Читать книгу The Wonderful Adventures of Phra the Phoenician - Edwin Lester Arnold - Страница 4

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Regarding the exact particulars of my earliest wanderings I do confess I am somewhat uncertain. This may tempt you to reply that one whose memory is so far-reaching and capacious as mine will presently prove might well have stored up everything that befell him from his very beginning. All I can say is, things are as I set them down; and those facts which you cannot believe you must continue to doubt. The first thirty years of my life, it will be guessed in extenuation, were full of the frailties and shortcomings of an ordinary mortal; while those years which followed have impressed themselves indelibly upon my mind by right of being curious past experience and credibility.

Looking back, then, into the very remote past is like looking upon a country which a low sun at once illuminates and blurs. I dimly perceive in the golden haze of the ancient time a fair city rising, tier upon tier, out of the blue waters of the midland sea. A splendid harbor frames itself out of the mellow uncertainty—a harbor whereof the long white arms are stretched out to welcome the commerce of all the known world; and under the white fronts, and at the temple steps of that ancient city, Commerce poured into the lap of Luxury every commodity that could gratify cupidity or minister to human pleasure.

I was young then, no doubt, nor need I say a fool; and very likely the sight of a thousand strange sails at my father’s door excited my daily wonder, while the avarice which recognizes no good fortune in a present having was excited by the silks and gems, the rich stuffs and the gums, the quaint curiosities of human ingenuity and the frolic things of nature, which were piled up there. More than all, my imagination must have been fired by the sea captains’ tales of wonder or romance, and, be the cause what it may, I made up my mind to adventure like them, and carried out my wilful fancy.

It is a fitting preface to all I have learned since that my first real remembrance should be one of vanity. Yet so it was. More than a thousand years ago—I will not lower my record by a single luster to propitiate your utmost unbelief—I set out on a first voyage. It might be yesterday, so well it comes before me—with my youthful pride as the spirit of a man was born within, and I felt the strong beat of the fresh salt waves of the open sea upon my trading vessel’s prow, and knew, as I stood there by her steering-oar, that she was stuffed with a hundred bales of purple cloth from my father’s vats along the shore, and bound whither I listed. Who could have been prouder than I?—who could have heard finer songs of freedom in the merry hum of the warm southern air in the brown cordage overhead, or the frothy prattle of the busy water alongside, as we danced that day out of the white arms of Tyre, the queenly city of the ancient seas, and saw the young world unfurl before us, full of magnificent possibilities?

It is not my wish or intention to write of my early travels, were it possible. On this voyage (or it may be on some others that followed, now merged into the associations of the first) we traded east and west, with adventure and success. The adventure was sure enough, for the great midland sea was then the center of the world, and what between white-winged argosies of commerce, the freebooters of a dozen nations who patroled its bays and corners, and rows of royal galleys sailing to the conquest of empires, it was a lively and perilous place enough. As for the profit, it came quickly to those who opened a hundred virgin markets in the olden days.

We sailed into the great Egyptian river up to Heliopolis, bartering stuffs for gold-dust and ivory; at another time we took Trinacrian wine and oranges into Ostia—a truly magnificent port, with incredible capacities for all the fair and pleasant things of life. Then we sailed among the beautiful Achaian islands with corn and olives; and so, profiting everywhere, we lived, for long, a jolly, uncertain life, full of hardship and pleasure.

For the most part, we hugged the coasts and avoided the open sea. It was from the little bays, whose mouths we thus crossed, that the pirates we greatly dreaded dropped down upon merchantmen, like falcons from their perches. When they took a vessel that resisted, the crew, at those rough hands, got scant mercy. I have come across a galley drifting idly before the wind, with all her crew, a grim row of skeletons, hanging in a row along her yard, and swinging this way and that, and rattling drearily against the sail and each other in melancholy unison with the listless wallow of their vessel. At another time, a Roman trireme fell upon a big pirate of Melita and stormed and captured her. The three hundred men on board were too ugly and wicked to sell, so the Romans drove them overboard like sheep, and burned the boat. When we sailed over the spot at sundown the next day she was still spluttering and hissing, with the water lapping over the edge of her charred side, and round among the curls of yellow smoke overhead a thousand gulls were screeching, while a thousand more sat, gorged and stupid, upon the dead pirates. Not for many nights did we forget the evil picture of retribution, and how the setting sun flooded the sea with blood, and how the dead villains, in all their horror, swirled about in twos and threes in that crimson light, and fell into our wake, drawn by the current, and came jostling and grinning, and nodding after us, though we made all sail to outpace them, in a gloomy procession for a mile or so.

