Oaths were sworn on either side, in the name of Zeus, that the party which first arrived at Aeaea should remain fifty days, if necessary, for the other to appear; but after fifty days would be released from any obligation to stay longer. This matter having been settled, the water-jars were again rinsed and replenished at the spring, which was a tedious business. The spring was a mere trickle, and they had not finished before evening. Jason therefore consented to let his companions pass the night on the island; for this was the night before the new moon, and starlight alone was insufficient to guide them safely into the rushing mouth of the Danube.
Meanwhile King Apsyrtus, observing the Argo’s flight to the north-westward, had divided his fleet into two flotillas. One, consisting of eight ships, he had put under the command of his Admiral, Aras, and ordered him to sail direct for Troy, to lie in wait for the Argo there; but if he came across her while he was still in the Black Sea, or the Sea of Marmora, so much the better. He was to butcher all aboard except Medea, the sons of Phrixus, Calaïs and Zetes; these were to be spared. With the other flotilla of twelve ships, which he commanded himself, Apsyrtus sailed north-westward in pursuit of the Argo, taking Dictys, the Vice-Admiral, with him.
The Black Sea is of enormous extent, a desolate waste of waters. Apsyrtus, losing sight of the Argo almost immediately, sailed for the mouth of the Danube, where he expected to overtake her. He arrived off the Fair Mouth on the very morning that the Argonauts disembarked at Leuce, and asked the local fishermen, who were Brygians, whether they had seen or heard of the Argo. They could tell him nothing, but later one of his own ships that had been blown northward out of her course arrived with news: as she had laboured along with oars about an hour after dawn that morning, her look-out man had sighted an island about a mile and a half to westward. The rising sun glinted on a white patch at the island’s southern extremity – a beached ship with the sail still hoisted – and a light smoke rose near by. The master, recognizing the island as Leuce, had sheered off and shaped his course to the south-westward.
Apsyrtus guessed that the beached ship was the Argo. He drew up into the Fair Mouth all his ships but one, ordering the master of the remaining ship to sail as quickly as possible to the northern mouth, the Fennel, and there set two men ashore: they were to lie hidden among the reeds until the Argo should appear and to send up a column of smoke when she was well within the river. Apsyrtus was confident that Jason would put in either at the Fennel or the Fair Mouth, the lesser mouths further to the northward being the outfall of shallow and tortuous streams. Other pairs of men from the same ship were to be posted at nearer points along the coast of the delta, to observe the smoke signal and pass it backward.
The Colchian sailed off at once on this mission, and when she returned at midnight her master reported that the men were posted in pairs according to the orders of Apsyrtus.
The Argonauts slept well, unaware that a trap had been set for them or even that they had been observed; for they had all been busied with their pastimes and sacrifices during the brief time that the prow of the Colchian ship had peeped over the horizon.
But Apsyrtus planned, as soon as the Argo had crossed the bar of the Fennel, to send a part of his flotilla into the Fair Mouth to intercept her at the head of the delta, while the remainder sailed north along the coast and, crowding up into the Fennel, blocked her escape.
The next day at dawn the Argonauts spread their sail to a northeasterly breeze, and continued their voyage; the sea-water was presently discoloured with the grey mud of the river. As they approached, they steered by a five-peaked mountain, far inland, called the Fist. The coast of the delta was low, flat, and treeless, but covered densely with reeds. In the distance they saw a settlement of rude huts, raised on piles, and light canoes, of willow framework covered with sewn seal-skins, lying in a row on the muddy shore close by. This was the chief village of the Brygians, who wear seal-skin breeches and reek of fish oil; it lies close to the mouth of the Fennel.
The Argo crossed the bar, and when she had come a mile or more up the stream, which was flowing at two knots, the Argonauts saw a tall column of smoke rising astern on the right bank; but paid little attention to it, supposing it to be the smoke from a funeral pyre. The stream at this point was half a mile wide, and alive with fish.
