Jason and the Argonauts (7 page)

“I can make myself useful,” he said. “You must have a lot of ironwork to do: the beak for your ship, swords, daggers, spearheads, armor. I also work in copper and brass. And if you have gold and rubies and such, I’ll whip up some baubles to win the hearts of maidens at every landfall. In fact, I’ll bring gold and diamonds with me. They keep them in a vault, but I can cast keys, too.”

“My brother the thief will have much employment for you.”

“Then I may join?”

“Yes.”

E
KION

T
HE SHIP STOOD COMPLETE
except for painting and tarring. It was a marvel—slender, swift, and with two brilliant new features: a pivoted rudder board instead of the great clumsy stern oar and a mast that tilted the sail for a quartering wind, permitting us to outrace and outmaneuver any other vessel on the sea. Or so our shipwright claimed.

He had also made a skiff to be carried on deck, using materials never before used: whalebone for ribs and struts; not planks for its hull but whale hide, scraped membrane-thin and tough as oiled silk. In making the oars, he had allowed for the enormous strength of the Twins. He used polished ash stiffened with rhinoceros horn. Under great stress, they bent like bows but did not break; when bent, they snapped back, adding to the titanic power of the Twins’ stroke.

“It’s a pirate skiff, really,” Argos told us. “Fleeing or pursuing, it will outrun anything. I learned its design when I voyaged to the Land Beyond the Dawn, where dwell little men with tilted eyes and parasols growing out of their heads. They carry curved knives and live on fish heads and tangerines. This is their design, but they never made a skiff to match mine, and their oars are flimsy things.”

Finally the ship was caulked and painted. There was never any question about her name. Rufus melted gold and mixed it with pine-nut oil and painted
Argo
in letters of gold across her stern.
Argo
was her name, and we who sailed her became known as the Argonauts.

E
KION

T
HREE DAYS OUT OF
port, we were cutting through the water under bright skies. I was at the bow watching points of light dance on the ruffled sea. We were all on deck. Rufus and Idas stood at the weather rail, deep in their endless discussion of new fittings for the Messenean’s wrist stump. My redheaded friend was spending entirely too much time on that lopped lout. I was jealous.

Daphnis sat on the iron block that was Rufus’s deck anvil. He was touching his lyre. By the goofy rapt look on his face I knew he was composing a verse. Autolycus was curled at the foot of the anvil, asleep—but with a pantherine grace; he seemed poised for leaping even as he slept.

The Twins were sparring. Idas had told them how dueling was done in his savage land. Enemies tied their left arms together and fought with knives. Castor and Pollux stood on the deck, left arm bound to left arm with a length of anchor chain, striking at each other with imaginary daggers. A point would be scored when one would slice past the other’s guard and touch his body with the edge of his fist. They were hitting as lightly as they could, but with enough force to cave in the ribs of anyone else.

Jason had climbed the mast and was perched on top, his legs wound around the spar. He was swaying in the wind. It was slackening now; he was waiting for it to blow gently enough for him to dive off the mast and be able to overtake the ship without our having to circle back.

Daphnis came to me and said, “I’m doing a sea song, using the cry of the wind, the creak of blocks, the rattle of tackle, the lisp of waters, all that we hear. At sea we tune ourselves to these sounds and are startled when one of them stops or a new sound comes.”

He spoke softly; his sweet murmuring and the occasional plink of the lyre had begun to put me to sleep on my feet. And in that sun-dazed half-sleep I seemed to be entering an old dream again, to be standing at the stump-water ocean watching a tiny visionary ship sail into disaster. I heard again an odd gurgling, rushing sound. My eyes snapped open, and I saw that, sure enough, we were sailing toward two huge boulders that had suddenly appeared. They stood about a quarter of a mile apart. But I remembered what had happened in my vision, and I shouted to Argos to put about. But found that I was shouting into a violent gust.

The wind carried away my voice. We drove straight forward to the passage between the rocks. And I saw to my horror that the dream was coming true: the rocks were beginning to hurtle toward each other over the face of the water.