It often seemed to me in those days there were more freebooters afloat than honest men. At times we ran from these, at times we fought them, and again we would give a big marauder a share of cargo to save the ship from his kindred who threatened us. It was a dangerous game, and one never knew, on rising, where his couch would be at night, nor whether the prosperous merchant of the morning might not be the naked slave of the evening, storing his own wealth in a robber cave under the lash of some savage sea tyrant.

Yet even these cruel rovers did me a good turn. We were short of water, and had run down along a lonely coast to a green spring we knew of to fill water-butts and skins. When we let go in the little inlet where the well was to be found, another vessel, and, moreover, a pirate, lay anchored before us. However, we were consciously virtuous, and, what was of more consideration, a larger vessel and crew than the other, so we went ashore and made acquaintance round the fresh water with as villainous a gang of sea-robbers as ever caused the blood of an honest trader to run cold in his veins. The very air of their neighborhood smelled so of treachery and cruelty we soon had but one thought—to load up and be gone.

But this was a somewhat longer process than we wished, as our friends had baled the little spring dry, and we had to wait its refilling. While we did so, I strolled over to a group of miserable slaves turned out for an airing, and cowering on the black and shadeless rocks. There were in that abject group captives from every country that fared upon those seas, and some others besides. The dusky peasant of Bœotia, that fronts the narrow straits, wrung her hands by the fair-cheeked girl snapped up from the wide Gulf of Narbo; the dark Numidian pearl-fisher cursed his patron god; and the tall Achaian from the many islands of Peloponnesian waters gritted his teeth as he cowered beneath his rags and bemoaned the fate that threw him into the talons of the sea-hawks.

I looked upon them with small interest, for new-taken slaves were no great sight to me, until I chanced, a little way from the others, upon such a captive as I had rarely or never seen. She struck me at once as being the fiercest and most beautiful creature that mortal eyes had ever lit upon. Never was Umbrian or Iberian girl like that; never was Cyprian Aphrodite served by a maid so pink and white. Her hair was fiery red gold, gleaming in the sunshine like the locks of the young goddess Medusa. Her face was of ruddy ivory, and her native comeliness gleamed through the unwashed dust and tears of many long days and nights. Her eyes were as blue under her shaggy wild hair as the sky overhead, and her body—grimy under its sorrow-stains—was still as fair as that of some dainty princess.

Knowing the pirate captain would seek a long price for his property, I determined to use a little persuasion with him. I went back to my men, and sent one of them, proficient in the art of the bowstring, to look at the slaves. Then I drew the unsuspecting scoundrel up there for a bargain, and, well out of sight of his gang, we faced the red-haired girl and discussed her price. The rascal’s first figure was three hundred of your modern pounds, a sum which would then have fetched the younger daughter of a sultan, full of virtue and accomplishments. As this girl very likely had neither one nor the other, I did not see why it was necessary to pay so much, and, stroking my beard, in an agreed signal, with my hand, as my man was passing behind the old pirate, he slipped a length of twisted cloth over his wicked neck and tightened it with a jerk that nearly started the eyes from his head, and brought him quickly to his knees.

Slipped a length of twisted cloth over his wicked neck and tightened it with a jerk

“Now, delicately-minded one,” I said, “I don’t want to fight you and your crew for this maid here, on whom I have set my heart, but you know we are numerous and well armed, so let us have a peaceful and honest bargain. Give me a fairer price,” and, obedient to my signal, the band was loosened.

“Not a sesterce will I take off,” spluttered the wretch, “not a drachma, not an ounce!”

“Come! come! think again,” I said, persuasively, “and the cloth shall help you.” Thereon, another turn was taken, and my henchman turned his knuckles into the nape of the swarthy villain’s neck until the veins on his forehead stood out like cordage and the blood ran from his nose and eyes.

In a minute the rover threw up his hands and signed he had enough, and when he got his breath we found he had knocked off a hundred pounds. We gave him the cord again, and brought him down, twist by twist, to fifty. By this time he was almost at his last gasp, and I was contented, paying the coins out on a rock and leaving them there, with the rogue well bound. I was always honest, though, as became the times, a trifle hard at bargains.

