But Cleite knew by his eyes and hands that he was lying.
At dawn a distant sound of yelling was heard and the blare of war-horns. The Dolionians and the Argonauts immediately sprang to arms each side convinced that the other was behaving treacherously. But the Argonauts were prompter than the Dolionians and overawed them. Jason stood over Cleite with a drawn sword and threatened to kill her unless Cyzicus ordered his men to lay down their arms. This Cyzicus did. Then Echion the herald ran out, followed by Castor, Pollux and Lynceus, to see what was afoot.
The noises proceeded from Chytos cove, across the bay, and Lynceus, straining his eyes, cried: ‘A fight is in progress between our guards and a great horde of men who seem to have six hands – for they are dressed in bear-skins with the four paws dangling. To the rescue!’
Echion ran back into the palace with the news, and Jason, when he heard it, sheathed his sword and asked pardon of Cyzicus, which he freely granted. Then all together rushed down to the beach, launched boats and galleys, and rowed hurriedly to the rescue.
When they arrived at Chytos they found that the fight was over. The Bear men had hoped to catch the guards asleep, but Hylas had given the alarm. This came about by chance. Hylas, ever since the departure from Lemnos, had watched for an opportunity of escaping from the tutelage of Hercules and getting back to his Iphinoë. He had not yet found this possible: on Samothrace he would soon have been recaptured, and at Sestos he would have been observed by the two men who were constantly on watch. But now he judged that the hour for his venture had come. He would slip ashore on Bear Island, scramble along the craggy coast, run across the isthmus (as if sent on a message by Hercules), and then strike inland into the Phrygian hills. He hoped to reach Troy within a few days and there, with the bribe of a silver belt-clasp, to persuade some Athenian or Cadmean ship-master to set him ashore on Lemnos.
Hylas had waited until his companions fell asleep one by one. Then he filled a wallet with provisions and his silver belt-clasp and some small gold ornaments, caught up a javelin, and was just lowering himself over the port bulwark near the bows, when he heard someone suppressing a sneeze in the thicket close by. He clambered back again. Thereupon the Bear men, cursing the comrade who had sneezed, rushed forward. One climbed upon the shoulders of another and would have hauled himself over the starboard bulwark had not Hylas run at him and pierced his throat through with the javelin, so that he fell with a great cry. Hylas called out: ‘To arms, to arms!’ Acastus and Peleus seized their spears and Polyphemus his bronze axe, and standing on the gunwale these three fought the Bear men off. But drunken Hercules dragged himself up to the helmsman’s seat and called for his bow and arrows. Hylas brought them to him and he began to shoot. It was strange that the effect of wine on Hercules was to quicken his rate of shooting without impairing the accuracy of his aim. While Acastus and Peleus killed two men apiece with their spears, and Polyphemus another with his axe Hercules transfixed no less than thirty with his arrows before the remainder fed away. They lay dead on the beach or in the water like so many baulks of timber seasoning in the ship-yard of Pagasae.
Hercules swore that he owed his life to the vigilance of his wonderful Hylas and embraced him with the usual violence. Hylas was therefore awarded the spoils of battle: thirty-five fine bear-skins, ten of which were fastened with golden buttons, two well-made Greek helmets which the Bear men had captured from the guards of King Aeneus, a bronze dagger inlaid with green horses at full gallop, three necklaces of bears’ claws and one of large painted terra-cotta beads. But the weapons of most of these savages were mere oaken spears, their points sharpened in the fire, rough oaken clubs and jagged stones. Hylas distributed the bear-skins as gifts among the Argonauts. Only Butes refused the skin offered him, saying that if he once put it on, his bees would come to hear of it and never trust him again.
All returned in friendship to the city together. The Argo was provided with a heavier anchor-stone, and the light one which it replaced was laid up as a votive offering in the temple of Poseidon, where it may still be viewed. Then blood-sacrifices were offered to all the Olympian Gods and Goddesses in turn. But no offering of any sort was made to the Triple Goddess, because she was worshipped by the Bear men, and by the Pelasgians of Proconesos, and by the Trojans. Cyzicus hated her: only a few days before this he had led an armed expedition into Bear Island, the inhabitants of which fled from him, and there shot one of the lions, sacred to the Goddess in her name of Rhea, that prowl about Mount Dindymos. He had audaciously spread its pelt as a coverlet upon his marriage-bed.
