ship — two men
on every bench, taking it in turns to row. Those men not rowing, raise up your ox-hide shields to protect us
from arrows.
We hold the future of Hellas in our hands! We can
plunge her into sorrow,
we can bring her unheard-of glory.’ So saying, he
donned his arms.
They obeyed at once, without a word. Dramatically,
Jason
drew his sword — the same he’d used for goading the
bulls—
and severed the hawsers at the stern, abandoning the
anchor stones.
Then, in his brilliant battle gear, he took his stand at Medeia’s side, near the steersman Ankaios. And the
Argo leaped
at the mighty crew’s first heave. And still none spoke.
They watched him.
And she — I — knew it, and was sick at heart,
remembering the song
of the moon. We had done a splendid thing — and I
above all,
— was that not true? — forsaking my dragon-eyed father,
rejecting
his treachery, turning half-blindly, innocently to the strange new doctrine, Love. Oh, it was not glory
I asked,
throwing myself on the mercy of Jason’s Akhaians.
I asked
to live, only that, to live and be treated unshamefully. Yet Jason glanced at the sky, the shore, still thinking of
the fleece,
and the ship rode low in the water, it seemed to me,
with guilt.
The snake would be waking now, I knew; its dumb wits
grieved,
its earth-old spirit shaken. It made no sound.
“We came
to the harbor mouth like a high sentry-gate guarding
the port
where my father maintained five hundred of his fastest
ships. Inside,
the water was dark, the sun still struggling with the
hills. Mad Idas
spoke, eyes rolling, mule-teeth gleaming, spitting in
Jason’s
ear. The Argo could slip in and out of there quicker’n
a weasel.
Consider what warmth we could get for our chilly bones,
out of all
that wood! Recall how we sent up the city of the
Doliones—
a city well guarded and wide awake — whereas here
there’s hardly
an upright creature, discounting the chain-wrapped
bollards.’ His brother,
catlike Lynkeus, studied the docks, the black-hulled
ships.
He pointed the guards out — ten of them. Jason mused,
then nodded.
‘We’ll risk it,’ he said, and signalled Ankaios at the
steering oar.
The ship veered in, oars soundless all at once, though
those on the selmas
rowed more swiftly than before. In the shadow of the
sleeping hills
the Argo was black as the water, invisible as death
except
for the silver virl on her bows, a downswept sharksmile,
cruising.
We shot in nearly to the anchor stones of the resined
fleet—
I’d hardly guessed their skill, those professional killers
of Akhaia,
and my heart thrilled with pride. Then suddenly all
was light,
shocking as crimson ruddle on a snow white lamb:
their spears
arked through blackness to the tinder of sails like
rushing meteors,
like baetyls hurled by infuriate gods. Then men on the
ships,
stumbling, half awake, snibbed the hawserlines,
struggling to flee
the incineration of the ships struck first — there men
with mattocks
and fire-axes struck out, blinded by smoke and steam, at timbers redder than rubies — but they found no
channel for flight,
pleached on all sides by their own burning ships, lost in
a forest
of hissing swirls of smoke. Hulls shogged together,
sailmasts
clattered to smouldering decks, and still the resin that
saved them at sea caught fire,
racing from barque to barque like flame through grass;
and above where the moored ships burned,
ash hung white as mist, then slowly settled, a floating
scurf. And now
came the rowing cry, unholy celeusma ringing on the
cliffs, and we shot to seaward,
a third of Aietes’ fleet — five hundred lean-prowed
ships — descending, flaming,
bartizans fallen like collapsed tents, to seek out the
harbor floor. Old Argus
stared back, sooty and sweaty, at the sinking ships,
and his fists
were clenched. ‘Insanity!’ he whispered, but no one
heard.
“As vast
as the sea, numberless as the leaves that fall in autumn
from the beams
of trees, the army of Aietes gathered and rushed to the
shore,
the king in his chariot of fire drawn, swift as the wind,
by the horses
of Helios. Beside him rode Apsyrtus, my brother— Apsyrtus, golden maned, gentle-eyed as a girl. But
already,
driven by gods and the Argonauts, our ship stood far to sea. In a frenzy, Aietes lifted his hands to Helios calling his father to witness the outrage. Then howling,
half mad,
he cursed his people and threatened them one and all
with death
if they failed to lay hands on his daughter; said whether
they found her on land
or captured the ship on the high seas, they must bring
him Medeia,
for Aietes was sworn to be avenged for that monstrous
betrayal. Thus
Aietes thundered. The sun dimmed; the gray earth
shook.
But the Argo sailed on, protected by a wind from Hera.
At once
the Kolchians equipped and launched their remaining
ships — an immense
armada despite all the damage we’d done — and out they
came,
flight on flight of dark swallows, fleeing catastrophe. Hera was determined that Medeia must reach the
Pelasgian land,
bring doom to the house of Pelias. But the Argonauts’
eyes were grim,
their faces stern, for still Lord Jason was strange with
them,
no longer himself.
Then young Orpheus abandoned his shield
and took up, instead, the golden lyre with which he
could tame
not only trees, fish, cattle, but even the grudge-stiff
hearts
of men. Lord Jason looked fierce, but I reached out my
hand to him,
touching the border of his mantle, and he kept his
silence, waiting.
“It was strange music for that desperate time: not
charging rhythms
urging the rowers to out-do themselves, but music as
calm
as the glass-smooth sea untouched by the magical wind
from Hera.
One by one the Argonauts — who, heaving at the oars or proffering shields, had glanced again and again at
Jason,
distrustful, stirred by wordless doubt — grew calmer,
forgetful
of the secret anger they could not themselves
understand. Orpheus
sang of the pride of Zeus and the labor of Hephaiastos, and how Zeus, awakened from his dream, wept. The
lyre fell silent.
Jason stared down, ashamed, yet hardly aware what
his shame
might mean. Aithalides spoke, whose memory never
slept.
‘You cast your eyes to the sky, the shore, and at times,
it seems,
toward us, apprehensive. It’s a trifling slight, though