Then I cut the red maid loose and took her by the elbow and led her down to the beach, where we were secretly picked up by my fellows, and shortly afterward we set sail again for the open main.

Thus was acquired the figure-head of my subsequent adventures—the Siren who lured me to that coast where I have lived a thousand years and more.

It was the inscrutable will of Destiny that those shining coins I paid down on the bare, hot African rock should cost me all my wealth, my cash and credit at many ports, and that that fair slave, who I deemed would serve but to lighten a voyage or two, should mock my forethought, and lead my fate into the strangest paths that ever were trodden by mortal foot.

In truth, that sunny virago bewitched me. She combined such ferocity with her grace, and was so pathetic in her reckless grief at times, that I, the immovable, was moved, and softened the rigor of her mischance as time went on so much as might be. At once, on this, like some caged wild creature, which forgives to one master alone the sorrows of captivity, she softened to me; and before many days were over she had bathed, and, discarding her rags for a length or two of cloth, had tied up her hair with a strand of ribbon she found, and, looking down at her reflection in a vessel of water (her only mirror, for we carried women but seldom), she smiled for the first time.

After this, progress was rapid, and, though at first we could only with difficulty make ourselves understood, yet she soon picked up something of the Southern tongue from me, while I very fairly acquired the British language of this comely tutoress. Of her I learned she was of that latter country, where her father was a chief; how their coast village had been surprised by a Southern rover’s foray; she knew not how many of the people slain, or made captive, and herself carried off. Afterward she had fallen into the hands of other pirates by an act of sea barter, and they were taking her to Alexandria, hoping, as I guessed, in that luxurious city to obtain a higher price than in the ordinary markets of Gaul or Italy.

What I heard of Britain from these warm lips greatly fired my curiosity, and, after touching at several ports and finding trade but dull, chance clenched my resolution.

We had sailed northward with a cargo of dates, and on the sixth day ran in under the high promontory of Massilia, which you moderns call Marseilles. Here I rid myself of my fruit at a very good profit, and, after talking to a brother merchant I met by chance upon the quay, fully determined to load up with oil, wine, stuffs, and such other things as he recommended, and sail at once for Britain.

Little did I think how momentous this hasty decision would be! It was brought about partly as I have explained, and partly by the interest which just then that country was attracting. All the weapons and things of Britain were then in good demand: no tin and gold, the smiths roundly swore, were like the British; no furs in winter, the Roman ladies vowed, were so warm as those; while no patrician from Tarentum to the Tiber held his house well furnished unless a red-haired slave-girl or two from that remote place idled, sad and listlessly, in his painted porticoes.

In these slaves there was a brisk and increasing traffic. I went into the market that ran just along the inner harbor one day, and saw there an ample supply of such curious goods suitable for every need.

All down the middle of a wide street rough booths of sailcloth had been run up, and about and before these crouched slaves of every age and condition. There were old men and young men—fierce and wild-looking barbarians, in all truth—some with the raw, red scars on chest and limbs they had taken a few weeks before in a last stand for liberty, and some groaning in the sickness that attended the slaver’s lash and their condition.

There were lank-haired girls, submitting with sullen hate to the appraising fingers of purchasers laughing and chatting in Latin or Gaulish, as they dealt with them no more gently than a buyer deals with sheep when mutton is cheap. Mothers again—sick and travel-stained themselves—were soothing the unkempt little ones who cowered behind them and shrank from every Roman footstep as the quails shrink from a kestrel’s shadow. Some of these children were very flowers of comeliness, though trodden into the mire of misfortune. I bought a little girl to attend upon her upon my ship, who, though she wore at the time but one sorry cloth, and was streaked with dirt and dust, had eyes clear as the southern sky overhead, and hair that glistened in uncared-for brightness upon her shoulders like a tissue of golden threads. Her mother was loth to part with her, and fought like a tiger when we separated them. It was only after the dealer’s lash had cut a dozen red furrows into her back, and a bystander had beat her on the head with the flat of his sword, that she gave in and swooned, and I led the weeping little one away.

So we loaded up again with Easter nothings, such as the barbarians might be supposed to like, and in a few weeks started once more. We sailed down the green coast of Hispania, through the narrow waters of Herculis Fretum, and then, leaving the undulating hills of that pleasant strait behind, turned northward through the long waves of the black outer sea.

For many days we rolled up a sullen and dangerous coast, but one morning our pilot called me from my breakfast of fruit and millet cakes, and, pointing over the green expanse, told me yonder white surf on the right was breaking on the steep rocks of Armorica, while the misty British shore lay ahead.

