered with dripping green weeds, issued from the water followed by a herd of sea calves who spread themselves out on the sh.o.r.e. The herdsman of the sea counted them, sat down on the floor of the cave, and then in a very short time had stretched himself out, fast asleep. Aristaeus waited until he was snoring and then he bound him with a heavy chain he had brought for the purpose.

When Proteus awoke and found himself captured, he struggled like a wild animal at bay. Next, he turned to flame and then, in succession to many terrible beasts, but Aristaeus never once let go of the chain that secured him. At last he returned to his true form and spoke angrily to Aristaeus.

"Who are you, who boldly invades my domain and what do you want?"

Proteus demanded.

"You know already," the bee-man replied, "for you have the powers of a prophet and nothing is hidden from you. I have lost my bees, and I want to have them returned to me."

At these words, the prophet fixed his eyes on Aristaeus with a piercing look.

"Your trouble is the just reward sent you by the G.o.ds because you killed Eurydice," he said. "To avenge her death, her companion nymphs sent this destruction to your bees."