"Ithaca."

"Oh, listen to those wailings in the abyss!"

"Thy father Laertes weeps yet for the wanderer."

"The dead! The dead are waiting there!"

"Men call thee Ulysses!" said the G.o.ddess, and at that word something moved within him and his limbs began to stiffen, and once more the hero felt the spear-shank hard and cold within his grasp.

He raised his face, and there was once more the old proud light upon it. Athene had gone, and big with his new resolve he stepped towards the blackness.

A voice came to him, thin, and far down.

"Ulysses! Ulysses! son of Laertes, I wait to guide thee. Hermes, son of Zeus, is with thee. Take courage in both hands and come."

The king moved forward, and the dark swallowed him up. He stumbled along a descending rock-strewn pathway. In the increasing gloom it seemed to him that he was on the side of a steep hill. A moaning wind encircled him. Now and again a slight gleam was visible from the golden helmet of the G.o.d.

Far far down he saw the leaden livid river of death, and on the sullen tide floated the stately funeral barge of Charon, the ferryman of the dead.

The wind grew even more mournful and sad as they trod the meadows of asphodel and the grey lilies of the underworld towards the marge of Styx.

Then the G.o.d called out aloud to the ferryman. As his voice echoed over the water, the dusky night became full of the sound of wings, and dark shapes filled the air. The spirits of the dead flapped round them in continual movement.

The ghosts began to call and cry to the living hero. Some had little squeaky voices like bats, others made a louder and more hollow sound.

The howlings of the formless increased all round Ulysses.

The inarticulate found utterance in the indefinite.

The waves of weird and hopeless voices rose, fell, undulated, now loud and shrill, now sobbing into silence. Little eager whispers filled the hero"s ear.

And to the terror of these great murmurs were added the sight of superhuman outlines, which melted away in the gloom almost as they appeared. Alecto and Tisiphone, the Furies, circled round Ulysses, and Megeara flew through the dark to her sisters.

A cold hand seemed placed upon the hero"s soul. Cries from precipice to precipice, from air to water, went on unceasingly--the melancholy vociferations of the lost!

The loquacity of h.e.l.l!

And in deadly fear, but resolute still, Ulysses struggled on through this great twilight world, open on all sides. As he walked on, the flying outlaws of the tomb seemed to be swarming over him and pressing him to the ground. He struggled beneath the weight of lost souls, but his whirling arms struck nothing but the empty air.

Fresh clouds of spirits p.r.i.c.ked the twilight, increased in size, amalgamated, thickened, and hurried towards him, crying.

They came to the brink of the river. Before them, as they looked out over the water, was no horizon, but an opaque lividity like a wan, moving precipice, a cliff of the night.

Then the old man Charon bowed to the commands of the G.o.ds and embarked them on his barge. He gazed on Ulysses with his keen wicked eyes, and his long white beard wagged in hideous mockery at this mortal among the dead.

The thin pole dipped in and out of the water, and the drops which fell from it were the colour of leaden bullets, for there is no life in the water of Styx.

Ulysses knelt in the bottom of the boat and shut out h.e.l.l from his eyes with his hand. He prayed to Athene for help to endure, and that he might have an answer from the old Seer Tiresias that would lead him safely home at last.

And now the other bank of the river began to loom up before them and the air began to be silent.

On the bank, as it seemed to welcome them, stood a tall old man with a golden sceptre in his hand. His face was full of an unutterable sadness, and his eyes were h.o.r.n.y and dim with blindness. But his magic staff conducted him safely to the river brink, and in a high shivering voice he hailed Ulysses.

"Why hast thou come here, O wise one, leaving the happy daylight for this cheerless sh.o.r.e? n.o.ble son of Laertes, I know thy quest, and thus make answer. Father Zeus gave me power, which still remains, and I, an old blind ghost, can see into the future even on the sh.o.r.es of Styx. Thou seekest to know if thou wilt ever catch thy wife in thy strong arms once more, and tread the well-beloved fields of Ithaca.

The mighty G.o.d of the sea, Poseidon, is wroth with thee and a malevolent G.o.d. For even now his son Polyphemus stumbles a bruised and sightless way among his native hills. But yet you may return after long woes and heavy toil. But one thing bear well in mind, O king, else wilt thou suffer unbelievable things. When thy ship touches at the Island Thrinacia, great herds of cattle will be feeding there on the fresh sweet gra.s.s which grows in the goodly upper world. These be the beeves and steers of the divine Helios, the Sun-G.o.d, and must be inviolate to men. But if one sacred beast is slain, then thy ship and all thy company will perish.

"Perchance thou thyself may win Ithaca forlorn, and to find others in thy place, but that I know not. I have spoken."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEY CAME TO THE BRINK OF THE RIVER.

_Page 52._]

Then with a long melancholy cry the figure vanished into the dark.

But in its place came a shadowy form which made the heart of the hero leap and beat, so it seemed all Hades was filled with the tumult.

His mother Anticlea stood before him.

Stretching out her cold, thin hands she spoke.

"My boy that I suckled, why hast thou come into Hades not yet being dead, for I see that the flesh is still warm upon thee for which I drank to Zeus?"

"Mother of mine, I sought Tiresias the Theban prophet. I have not even yet won Ithaca nor seen the dear ones there. A G.o.d is against me.

So I came through the spirits of the unburied, and over the dark river to seek counsel of the seer. Knowest thou in this beyond-earth if the beloved Penelope still holds me in her heart? or is she perhaps here with thee, lost to the sunlight?"

The mother of Ulysses answered, "Penelope is as faithful and true as on thy wedding day, but she is in a peril, so haste ye home. And now farewell." Where Ulysses had seen his mother, was but a little grey vapour which swayed and vanished.

Then the hero called roughly to Charon, and bade him take the pole and urge the barge back to the starting-place. This time, though the mult.i.tude of the dead circled over him with cries, begging his help to take them out of Hades, he felt no fear, for his mind was burning with other thoughts.

He mounted the long cliff side, and at last in the distance saw a faint gleam of light stealing down towards him. In the pale gleam the figure of Hermes was manifest for a moment flitting up to the day before him.

The cries grew fainter and more faint. The light changed from grey to primrose, from primrose to yellow. The little star which was the mouth of the cave became a sun and then a world, and the yellow turned into the white hot sunshine as h.e.l.l faded utterly away.

On the beach the little blue waves sang on the yellow sand. The black divers rose lazily on the swell, and the shields round the prow of the ship shone like white fire.

Once more the vessel of heroes swam over the seas. And now there was another quality in the wind for them, and the world was a new world.

Their leader had told them that if they obeyed his commands they would win home once more. The news he had brought back from Hades made them st.u.r.dy and strong of heart, and they vowed that in all things they would trust in the king who had dared the perils of the underworld.

Their thoughts turned with a lover"s thirst to images of their native land, tranquil skies, the old-remembered meadows, cool brooks, and eternal peace after their long wandering.

Hope beat high in the heart of Ulysses also. The grey nightmare of h.e.l.l was over and in the past, one more memory when in his own halls he would weave his saga.

He had been near to the awful thing Death.

He had found that after all it was only Death.