So I called out Blodwen the slave, and told her to snuff the wind and find what it had to say. She knew only too well, and was vastly delighted, wistfully scanning the long gray horizon ahead, and being beside herself with eagerness.

We steered westwardly toward the outer islands, called Cassiterides, where most of our people collected and bought their tin, but we were fated not to reach them. On the morrow so fierce a gale sprang out of the deep we could by no means stand against it, but turned and fled through the storm, and over such a terrible expanse of mighty billows as I never saw the like of.

To my surprise, my girl thought naught of the wind and sea, but came constantly to the groaning bulwarks, where the angry green water swirled and gleamed like a caldron, and, holding on by a shroud, looked with longing but familiar eyes at the rugged shore we were running down. At one time I saw her smile to recognize, close in shore, and plunging heavily toward some unknown haven, half a dozen of her own native fisher-boats. Later on, Blodwen brightened up even more as the savage cliffs of the west gave way to rolling downs of grass, and when these, as we fled with the sea-spume, grew lower, and were here and there clothed with woods, and little specks among them of cornfields, she shouted with joy, and, leaping down from the tall prow, where she had stood, indifferent to the angry thunder of the bursting surges upon our counter, and the sting and rattle of the white spray that flew up to the swinging yard every time we dropped into the bosom of the angry sea, she said exultingly, with her face red and gleaming in a salt wet glaze, she could guide us to a harbor if we would.

I was by this time a little sick at heart for the safety of all my precious things in bales and boxes below, and something like the long invoice of them I knew so well rose in my throat every time we sank with a horrible sinking into one of those shadowy valleys between the hissing crests—so I nodded. Blodwen at once made the helmsman draw nearer the coast. By the time we had approached the shore within a mile or so the white squalls were following each other fast, while heavy columns of western rain were careering along the green sea in many tall, spectral forms. But nothing cared that purchase of mine. She had gone to the tiller, and, like some wild goddess of the foam, stood there, her long hair flying on the wet sea wind, and her fierce, bright eyes aglow with pleasure and excitement as she scanned the white ramparts of the coast down which we were hurtling. She was oblivious of the swarthy seamen, who eyed her with wonder and awe; oblivious of the white bed of froth which boiled and flashed all down the rim of our dipping gunwale; and equally indifferent to the heavy rain that smoked upon our decks, and made our straining sails as hard and stiff as wood.

Just as the great shore began to loom over us, and I sorely doubted my wisdom in sailing these unknown waters with such a pilot, she gave a scream of pleasure—an exulting, triumphant note that roused a sympathetic chorus in the piping wild fowl overhead—and, following the point of her finger, we saw the solid rampart of cliffs had divided, and a little estuary was opening before us.

Round went our felucca to the imperious gesture of that girl, and, gripping the throbbing tiller over the hands of the strong steersman, aglow with excitement, yet noting everything, while the swart brown sailors shouted at the humming cordage, she took us down through an angry caldron of sea and over a foaming bar (where I cursed, in my haste, every ounce I had spent upon her) into the quieter waters beyond; and when, a few minutes later—reeking with salt spray, but safe and sound—we slowly rolled in with the making tide to a secure, landlocked haven, that brave girl left the rudder, and, going forward, gave one look at the opening valley, which I afterward knew was her strangely recovered home, and then her fair head fell upon her arms, and, leaning against the mast, under the tent of her red hair, she burst into a passionate storm of tears.

She soon recovered, and stealing a glance at me as she wiped her lids with the back of her hands, to note if I were angry, her feminine perception found my eyes gave the lie to the frown upon my forehead, so she put on some extra importance (as though the air of the place suited her dignity), and resumed command of the ship.

Well! There is much to tell, so it must be told briefly. We sailed into a fair green estuary, with woods on either hand dipping into the water and nodding their own glistening reflections, until we turned a bend and came upon a British village down by the edge. There were, perhaps, two hundred huts scattered round the slope of a grassy mound, upon top of which was a stockade of logs and mud walls encompassing a few better-built houses. Canoes and bigger boats were drawn up on the beach, and naked children and dogs were at play along the margin; while women and some few men were grinding corn and fashioning boat-gear.

As our sails came round the headland, with one single accord the population took to flight, flung down their meal-bags and tools, tumbling over each other in their haste, and, yelling and scrambling, they streamed away to the hill.