At evening, helped on by the same wind, they anchored on the left bank, near a grove of rotten willow-trees, about twenty miles from the mouth of the river. It was a gloomy occasion, because the ground was damp from heavy rain, and Orpheus, who had been weakened by his dysentery, was overtaken by a sudden fever. He became delirious and poured out a torrent of eloquence, so ill-omened, though nonsensical, that his comrades were constrained to gag him; and he fought with such violence that a man was needed to control each of his four limbs. Medea could do nothing for him; for she was unclean at the time, because of her monthly course, and therefore unable to undertake any work of healing or magic.
It was then that the Argonauts heard, for the first and last time, the prophetic lament of King Sisyphus for the Goddess Pasiphaë, which he sang in the quarries of Ephyra on the evening before the stone crushed him; for Orpheus repeated it as he struggled, unaware of the blasphemy.
Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!
My eye, dazzled with tears, shall dazzle yours,
Conjuring you to shine and not to move.
You, sun, and I all afternoon have laboured
Beneath a dewless and oppressive cloud –
A fleece now gilded with our common grief
That this must be a night without a moon.
Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!
Faithless she was not: she was very woman,
Smiling with dire impartiality,
Sovereign, with heart unmatched, adored of men,
Until spring’s cuckoo with bedraggled plumes
Tempted her pity and her truth betrayed.
Then she who shone for all resigned her being,
And this must be a night without a moon.
Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!
A crane flew by with a fish in its long bill, but dropped it into the river-mud close to the Argonauts’ camp, uttering a sharp cry of distress and then a gabbling sound.
Jason asked Mopsus: ‘Mopsus, what does the crane say?’
Mopsus answered: ‘It says: “Alas – alas – cut into little pieces – cut into little pieces – they can never be put together again!” But whether the bird of Artemis is speaking of its own private grief or prophesying to us, I do not know.’
Lynceus said: ‘If those are indeed the words of the crane, they cannot refer to the dropped fish, which, though dead, is not cut in pieces. In my opinion, the bird intentionally opened its bill to drop the fish and address us; and therefore the words are prophetic.’
‘Let us wait in holy silence for another sign,’ said Mopsus. ‘Let none of us move until a sign appears.’
They waited in silence, and presently a large shoal of a sort of sardine fish came swimming close to the bank where Medea was sitting, and called attention to themselves by making a flurry in the water with their tails. This evidently was the expected sign, but nobody could interpret it plainly, though Atalanta observed that in Thessaly the Sardine is sacred to Artemis, just as the Crane is to Delian Artemis, and judged that some message of protection was being conveyed to Medea by the Goddess.
Melanion, son of Phrixus, agreed with this view. He said: ‘Artemis is well known in these parts. Two islands sacred to her lie a little further up the coast, opposite the lesser mouths of the river, called the Thousand Mouths.’
Echion the herald put an end to the discussion. ‘It is unprofitable,’ he said, ‘to torture the mind with surmise and speculation. Let us be content to remember the voice of the Crane and the flurry of the Sardine. Perhaps tomorrow the sense of both these portents will be apparent to us.’
They rolled themselves in their cloaks or blankets and slept, but shortly before dawn Jason
dreamed that he broke open a ripe pomegranate with his nails and spilt the red juice upon his tunic and upon Medea’s gown. Meanwhile Medea was dreaming that she and Jason, coming together into a hut, tossed a huge crayfish, the size of a man, into a cauldron of boiling water, and that both crayfish and water turned red; and that Jason drew the crayfish out and plucked out its eyes, and trimmed off the lower joints of all its legs with his sword, and scattered them outside in the darkness, crying with a voice like the crane’s: ‘Cut into little pieces – cut into little pieces – they can never be put together again!’
Medea and he were sleeping at a distance from each other, but both started up at the same instant in common terror. They dared not sleep again, but purified themselves at once in the running water of the Fennel, and remained awake until it was time for breakfasting.
