Presently the wood blazed up through the
noonday night, and the fire flickered and flared on the faces of the
dead men that lay about the deck, rolling to larboard and to starboard,
as the vessel lurched, and the flame shone red on the golden armour of
the Wanderer.
Of all his voyages this was the strangest seafaring, he cruising alone,
with a company of the dead, deep into a darkness without measure or
bound, to a land that might not be descried. Strange gusts of sudden
wind blew him hither and thither. The breeze would rise in a moment
from any quarter, and die as suddenly as it rose, and another wind
would chase it over the chopping seas. He knew not if he sailed South or
North, he knew not how time passed, for there was no sight of the sun.
It was night without a dawn. Yet his heart was glad, as if he had been a
boy again, for the old sorrows were forgotten, so potent was the draught
of the chalice of the Goddess, and so keen was the delight of battle.
"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.
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