Orpheus urged Jason to go apart with him and a few others and propitiate the Goddess with offerings on her sacred mountain, pleading that the omission of her sacrifice was made for reasons of policy, not in hostility or scorn.
Jason would not listen, protesting that he must gain the perfect confidence of Cyzicus and thus ensure a generous provisioning of the ship; and that to leave the city for a secret journey into Bear Island would certainly be misinterpreted as an act of treason.
So no overtures were made to the Goddess and the marriage-feast continued under Olympian auspices. By the end of it one of the Argonauts, it is not known which, had given away the secret of their mission to Colchis. Several Dolionians at once volunteered for the voyage, but Jason could find no room for them in the Argo. Cyzicus himself was anxious to sail and, being a practised helmsman who had twice made the voyage to Colchis, would have been a welcome addition to the crew; for Tiphys was suffering from colic and could not eat or drink anything but sheep’s milk and barley-porridge. Cyzicus suggested that Tiphys should remain behind in the palace and be carefully tended, while he took charge of the helm. But Tiphys declared that he was well enough and that he would not resign the helm to Poseidon himself until the voyage had ended, for the Goddess Athena had expressly committed the rudders to his own charge. And Queen Cleite, in private swore that if Cyzicus went off with Jason she would immediately go off to her father’s house at Percote and never return: for she would not remain in one house with a fool, and only a fool would trust Jason, with his white eye-lashes.
On the fifth day, therefore, the Argonauts prepared to sail again. Cyzicus called down the blessings of all the Olympians upon the Argo, and presented rich presents to the crew: jars of wine and corn, shirts of Egyptian linen, and embroidered cloaks. To Jason he gave a broad-headed spear, with a shaft inlaid with shell, which had belonged to King Aeneus; and Jason in return gave him a golden goblet (one of Hypsipyle’s parting gifts) engraved with a continuous design of running stags, and a Thessalian bridle with a silver bit. They clasped hands and became as brothers. But ‘I hope never to see that man again,’ Cleite muttered as soon as Jason’s broad back was turned.
The wind blew fresh from the south-west. When they had trundled the two anchor-stones aboard and Argus had given the hawser-ends to a line of Dolionians to hold until the crew were settled in their seats, a sudden flaw of wind, rushing down from Mount Dindymos, spun the Argo about and dragged the men at the hawser-ends into the water. No one was hurt and Cyzicus said, laughing: ‘Your Argo seems unwilling to leave our hospitable shore. See how she turns her prow about!’
Cleite warned Cyzicus, even before the Argo was out of sight: ‘Dearest one, see that you keep a vigilant guard for the next few nights. The wind that turned Jason’s ship about came as a warning from some god or other that he treacherously intends to return, now that he has spied out our dispositions, and to murder us in our beds.’
Cyzicus replied that had any woman but she spoken in this sense he would have called her an ignorant mischief-maker. Cleite said: ‘But, seeing that nobody but myself has done so, what reason have you to disregard the warning?’ She insisted on a watch being kept, day and night.
The breeze slackened at dawn, when the Argo had travelled a fair distance. No land was to be seen anywhere. The sky was overcast, though the rain had nearly ceased. The Argo was surrounded by grey-green waters, with no ship, rock, or reef intervening to br
eak the connected course of the horizon. Neither Tiphys nor Argus nor old Nauplius (whose great-grandfather and namesake was the first Greek ever to steer by the Pole Star) could calculate their position with certainty.
Jason asked Nauplius: ‘What sort of weather may we expect today?’
He shook his head: ‘I have been at sea, man and boy, for thirty years, throughout each sailing season; yet I cannot undertake to answer you. The sea is to me like the face of an old grandmother to a child. I can never read in her features what is passing in her mind, or what fit she will take next – one moment it may be a calm, the next a storm. Ask Coronus: the Crow, his bird, can foretell the weather infallibly, they say!’
Idas laughed and said: ‘Whoever is weather-wise is a fool otherwise.’
Jason put the question to Coronus, who answered simply: ‘Expect a squall from the north-east.’
In the middle of the morning the north-eastern horizon began to brighten and sudden gusts of wind blew, now from one quarter and now from another.