The second day passed uneventfully, though ominous of evil in the first hours, when the sky was so heavy with mist that the sun rose like a vermilion ball and did not show his glory until long after they had breakfasted. About noon on the third day when, wearied with rowing, they drew near the head of the delta, suddenly the flotilla of Apsyrtus bore down on them from behind a wooded rise where the river made a sharp turn.
One ship against six was unequal odds, and Jason immediately gave the order: ‘About ship, and row for your lives!’ The Argo had a lead of about five hundred paces and doubled it as the afternoon wore on because Melanion, who was steering, knew well how to take advantage of the twisting currents, but all the ships were clipping along furiously.
Argus called Jason to him and said with gasps as he rowed: ‘Beyond the next bend, as I noticed this morning, there is a stream or backwater which, if I am not mistaken, communicates with the Fair Mouth. At all events it flows out of the Fennel, not into it. Let us quickly turn in there, and hope that the Colchians will hurry on seaward, not noticing our change of course.’
Jason asked Melanion: ‘Do you know where that stream emerges?’
Melanion replied: ‘Alas, I have never enquired.’
Jason, with a prayer to Athena, to take the ship and himself under her keeping, made his decision.
‘Steer her into the next stream to starboard,’ he ordered.
A fierce current caught the Argo and whirled her past the bend. When she was again in a straight stretch of the river, the stream showed to starboard, its narrow mouth flanked with reed-beds. Melanion steered the Argo safely in, and after a few strong pulls the crew shipped their oars as silently as possible and let her slide on into concealment behind a forest of reeds. Behind them they could hear the wild bird-like cries of their pursuers and the measured plash of oars as each of the Colchian ships in turn drove on downstream.
They mopped their brows and spoke in whispers. Melanion said: ‘This stream may be a blind alley. The current is so sluggish that I doubt whether it communicates with the Fair Mouth, which is fast flowing. I propose that we wait until the Colchians have rounded the next bend downstream and immediately double back upstream for six miles. We can then row up the narrow tributary which enters the Fennel from the opposite bank; I have been told that after twenty or thirty miles it communicates with the nameless northern arm of the river which breaks into countless small streams, the Thousand Mouths, and debouches behind the islands sacred to Artemis of which I spoke yesterday. If we take that course, the Colchians will never catch us.’
Jason asked: ‘Who approves of the proposal that Melanion has made?’
Augeas of Elis said: ‘Not I, for one. I am utterly exhausted. I could not row another mile, nor even half a mile, except downstream. It is easy for a helmsman to speak as Melanion does, but in this stifling weather it would break our hearts to contend once more with the current that tried our strength so severely this morning. Six miles, says he! And what then? Another twenty or thirty miles, still upstream, along a narrow rushing tributary? No, no! This stream that we are in may run slowly, but it runs in the right direction, namely seaward. It will bear us to safety before nightfall, I have no doubt. Then as soon as ever we are swept out into salt water, let the sons of the North Wind invoke their father with prayers and promises; we will hoist our sail, and within five days we shall be racing through the Bosphorus. We cannot afford to delay or to return upstream. Our enemies, when they reach the mouth of the Fennel and find no trace of us anywhere, will be at a loss. They will not know whether we have eluded them by turning off the main stream or whether we have scuttled our ship, or whether we have hidden her in a reed-bed somewhere and are now waiting to slip past them into the sea under cover of night.’
Augeas spoke with such passion that he convinced Jason and all his comrades except Melanion and Idas.
Idas, turning about to fix his eyes upon Augeas but addressing the company at large, said: ‘I am sorry that you are so easily persuaded, my lords, by the gutless Epian. “No moon, no man”, as I have often told you. But I blame his father, not himself, for his cowardice and sloth, and I will tell you why. My dear mother Arene (after whom my father Aphareus named our city) came to visit Hermione, the wife of Eleius, at about the time that she expected to be delivered of her first child. The night was moonless, and my mother therefore said to Hermione: “Dear cousin, in Heaven’s name I implore you not to fall into labour until tomorrow night, when there will be a new moon. You know the proverb ‘no moon, no man,’ and I should be exceedingly sorry for you if you were to bear your bold husband Eleius a tadpole instead of a son.” Hermione undertook to do nothing that might possibly precipitate childbirth. However, that same afternoon Apollo, who hated Eleius – as he secretly hates all priests of the Sun for not identifying their God with himself – sent a mouse which ran up Hermione’s leg as far as the thigh and made her scream involuntarily; and at once her pangs came on her.
