The Egyptian

BOOK 8
The Dark House
1

Before us rolled the boundless waters, but I feared nothing for Minea was with me, Minea who breathed the sea air and was herself again, with moonlight in her eyes. She stood in the bows by the figurehead, leaning forward and drinking in the air as if with her own strength she would draw us more speedily along our course. The sky over us was blue, and the sun shone; the wind was not too boisterous but fresh and steady and blowing from the right quarter-or so the captain said. Having become accustomed to the motion of the vessel, I suffered no sickness, though fear of the unknown assailed my heart when on the second day out the last of the white-winged, circling sea birds forsook the ship. Instead, the dolphin team of the sea god attended us, their smooth backs Bashing as they tumbled in the water. Minea shouted aloud and hailed them in her own tongue, for they brought her greetings from her god.

Nor were we alone on the waters; we sighted a Cretan warship whose hull was hung with copper shields and who dipped her pennant when she saw that ours was not a pirate vessel. Kaptah rose from his bunk when he found himself able to stand and talked to the sailors, boasting of his journeys in many lands. He told of his voyage from Egypt to Smyrna, of a storm that ripped the sail from the mast, and of how he and the captain were the only ones aboard who could eat, while the rest lay about the deck groaning and puking into the wind. He told also of most fearful sea monsters that haunted the Nile delta and would engulf any fishing boat which ventured too far out to sea. The sailors gave him as good again and described certain pillars at the farthest ends of the ocean, which supported the heavens, and of fish- tailed maidens who lay in wait for seafarers and put spells on them to seduce them. They told tales of sea monsters that made the hair rise on Kaptah’s head and sent him running to me with a gray face, to cling to my shoulder cloth.

Minea grew daily more radiant. Her hair floated in the wind, her eyes were like moonlight on the waters, and she was so slender and beautiful to see that my heart melted within me as I beheld her and remembered how soon she would be gone. To return to Smyrna or to Egypt without her seemed an empty thing. Life was like ashes in my mouth at the thought of the time when she would not put her hands in mine or press against my side and when I should behold her no longer.

The captain and his men held her in deep veneration when they heard that she danced before bulls and that the lot had fallen to her to enter the god’s house at the full moon, although she had hitherto been prevented by shipwreck. When I tried to ask them about their god, they made no answer; some said, “We do not know” and others, “We do not understand your tongue, stranger.” I knew only that the Cretan god ruled the sea and that the islands in the sea sent their young men and their maidens to dance before his horned beasts.

The day came when Crete rose like a blue cloud from the ocean and the seamen uttered cries of joy, while the captain made sacrifice to the god of the sea who had sent us fair weather and a following wind. The mountains of Crete and its steep, olive-clad shores rose before my eyes, and I saw a strange land of which I knew nothing, though I was to leave my heart buried there. But Minea saw in it her homeland and wept with joy at the bare hills and the tender green of the earth within the sea’s embrace. Then the sail was lowered; the oarsmen unshipped their oars and rowed the ship alongside the quay, past other craft from every land-both warships and merchantmen-which lay at anchor in the roads. There must have been a thousand vessels, and Kaptah surveying them said he could not have believed there were so many in the world. Here were neither towers nor walls nor any fortifications, and the city adjoined the port; so assured was Crete’s sovereignty of the seas-so powerful its god.