John Powys - Atlantis

“O it’s you, is it?” Akron cried, straightening his back, though still remaining on his knees. “What I want now is one of those bronze hammers to smash this damned spike of rock! No! No! Heavier, much heavier than that! Go in there, where they are, Nisos, will you, and bring me the heaviest you can find!”

Nisos looked round him in some bewilderment; for the intense blackness of the shadows, and the red flickerings from the fire under the cauldron that was keeping the glue fluid, made up between them such an Hephaistian Smithy, as might well have been started by an insane as well as a lame god of fire at the bottom of the ocean!

But one of the black Libyan boys was quick to see his confusion and led him at once to the recess referred to as “in there” out of which he was soon able to extract the sort of long-handled hammer that was the instrument needed. Armed with this he returned to the bent figure of Akron, handed him the huge hammer, and watched eagerly to see what he would do.

The effect of what he saw at that moment lodged itself in his brain so deeply that always, after that, when he found himself in a place where there was anything to remind him of black protruding shadows and cavities full of whirling tongues of scarlet fire, all the impressions of that moment rushed back upon him.

It was the presence of that burning fire under the cauldron of melted glue in connection with the bottom of the ocean that hit him so hard. The element of fire, though taking up only so small a space compared with the terrific mass of water that surrounded it, drew into itself and flung out of itself, as it whirled its bloody circles round and round, an essence of existence that was at once absolute and unique.

But the master of the “Teras” straightened his back, took the long-handed hammer in his hand, and struck that up-thrusting point of rock one — two — three — terrific blows. At the first blow that rough projection of time-crumpled, space-naked rock shivered and cracked. At the second blow a fragment was whirled away. At the third blow the whole piece of rock went crashing off and was sent hurtling through the air to one of the pitch-black corners of the hold. Then there came bursting out of the hole made by that pointed rock a violent spout of sea-water; and down above this jet of brine Akron crouched again, squeezing into that jagged rent handful after handful of “kolla”, or semi-solid glue, snatched out of the cauldron. From a pile of carefully selected narrow slips of wood one of the black Libyan boys now handed Akron several freshly smoothed and rounded-off pieces of wood, by the aid of which, squeezed in with the malleable “kolla” or glue, this dangerous rent in the keel of the “Teras” was soon mended.

But they were now confronted by the yet more difficult business of getting the ship well away from the dangerous edges of the small island of Wone while they still kept within reach of it. Akron himself hurried to the oarsmen’s deck; for he had already decided that for this particularly ticklish and hazardous undertaking of getting the “Teras” clear of Wone and yet circumnavigating the island till they were well to the west of it, they would be better and safer in the hands of their oarsmen than of the men who manipulated their great sail.

One special advantage which this choice of Akron’s possessed Nisos realized to the full directly the two of them were on the oarsmen deck along with the four rowers. The crucial direction and management of the whole manoeuvre was now free from the presence of Nausikaa and Okyrhöe as well as of Eione and Pontopereia.

Zeuks however was still there, having deposited Arsinöe in the cabin of Odysseus, doubtless under the vague idea inherited from his immortal begetter, Arcadian Pan, that the only conceivable relation between a captive lady and a great sacker of cities was the sharing of a night’s sleep. Fortunately for the “Teras” and for them all the sharply-pointed rock that had pierced the keel was at the extreme end of a little promontory; so that at the first strong pull of the four long oars the ship swung clear of the island and was in deep water.

Ordering the four men to go on with an evenly-timed spell of steady rowing, Akron now ran up the ladder to the top-deck followed hurriedly by Nisos; and, once on that deck, instead of approaching the group near the mast where Odysseus was watching events with the detachment of an alert sea-lion, he strode quickly to the ship’s stern to join the helmsman. He didn’t presume himself to touch the “Teras’s” helm, as the business of steering a ship as big as she was was no light task, and required a man not only with a special training but with special endowments.

But it had been to Akron himself, who had spent a day and a night in his younger days voyaging to Kephallenia to find Eumolpos and persuade him to join them, that the “Teras” owed her incomparable steersman. It was fascinating to Nisos to see the reverential respect with which the Master of the “Teras” followed now every faintest movement of the rudder by an expert in that difficult art.

The rudder was made of a young fir-trunk, peeled smooth and white; and, by its exquisite pressure upon the carefully squared and polished piece of wood directing the ship’s course beneath the water, it caused the “Teras” to obey the firm unswerving hands of Eumolpos of Kephallenia with a perfection that was indeed awe-inspiring.

Nisos edged himself as far back into the stern as he possibly could, so far indeed that the round pole of the rudder pressed against his left thigh. But from this position he was able to get an unforgettable view of the whole spectacle. The moon was obviously full that night and its lustre flooded everything with a liquid luminosity that had nothing ghostly or spectral about it and yet was decidedly unearthly.

The Island of Wone, when once they had got the “Teras” off that sharp-jutting rock, by no means towered above them. Its structure was indeed that of a flat table-land raised only three or four feet above the surface of the sea; and the single mast of the “Teras” rose so high into the air as to quite out-top the two weird Divinities from Arima, Eurybia and Echidna, who, as they had done from time immeasurable, were still arguing with each other in a tireless monotonous dialogue.

The object upon which Nisos finally fixed his attention was the neck of the terrific Figure-Head of the “Teras”, which he had been assured he must regard as terminating in the actual head and features of its super-human designer.

These monumental features were at this very moment, so he had been solemnly told, no different from what they had been a hundred-thousand years ago and no different from what they would be a hundred-thousand years hence. “Had this supreme enemy of the everlasting gods,” he asked himself, “been able to invent a way of surviving beneath a volume of water half-a-mile deep?”

And what had happened to that fire-breathing monster Typhon? Had he been, as it had been said, “intercepted”, on his way to join the infernal foes of the gods who live forever? Nisos had been hearing, ever since he first came on board, extraordinary stories about this super-human Being whose features — and the legend ran that the Personage Itself had carved its own features — were neither divine nor human, neither of any conceivable Past or conceivable Future, but totally outside and beyond all we have heard, seen, remembered, imagined, dreamed, feared or hoped!

“It seems strange,” he said to himself, “that I, Nisos, the son of Pandea the wife of Krateros Naubolides, should be squatting by this helmsman, staring at the curving neck of this creature beyond all creatures, created by this creator beyond all creators, whose dragon-swan neck ends in some ultimate vision, the vision of a Being that is both more Divine and more Titanic than anything we know, that is in fact outside all we know. And isn’t it an unusually queer chance,” Nisos now asked himself, “that I should know not one single person, except I suppose the men of the ship, who has ever seen the mysterious face with which the Figure-Head of the ‘Teras’ terminates?