‘My mother Arene cried to Hermione: “Lie down on your bed quick, dearest cousin, lie still, do not speak a word and I will delay the childbirth until tomorrow night.” So my mother reeved all her own hair, her long fair braids, into difficult knots, and knotted together the skirts of her robe and cloak, and tied nine knots in her amber necklace, and then sat silently down with her legs crossed and her fingers tightly locked together at the door of Hermione’s room. This is a sure charm, the same charm that the mother of King Sthenelus spitefully employed to delay the birth of Hercules and thus defeat an oracle. There she sat all night in great discomfort, and Hermione thanked her repeatedly in her heart, for the pangs became fainter and fainter; but could not speak, for fear of breaking the charm. And my mother sat on, cross-legged, and allowed nobody at all to set his foot across the threshold.
‘Eleius broke the charm when he returned from hunting very early in the morning. He found my mother seated at the door of his bed-chamber, and wished to enter to fetch fresh linen from the chest, but my mother cast him a Gorgon look. He was a foolish and impetuous man and he shouted loudly through the door: “Hermione, Hermione, hand me a fresh linen shirt and drawers. I am wringing wet.”
‘Hermione dared not answer or rise from her bed, for fear of breaking the charm, and Eleius, growing suddenly angry, picked up my mother by her elbows and flung her aside. Then he burst into the bed-chamber and began abusing Hermione. He asked: “Why, wife, what ails you? Would you bar your dear husband out of his own bed-chamber when he comes home wringing wet from hunting boar?” At once the pangs returned, and Augeas was born before the night of the new moon, and he is what you see him to be – and all for the sake of a fresh linen shirt and a pair of drawers! And I am sorry, my lords, that you have been persuaded by this gutless Augeas to rest on your oars, when only by a vigorous use of them will we ever escape from the Colchian fleet.’
Had the speaker been any other Argonaut but talkative Idas, his comrades might have listened to him and reconsidered their decision; but since he was Idas, they paid no attention to him at all.
Presently they rowed on at their leisure down the stream, which was muddy and in part choked with reeds, but had not come far before they fou
nd themselves in a lake about two miles broad, its calm surface unbroken by any islands or reed-beds. They continued across it in the expectation of discovering a concealed egress at the southern extremity; but found none and sailed back along the reedy eastern shore, confident that the water which flowed into the lake from the Fennel must also flow out somewhere.
They were still debating the question in loud voices when first five, and then six more, Colchian ships nosed into the lake through a reed-bed just ahead of them. Spreading out in a half-moon they hemmed the Argo in, allowing her no hope of escape.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Parley
As soon as King Apsyrtus found that the Argo had eluded him, he had heaved-to and anchored his whole flotilla, except for two ships which he sent back upstream to the bend where she had last been sighted; ordering their masters to examine all intervening reed-beds, tributaries, or backwaters, and report to him at once if they found any trace of her. Presently one of them, searching the stream which the Argo had entered, noticed some newly bruised reeds and the mark of an oar on a mud-bank. He returned hurriedly to Apsyrtus with this report, and arrived just as the other Colchian flotilla under the command of Dictys the Vice-Admiral came rowing up from the sea. Dictys knew the river well, and when he heard what the master had reported, he hurried to Apsyrtus and pointing downstream said eagerly: ‘Majesty, the tributary which you see yonder, flowing into the river on the right bank below the clump of willows, proceeds from a broad lake, called Crane Lake, into which the Greeks have evidently sailed, and it is the only stream that does so. If we sail up the tributary until we reach the lake we shall catch them in a trap.’ And this is exactly what had happened.
The Golden Fleece Page 40