Atlantis

by John Cowper Powys

  The ladder from the second deck to the third deck was at the stern of the vessel, whereas the one he had just descended was near the prow and the astonishing neck, scaled, feathered, wrinkled, infundibular, that belonged to the figure-head of the “Teras”, the figure-head which so far he had only seen from the rear but which Akron assured him, when seen from the front, represented the most intellectual visage ever carved out of any substance upon earth by flint or stone or bronze or iron and was the face of “the unknown ruler” of Atlantis. Thus in order to reach the ladder to the lowest deck of the “Teras” where were the three cabins occupied at present by Nausikaa and Okyrhöe, by Eione and Pontopereia, and by Odysseus himself, Nisos had to step over the big round oars, either of Teknon and Klytos on the starboard side, or of Euros and Halios on the port side; and he selected the latter.

  He did this, as we so often say, “for a trivial reason” but as we all, especially those of us who are historians, know only too well, reasons like this always appear to everybody trivial before the result is revealed, and the event which is the result monumentalized, made clear to all. His “trivial reason” was that the oarsman Euros had that deep indentation behind his skull and above his neck, which certain experiences had taught our young prophet was an infallible sign of refinement and of quite special sensitivity.

  Greeting Euros therefore with diffidence and respect and half-turning to address the man’s up-tilted face as he paused, before stepping over the oar of Halios he continued to see, even while glancing into the man’s eyes, that particular indentation at the back of his head which he held in such high regard, while behind it as if it were a symbol of all that was delicate and vulnerable in humanity, as opposed to all that was inhuman in Nature, rolled the enormous weight of waters. But it is dangerous, as his hero Odysseus could have told him, to philosophize too minutely when you are acting with a rush: and his pause at that second made him trip up so blindly over Halios’ oar that down he came with a crash, sprawling absurdly on the carefully scrubbed deck, and uttering a blasphemous curse on the vindictive ways of Poseidon.

  Halios lowered his great oar with rapid effectiveness as well as with exquisite nicety and helped Nisos to his feet while all their six eyes, joined now by the four eyes of Teknon and Klytos on the starboard side, turned simultaneously seaward, totally forgetting Pontopereia’s wild cry.

  And what they saw was indeed a sufficient marvel to justify any creature’s obliviousness to all else. For on one side a flaming red sun sank behind the horizon; and on the other a pale full moon rose above the horizon.

  What was indeed curious in this sudden possession by the sinking Sun and the rising Moon of the entire consciousness of four middle-aged men and one young man was the fact that each of the two celestial luminaries was only visible through one of the oar-holes on one of the two sides of the ship.

  In each case the bulk of the hole was filled by its particular oar; and, since each of the heavenly bodies was of a circular shape, the golden segment of the moon, which encircled the oar of Euros on one side, and the blood-red segment of the sun which encircled the oar of Teknon on the other side, produced, when the eyes of all five men moved from one to the other, a visual effect so strange that it was doubtful if any of them would ever, though he lived as long as the Ithacan palace Dryad, see such a sight again. Each of the five men received the startlingness of this queer vision in a different way. Euros, for instance, felt pure annoyance over the advantage that the deck-hands who dealt with the ropes and the sail had over themselves in regard to what they could see, and this feeling was increased when first on one side and then on the other the oar-holes were not only lined and inlaid with bloody sickles and golden crescents but crossed and re-crossed by the obstinate and greedy flight of a small sea-bird, for whose feather-covered cranium these creaking orifices were associated neither with the sun nor with the moon, but purely and solely with the fragments of terrestial garbage which the oarsmen got rid of through them. As for Nisos, he played with the crazy and fantastic fancy that the whole universe was the body of the giant Atlas, that great Titan whom the Son of Saturn compelled to hold up the sky lest it fall upon the earth.