If my dream had been truly prophetic, then the rocks were driven by an evil intelligence and were intending to catch us between them. I remembered what I had seen: the hull cracking like a walnut, the men crushed, the bloody water. The wind was blowing harder and harder; the sail was taut. Sheets of spray curled at our bow, rising in a beautiful double arc and falling into a wake behind us.

I saw that we were going fast enough to pass between the rocks before they could meet. But even as I thought this, the rocks picked up speed and bowled terrifically over the water, coming straight at us, one on each side.

They were huge, towering high above the mast. They were massive chunks of mountain risen from the bottom of the sea to destroy us. They were very close now. I could see the mosses that grew upon them, purple and green, and their crust of barnacles.

Argos put over the helm. The ship answered, swinging away from the rocks, and we were darting off, as the rocks hurtled toward each other. Oh, how I hoped they would collide, shattering themselves.

But then—sickening sight—they swerved simultaneously and began to pursue us, plowing through the water, side by side. We had gained by our turn; they were farther behind. And the wind was still blowing hard, driving us on. But as I watched, the rocks grew larger and larger.

They were directly astern. I couldn’t see whether they were sliding along the surface of the water or forging through it. Both seemed impossible. Yet these boulders were coming at us with terrific speed. Our only hope was for the wind to blow harder.

I prayer for it to blow harder. And my prayer was answered. The wind picked up. It howled through the rigging. Jason still rode atop the mast; he couldn’t have climbed down if he had wanted to. He had to cling with arms and legs, or he would have been blown off like a leaf.

It was blowing a half-gale now. Our sail cupped the wind and the
Argo
flew over the water. I saw the rocks dwindle behind us. And I thanked whatever god had heard my prayer. Too soon. No sooner had I thanked him than the wind dropped. It was amazing. One moment it was blowing a half-gale, the next moment hardly a whisper of wind. The sail flapped. We wallowed. And the rocks rushed upon us.

I heard a shout. Whiteness fell from the sky like a swan plunging. It was Jason diving in a long arc from the top of the mast, arms and legs taut, hair sculptured in the speed of his fall. He entered the water cleanly and surfaced well beyond the ship, heading for the rocks.

He swam so fast he seemed to be skimming over the bright skin of the water. I saw that he wanted to meet the rocks as far from the ship as possible. But why? What could he do when he met them? He would affect them no more than a bird sharpening its beak.

I saw the rocks flinging spray as they braked in the water. They were stopping! I saw them drift sideways, away from each other, as if parting to leave a safe passage for the swimmer. Less and less did I understand what I was seeing.

Jason swam straight on, brown arms flashing. Something white floated behind him. It was his tunic. Then I saw why the rocks had drifted apart, and realized that they were indeed directed by a living intelligence. For they were changing direction. They were again rushing toward each other. They had separated only to give themselves space to pick up speed, intending to catch Jason between them. They were closing like giant jaws; they wouldn’t even leave a corpse if they met upon him. He would be a pinkish spot spreading on the waters.

Gulls seemed to know they were being offered a meal. They dived, screaming, plunging so close they risked being caught between the rocks, which were almost touching now. The diving gulls obscured the swimmer. The huge boulders struck each other with a horrid grinding crash.

I couldn’t see Jason. I saw only gulls and flying spray and rock dust. Suddenly the gulls vanished. More slowly, the dust cleared. The boulders had disappeared. Had they shattered themselves upon each other? Or dissolved again into vision? No—they had been there. Fragments of rock littered the water. I was holding my breath. I didn’t even know I had stopped breathing until I heard the tortured air moaning as it forced itself out.

What was I hoping? Did I want to see the black head breaking water beyond the litter? Or did I want to detect blood on the water? I seemed to feel my eyes burn, hungry as a gull’s for a glimpse of redness among the rock litter, or a bone, or a gobbet of flesh.

Whatever I hoped, I saw him surface, not merely showing head and shoulders, but broaching like a porpoise, rising straight out of the sea until his feet were clear, shedding diamonds of waterdrops, then turning in the air and arching back, shouting exultantly … uttering a victory yell that was impossibly loud coming from that slender frame. His voice bowled across the still air like thunder, rattling our oxhide stays.