This amused Blodwen greatly, and she let them run until the fat old women of the crowd had sorted themselves out into a panting rear guard halfway up, and the long-legged youngsters were already scrambling over the barrier; then, with her hand over her mouth, she exerted her powerful voice in a long, wailing signal cry. The effect was instantaneous. The crowd stopped, hesitated, and finally came scrambling down again to the beach; and, after a little parley, being assured of their good-will, and greatly urged by Blodwen, we landed, and were soon overwhelmed in a throng of wondering, jostling, excited British.

But it was not me to whom they thronged, but rather her; and such wonder and surprise, broadening slowly in joy as she, with her nimble woman’s tongue, answered their countless questions, I never witnessed. At last they set up yelling and shouting, and, seizing her, dragged and carried her in a tumultuous procession up the zigzag into the fortalice.

Blodwen had come home—that was all; and from a slave girl had blossomed into a Princess!

Never before was there such a yelling and chattering and blowing of horns and beating of shields. While messengers rushed off down the woodland paths to rouse the country, the villagers crowded round me and my men, and, having by the advice of one of their elders, relinquished their first intention of cutting all our throats in the excess of their pleasure, treated us very handsomely, feeding and feasting the crew to the utmost of their capacity.

I, as you will suppose, was ill at ease for my fair barbarian who had thus turned the tables upon me, and in whose power it was impossible not to recognize that we now lay. How would the slave Princess treat her captive master? I was not long in doubt. Her messenger presently touched me on the shoulder as I sat, a little rueful, on a stone apart from my rollicking men, and led me through that prehistoric village street up the gentle slope and between the oak-log barrier into the long, low dwelling that was at once the palace and the citadel of the place.

Entering, I found myself in a very spacious hall, effective in its gloomy dignity. All round the three straight sides the massive walls were hidden in drapery of the skins and furs of bear, wolf, and deer, and over these were hung in rude profusion light round shields embossed with shining metal knobs, javelins, and boar spears, with a hundred other implements of war or woodcraft. Below them stood along the walls rough settles, and benches with rougher tables, enough to seat, perhaps, a hundred men. At the crescent-shaped end of the hall, facing the entrance door, was a daïs—a raised platform of solid logs closely placed together and covered with skins—upon which a massive and ample chair stood, also of oak, and wonderfully fashioned and carved by the patient labor of many hands.

Nigh it were a group of women, and one or two white-robed Druids, as these people call their priests. But chief among them was she who stepped forth to meet me, clad (for her first idea had been to change her dress) in fine linen and fair furs—how, I scarcely know, save that they suited her marvelously. Fine chains of hammered gold were about her neck, a shining gorget belt set with a great boss of native pearls upon her middle, and her two bare white arms gleamed like ivory under their load of bracelets of yellow metal and prismatic pearl shell that clanked harmoniously to her every movement. But the air she put on along with these fine things was equally becoming, and she took me by the hand with an affectionate condescension, while, turning to her people, she briefly harangued them, running glibly over my virtues, and bestowing praise upon the way in which I had “rescued and restored her to her kindred,” until, so gracefully did she pervert the truth, I felt a blush of unwonted virtue under my callous skin; and when they acclaimed me friend and ally, I stood an inch taller among them to find myself of such unexpected worth—one tall Druid alone scowling on me evilly.

For long that pleasant village by the shallow waters remembered the coming of Blodwen to her own. Her kinsmen had all been slain in the raid of the sea-rovers which brought about her captivity, and thus—the succession to headship and rule being very strictly observed among the Britons—she was elected, after an absence of six months, to the oak throne and the headship of the clan with an almost unbroken accord. But that priest, Dhuwallon, her cousin, and next below her in birth, scowled again to see her seated there, and hated me, I saw, as the unconscious thwarter of his ambition.

Those were fine times, and the Princess bought my cargo of wine and oil and Southern things, distributing it to all that came to pay her homage, so that for days we were drunk and jolly. Fires gleamed on twenty hilltops round about, and the little becks ran red down to the river with the blood of sheep and bullocks slaughtered in sacrifice; and the foot-tracks in the woods were stamped into highways; and the fords ran muddy to the ocean; and the grass was worn away; and birds and beasts fled to quieter thickets; and fishes swam out to the blue sea; and everything was eaten up, far and wide; that time my fair slave girl first put her foot upon the daïs and prayed to the manes of her ancestors among the oak trees.