  And Nisos imagined himself following his hero Odysseus in a winged ship that had the power of forcing its way through the body of the earth, as well as through the body of the sun, as well as through the body of the moon; but in his present fancy these three bodies were one body, the body that is to say of the entire universe, which was simply the body of Titan Atlas. His pet hawk was with him; and in his fancy he and his hawk kept flying through the whole body of Atlas and out on the other side: that is to say—into the void and back again into Atlas.

  It was not long, however, before this Atlas fancy of our youthful prophet developed into a much bolder imagination; the idea namely, that he himself was a universe-devouring dragon who lived on the elements and fed on earth and fire and water as he hurled himself through the air from one universe to another, devouring each one in turn, while, out of his excrement, vast-trailing protoplasmic embryos of new universes were eternally coagulated afresh.

  The queer trance into which all five men on the rowing-deck of the “Teras” had fallen may have been caused by the fact that in their awareness that the ship was sailing mid-way between sinking sun and rising moon each man felt he was being pitilessly pulled in opposite directions by two sanguinary opponents and that the end of it could only be that he would be torn into two halves. He could already feel himself becoming both these two half-selves which were now feebly drifting in opposite directions, their ragged edges raw and bloody while the flesh nearest those edges grew more and more gangrened. Was it perhaps that the screams of this sea-hawk, a bird that might easily have seemed to a prophetess, like that Nymph in the Italian cave, to be the return of a creature that had for hundreds of thousands of years been visiting and re-visiting the earth, stirred up in Nisos a desire to plunge deeper and deeper into the mystery of matter?

  At any rate one thing was certainly clear, namely that the wood-work of the “Teras” herself was slowly being aroused to a sort of semi-human consciousness. Whether this would have a good effect on those who were voyaging in her, who could say?

  But Nisos now set himself to scramble down to that lowest deck of all, from whence Pontopereia’s cry had ascended. It occurred to him, as he now rushed down, to wonder whether his delay in obeying her cry had hurt the feelings of the daughter of Teiresias, and as he climbed down the ladder, feeling slightly uncomfortable in his mind from remorse at not obeying her more quickly and slightly uncomfortable in his body from his crashing fall he cursed himself as a prize fool. “Where in the name of all the Harpies and Gorgons is the girl?” he muttered as he entered their cabin and found Tis’s sister asleep on their couch and not a sign of the other one. “Has she,” he thought, and as this fear shot through him he felt a queer sensation that he knew was different from any other feeling he had ever had before, “has she climbed up the ladder and thrown herself into the sea? And did she do this,” and he addressed his remark not to himself but to the sleeping figure of Eione, “because of something you said to her?”

  He stood staring at the sleeping girl in the bed with what he pretended to himself was a look of fierce dramatic reproach. The sleeping girl would have been gratified however to observe that this fierce look was directed solely at her face and that upon her incredibly well-moulded limbs, as fully exposed to his view as her extremely rustic and almost grotesquely simple features, the look that was drawn out of him was of quite a different kind.

  Different or not, all that Pontopereia knew about Nisos’ expression when she crept up silently behind him from her hiding-place among the hampers and nets and wicker cases and javelin-holders and quivers made of twisted root-fibres full of feathered arrows, which Odysseus had piled up outside his cabin and which—for the lowest deck of the “Teras” was anything but spacious—did more than just impinge upon the cabin of the two girls—all indeed that Pontopereia cou
ld possibly know of the feelings of Nisos as he stood staring at her enemy-friend and incorrigible rival was the simple fact that he did stand thus staring. And so when she spoke to him and he swung round to face her as if she had pricked him with one of Odysseus’s darts, the look that was exchanged between them was one of those looks that young men and young maids exchange now and again and that are as the primeval Welsh Prose Epic expresses it, “like the colour of lightning upon a sword-blade”.

  But it was at this moment that Odysseus himself appeared on the scene, emerging from his solitary cabin with bare feet, and entirely naked save for the blanket he had wrapped round him and the extraordinary Helmet of Proteus which he had just clapped on his head.

  “I want one of you,” he whispered hoarsely, “to come here a second!”