Weary Tiphys told his companions: ‘Doubtless this is the prelude to the squall that Coronus foretold. By my reckoning we have already come within a day’s sail of the Bosphorus. But we cannot hope to sail through in the teeth of a north-easter. And I have heard that, when such a wind has blown for a day or two, the current in the Bosphorus runs at five or six knots; we could make no headway against it even if the wind itself were to drop. When the squall strikes us, let us run before it, coasting past the Besbicos Islands, and make for the sandy beaches at the mouth of the river Rhyndacos which lies to the south-westward This is our wisest course if we wish to avoid shipwreck. Meanwhile let us disguise our ship again with the dark sail and set the White Horse over the Ram.’
The Argonauts began to cry: ‘No, no! Why should we not invoke Amphitrite again and obtain from her another sailful of that excellent south-westerly wind? Come, Orpheus, conduct the ceremony!’
Orpheus shook his head. ‘Our leader Jason,’ he said, ‘refused to sacrifice to the Goddess at the time when we honoured the Olympian deities, nor would he take my advice and ascend Mount Dindymos to propitiate her there. He even dared make himself a blood-brother to King Cyzicus, who has killed one of the Goddess’s sacred lions and publicly declared himself her enemy. How can we hope by now invoking her in the name of Amphitrite to coax a smile from her? It was not for nothing that the flaw of wind blew down from Dindymos and spun the Argo about. I read it at once as a warning from the Goddess that we should not sail until we had earned her pardon; but it was already too late to speak. This is an evil business, and we must all patiently accept the consequences!’
As he spoke, the north-easter came down upon them with the noise of ten thousand whistling arrows, cold and cruel from the distant Scythian steppes. They hastily pulled the ship about and ran before the wind. The sea was soon ridged with white-topped waves across which the Argo ran, lifting and sinking, like a frightened deer in full course; but the sail held, and she shipped no water, because of her close-fitting bulwarks. On she sped, hour after hour, and Argus cried: ‘Comrades here you see the advantage of a bolted ship! One merely lashed together in the ancient fashion would have been shaken apart long before now, and we should be desperately baling out green water that poured in from ever-widening leaks.’
However, not even Lynceus could sight the Islands of Besbicos, and when at dusk they approached the southern coast it was steep-to and the waves hissed on pitiless rocks. They sailed on, searching for the mouth of the Rhyndacos. It was already night, with the waning moon not yet risen, before they sighted ahead of them what appeared to be a flat plain stretched out between two hills. Some lights twinkled from the foot of the hill on the port bow, and Argus said: ‘That will be Dascylion, a small Trojan settlement of about twenty houses. I believe that we shall find the beach flat and without rocks if we steer directly towards it.’
‘Boldness is best,’ said Peleus. ‘Let us spring ashore with a war-cry. We shall take the inhabitants by surprise and overawe them.’
Jason agreed. They put on their helmets and body armour, and soon the wind drove the ship through the surf and upon a sandy and hospitable beach. They hauled her out of reach of the waves and belayed her to a smooth rock, which they found ready to their purpose, then rushed in a body towards the lights, yelling: ‘Yield, yield!’
Chapter Twenty
The Funeral of King Cyzicus
Armed men poured from the houses on the hill, and battle was joined above the beach. The Argonauts kept together in a body – all except Hercules, who rushed forward laying out to right and left with his terrible club – but the enemy fought in a scattered and disorderly manner. It was Jason’s first battle, and a divine fury seized him. He thrust with the gift-spear of Cyzicus at the dark figures that opposed him, while at his right side Polyphemus the Lapith with a long sword, and on his left Little Ancaeus with an axe, hacked their way forward to the houses. It was bloody work and already ten of the enemy were strewn on the field of battle and the rest were in rout, when with a sudden war-cry three tall men came charging together down the hill. Their leader made straight for Jason, who lunged forward with his spear and spitted him through the middle. The spear-head stood out close to the back-bone and Jason could not free it, even by pushing with his foot against his adversary’s thighs. Of the other two men, one was struck down by Little Ancaeus, who lopped off his head at the third stroke, and the third fled away shouting: ‘We are lost – oh, we are lost – our noble King Cyzicus is killed!’
At this a horror seized the Argonauts and Jason cried: ‘A light! A light!’
