第13章

"Endure, my heart," he cried, as often he had cried before, "a worse thing than this thou hast endured," and he caught up a lyre of the dead Sidonians, and sang:--Though the light of the sun be hidden, Though his race be run, Though we sail in a sea forbidden To the golden sun:

Though we wander alone, unknowing,--Oh, heart of mine,--The path of the strange sea-going, Of the blood-red brine;Yet endure! We shall not be shaken By things worse than these;We have 'scaped, when our friends were taken, On the unsailed seas;Worse deaths have we faced and fled from, In the Cyclops' den, When the floor of his cave ran red from The blood of men;Worse griefs have we known undaunted, Worse fates have fled;When the Isle that our long love haunted Lay waste and dead!

So he was chanting when he descried, faint and far off, a red glow cast up along the darkness like sunset on the sky of the Under-world.

For this light he steered, and soon he saw two tall pillars of flame blazing beside each other, with a narrow space of night between them.

He helmed the ship towards these, and when he came near them they were like two mighty mountains of wood burning far into heaven, and each was lofty as the pyre that blazes over men slain in some red war, and each pile roared and flared above a steep crag of smooth black basalt, and between the burning mounds of fire lay the flame-flecked water of a haven.

The ship neared the haven and the Wanderer saw, moving like fireflies through the night, the lanterns in the prows of boats, and from one of the boats a sailor hailed him in the speech of the people of Egypt, asking him if he desired a pilot.

"Yea," he shouted. The boat drew near, and the pilot came aboard, a torch in his hand; but when his eyes fell on the dead men in the ship, and the horror hanging from the yard, and the captain bound to the iron bar, and above all, on the golden armour of the hero, and on the spear-point fast in his helm, and on his terrible face, he shrank back in dread, as if the God Osiris himself, in the Ship of Death, had reached the harbour. But the Wanderer bade him have no fear, telling him that he came with much wealth and with a great gift for the Pharaoh. The pilot, therefore, plucked up heart, and took the helm, and between the two great hills of blazing fire the vessel glided into the smooth waters of the River of Egypt, the flames glittering on the Wanderer's mail as he stood by the mast and chanted the Song of the Bow.