  “What in the name of Aidoneus,” thought Nisos, “is in the king’s mind?”

  But Eione, who had already leapt from her couch so quickly that the imprint left by her head on the pillow contained a twisted couple of tiny fair hairs held together by an infinitesimal flake of cinder-dust that must have adhered to them when she was recently heating water for her bath, had not lived all her life with old Morus for nothing. She would naturally divine the sort of thing that the practical cunning of a wily old man would urge him to do at a crisis like this. She had therefore, in reading the mind of Odysseus, an advantage over both the daughter of a prophet and the young aspirant to be himself a prophet.

  She therefore without a moment’s hesitation, and as if it were a dedicated dagger for some pontifical killing, offered her slender wrist to the old king; who proceeded at once, and with no more hesitation than she had shown, to make use of this small wrist. He led her after an imperative gesture to Pontopereia and Nisos to remain quiescent, to the drawn curtain that covered the threshold of the cabin occupied by Nausikaa and Okyrhöe; and the moment he got her there he made a mute sign to her to remain absolutely still, and then, drawing the curtain aside with an imperceptibly gentle movement he set himself to listen to what was going on between the two women.

  “O for heaven’s sake don’t make me have to go over it all again, Princess,” Okyrhöe was saying. “I’m only telling you for the hundredth time that this whole mad voyage of this crazy old king is ridiculous; and that you who pretend to be his friend, instead of helping him, are driving him faster to his ruin and destruction! Why, my good, silly woman, before we started on this crazy voyage I talked to several of the sailors who are running this ship and I soon found out how hopeless the whole thing is. They told me that the very figure-head of this ship is enough to damn the whole business by showing the ship’s destiny. They told me that the face of that Being at the prow is enough alone to prove to whom the vessel belongs! It belongs to the Ruler of Atlantis; for the face that looks out from that dreadful neck is the face of that Ruler himself!

  “They all know that; yes! all the sailors on this ship know it. And they know too that it was because of the blasphemous inventions and impious intentions of this wicked magician that the divine Son of Kronos who wields the thunder plunged the whole continent of Atlantis into the depths of the ocean. You pretend that this ship is of your land and has inherited from the skill and the craft of your people its power of prevailing over disaster and of holding onto its strength. All this is false—in fact a lie! The ‘Teras’ with its officers and the best of its crew was a pirate-ship long before it fell into the skilled hands of your people and was converted into a vessel of the shape and style of your land.

  “And now, my foolish woman, you must see how ridiculous it is to encourage Odysseus in this madness of his, when the truth is——”

  At this point Nausikaa boldly interrupted her. “Come, come, my dear lady, why on earth should a couple of presentable females like you and me scold each other like a pair of fish-wives in the old ‘Net-Alley’ of the Piraeus?”

  But once started in her torrent of vituperation it was impossible to silence Okyrhöe. “When I began”, the woman went on, “talking to these people just now I soon realized into what a desperate and tragic business you had, with all your good intentions, betrayed this unfortunate old king. Don’t you see bow infinitely pathetic it is to watch this aged impulsive fool dressing himself up in this comical head-dress they call the Helmet of Proteus?

  “What about all his fellow-countrymen who are now going to be led into such terrible peril by the pure chance that you came here with this ship? I’m not saying these things to you to torment you or to get any advantage over you. Do please, I beg you, lady, stop this vulgar abuse, and let us decide together how we can best help our mutual hero in this grand final adventure of his unequalled life!”

  The two of them continued their word-battle for quite a number of minutes, though neither of them was unoccupied while their desperate dispute went on. They were both arranging their hair, their head-dresses, their robes, their jewels, and even smoothing out the creases in their soft leather sandals, to make which final adjustment they were forced to display to each other and of course, though unknown to themselves, to their three watchers, for, though the daughter of Teiresias still held herself proudly aloof, Nisos as it well may be believed, was unable to resist the temptation of joining in this espionage, the most intimate beauty of their figures.