Young Hylas, who had himself driven a javelin into the bowels of one of the enemy, seized up the smoky pine torch which the dying man let fall and whirled it about his head until it flamed brightly. He ran to Jason, who, bending down to scrutinize the man at his feet, found that it was indeed King Cyzicus, transfixed with the gift-spear, the spear of his own father Aeneus.
Cyzicus looked up and gasped out: ‘Cleite, Cleite!’ Then the blood gushed from his mouth and he died.
Now they knew at last that they had overshot the Rhyndacos river-mouth by some twenty-five miles, and that the Triple Goddess, for a sour jest, had fetched the Argonauts back to the other side of the same isthmus from which they had sailed two days previously.
Jason ordered Echion the herald to enter the palace, there to make peace on his behalf with Cleite and the brother of Cyzicus and the remaining Dolionian chiefs. Echion courageously accepted this dangerous charge, but when at length he secured admittance and asked to be led to Cleite, he found her hanging from a beam in her bridal chamber. He cut her down, but it was too late.
Morning dawned, bright and gusty. The wind drove huge waves hissing up the beach, which dashed in spray against the Argo’s stern. Already the Dolionians had found and claimed their dead, and the sound of mourning rose like the howl of wolves from every house. The Argonauts stood about in little groups, whispering to one another, ill at ease. Only Idas dared speak out. He went up to Jason and said aloud: ‘We are free of guilt in this matter. The blood of our dear hosts lies on your head only. Why did you disregard the warning of Orpheus? Why did you not propitiate the Goddess?’
Jason put his hand to his sword and said: ‘Idas, you have sworn to obey me as your captain. I now command you to silence. Listen to me. The death of my wretched royal brother weighs heavily on my heart, yet I regard myself as no more to blame for it than yourself. It is clear that the Great Goddess made us all equally the instruments of her vengeance upon him for the death of her sacred lion. Let the Goddess herself, not us, be answerable for this night’s work. Not one of our company has been killed or even wounded, except for a scratch or two, which is remarkable and clearly shows that her just anger was turned wholly against the Dolionians.’
Idas was about to make some scoffing retort when Hercules caught him up from behind and tossed him into the air, so that he turned heels overhead and landed on his feet, staggering. ‘You ha
ve said enough,’ said Hercules, twirling his club. Idas choked back his wrath.
Peace was concluded with the Dolionians. Alexander, who succeeded to the throne, accepted Jason’s explanation that his men had believed themselves to be at Dascylion; he absolved them of all blame and admitted that he had, for his part, mistaken them for his Pelasgian enemies of Proconesos. It was plain that he felt joy rather than grief at his brother’s death. Then, all together, Argonauts and Dolionians heaped pyres and set the twelve corpses upon them, with rosemary and other sweet-smelling herbs to disguise the reek of roasting man-flesh and with all the gifts of food that had been put into the Argo, except the wine. Together they danced in armour about each pyre, three times about each, clashing their weapons together, while servants blew on conches and beat drums to frighten off the ghosts of the slain. And always, at the third time about, the dancers threw lighted brands into the pyre and watched while the flames leaped up and the corpse was devoured. The wind made the pyres roar lustily, and soon there was nothing left of the dead men but glowing bones. Over these they heaped high barrows, but the highest barrow of all was heaped for Cyzicus.
The Argonauts washed themselves three times in spring water, and changed their garments. They sacrificed black sheep, the heads turned downwards, and poured the blood upon the barrows, for the ghosts to slake their vengeful thirst; and the gift-wine, too, to make them forget. They also tore out their hair by handfuls. However, the ghost of Cleite was no concern of the Argonauts.
For three days they held funeral games in honour of King Cyzicus, in which the Dolionians also took part; but the Argonauts won every event, as might have been expected.
In the wrestling contest, Great Ancaeus was chosen to represent them, instead of Hercules or Castor. For Hercules had accidentally killed the last two men whom he had met in the ring and was still occasionally plagued by their indignant ghosts, and Castor had injured his thumb as he leaped ashore from the Argo on that fateful night. At the first encounter Ancaeus caught the opposing Dolionian about the middle, swung him off his feet, flung him sideways, and touched him down swiftly before he had recovered from the surprise. This won Ancaeus a golden cup, for the Dolionian refused to try a second fall with him.
The Golden Fleece Page 22