We were all laughing and shouting, embracing one another and dancing on deck as he swam slowly now toward us, pushing through rock fragments as he came. But one stone about the size of a fist followed him as he swam. And when he reached the stern and was scrambling up to us, that white stone leaped out of the sea and landed on deck. It rolled to his feet.

It was as if this single stone were the survivor of those boulders that had dashed themselves to death upon each other—as if it had inherited their weird energy and menacing intelligence and now offered itself to the victor.

E
KION

F
OOD AND WATER WERE
running low; we decided to stop at the first island we sighted. But the wind fell off, and for the next two days we crawled across a landless sea. On the morning of the third day the wind freshened, and by midday we had sighted a small, hilly island.

“It’s called Bebrycos,” said Argos. “But I don’t think we should put in. It has a bad reputation.”

“You’ve said that about every other island we’ve passed,” said Jason. “What’s wrong with this one?”

“I don’t remember exactly,” said Argos. “Something about a king who doesn’t like visitors—or maybe likes them too well and never lets them go. We’d better pass it by.”

“And when we come to the next island, you’ll remember something bad about that one,” said Jason. “In the meantime, we’ll run out of food and water. We’re landing here.”

“You’ll take the skiff, then,” said Argos. “I’ll stand offshore.” I saw Jason’s jaw muscles throb and his gray eyes darken. But all he said was, “Find a bottom and drop anchor. We’ll take the skiff.” Actually, we knew this was safer, although we were all getting irritated at the way Argos would rather risk our lives than endanger a plank of his precious ship. Still, we knew that most islanders did not welcome strangers, and that it was better to sneak ashore than sail boldly into an unknown harbor.

We spent the rest of the afternoon hunting a good place to anchor—which was hard to find because the bottom shelved sharply here and the water stayed deep almost all the way to the beach. We didn’t dare anchor so close to shore. A war canoe could dart out swiftly as a dragonfly and put a party aboard us before we could get under way.

We sailed all around the island without finding a place. Then Jason had an idea. By this time his rock had grown to boulder size and rolled behind him wherever he went, sliding off the deck and surging after him when he swam. Jason instructed Rufus to make a harness for the rock.

The smith went to his deck anvil and wrought rods and chains into a strong openwork iron nest and attached it to a long cable. Jason spoke to the rock; it rolled into its harness, slid to the edge of the deck, then overboard and sank. The cable stretched taut, and the
Argo
swung at a bow mooring where there was no bottom.

We rowed to an empty beach and struck inland. We picked up animal tracks and followed them through a screen of trees to a stream. It was a lovely place, girded by trees and floored by pine needles, and the stream widened into a deep pond. We stripped and dived in, frolicking like children.

I climbed out and went to see what lay beyond the wood. I came to an open space. I was standing in a kind of natural arena, a large grassy meadow cupped by low blue hills. The place was empty, humming with silence. I saw movement up one slope and climbed a path, threading among boulders. On one of them sat a girl weeping.

“Why do you weep, beautiful maiden?”

“Oh, I’d rather be ugly!”

“That’s something only a beautiful girl can say.”

“I don’t care, I do, I do. I wish I was ugly as a toad. Then that innocent boy wouldn’t have to die.”

“You’d better tell me all about it.”

“But you’re a stranger.”

“Secrets should be told only to strangers.”

“You say ‘only’ a lot, don’t you? Who are you?”

“Only a stranger … tell me of this love and this death.”

“You talk like singing.”

“Wait till you meet my brother.”

“We have this king here, you see, and he’s a terrible man. He knows that someone has asked my hand in marriage, and he means to kill him.”

“Are you the king’s daughter?”

“No, sir. I’m his wife’s sister.”

“Why does he wish to kill your suitor? Is the lad so unworthy?”

“He’ll kill anyone who wants to marry me. He’s saving me for himself.”

“But he’s married to your sister, you say.”

“After he kills her, he’ll marry me. Then, when he’s tired of me, my younger sister should be old enough.”

“The man’s a monster.”

“Yes, sir. That’s what he is. Everyone hates him. But they fear him even more. And he enjoys being feared. And kills anyone who displeases him. Now that poor boy has displeased him, only because he was unlucky enough to fall in love with me. And so he goes into the ring today.”