  Matters on board the “Teras” were further complicated at this critical point by the emergence from the ship’s hold, which was reached by a short ladder of no more than three rungs from the cabin occupied by Odysseus, of the two black Lybian cooks staggering under their first instalment of food and drink for everyone on board; and as this plenteous repast was to be swallowed in what was now the cabin of Odysseus it can be imagined with what rapidity these two imperious ladies of fashion hastened to complete their toilet.

  Along with the two black Libyans there came up also from the hold of the good ship “Teras”, or “Prodigy”, a couple of Assyrian boys of about thirteen whose business it was to act as general scavengers and excrement-disposers for both crew and passengers. On every deck of the ship there were containers for excremental liquids and containers for excremental solids which it was the duty of these Assyrian boys to empty into the sea; and for this purpose, each day of every voyage, they went the round of the ship at sunset.

  Thus it was no haphazard or random coincidence but by one of those inevitable concentrations of the normal and natural forces of life that keep the world on the move that the whole crowd of human creatures, from the Old Odysseus to the young excrement disposers, who were divided from the waters of drowning by the planks of the “Teras” or “Prodigy”, were gathered together when a clamorous shout went up, a shout that came from the throats of the general crowd and not from any professional group or any especially nervous group, a shout that was soon repeated still louder and by this time came from the deck upon which any boat-load of people coming from any direction at all would of necessity scramble on board.

  Nisos was at Odysseus’ side when the divine animal, Pegasos, flying with quite a company of people on his broad back, reached the “Teras” and therefore our young man had a unique opportunity of noting how the old king reacted to this impact. But he was so anxious to catch all the king’s feelings that he couldn’t help exaggerating much that he observed.

  He exaggerated for instance many flickering changes of expression on the countenance of Odysseus. He exaggerated certain jerky and feverish gestures made by the King. The truth was that no one alive really understood the King except Eurycleia his old nurse. It was one of the results of Odysseus’ abnormal self-control that he could feel deep down in his blood and bones reactions quite different from those which he felt in his more superficial nerves or along the surface of his skin, and more different still from those expressed in his face.

  The scene on the “Teras’” top deck when Pegasos arrived was indeed something that might have reduced to a wild state of hysterical excitement any traveller less self-controlled and less artful than Odysseus. The human creatures whom Pegas
os now shook from his broad back and from between his wide-stretched wings were obviously so confused by the whole experience that, as the saying goes, they hardly “knew their heads from their tails”.

  For the last couple of days a frantic longing to cling together like a frightened swarm of insects must have possessed them. But in spite of this they preserved their poise and endurance. Chief among these brave voyagers upon the winged horse was Zeuks the son of Arcadian Pan and along with him was none other than Spartika the Priestess of Athene’s Temple, and in addition to these and holding herself with proud dignity a little apart from the rest was none other than Arsinöe the bastard daughter of Hector, who in her childhood had been befriended by Andromache, Hector’s wife.

  Nisos was astonished to see that it was not Zeuks but Spartika who held the proudest position on the back of the winged horse, nearest, that is to say, to his head, and he was still more surprised when instead of descending, as Zeuks and Arsinöe very speedily did, Spartika remained seated, and indeed began to caress the mane of Pegasos and to give that arching neck whose curves resembled a torrent of water released from rocks and roots and flowing at ease down a smooth declivity, a series of reassuring and yet authoritative pats.

  Our friend Nisos, who still retained at the back of his consciousness an obstinate determination to be a real prophet before he died, and who was still alert to catch the most intimate ways of the mental rulers of our race, was deeply struck by the manner in which Spartika kept them all standing where they were, as if she had thrown a spell over each of them, while she delivered what evidently was a long-prepared and legally-involved discourse on the precise attitude she intended to take between the run-away goddess of that formidable “aegis”, whose very “tassels” could bring new life to the half-dead, and that Priest of the Mysteries who had so successfully usurped the position of Telemachos.