Thus the handling characteristics turned out so odd to him that his crew caught the knack about as fast as he did. Before long they were taking practice cruises on virtually every day of halfway decent weather. They were a hearty, laughter-loving two score and ten, youngsters in the late teens and early twenties, delighted at this novelty, bound and determined to master their ship and lay their wake in rings around those old fogies who grumbled at newfangled foreign foolishness. No longer needed as an instructor, Reid usually stayed behind with Erissa. Time for him and her was shrinking unbearably. And one of his sailors, a slim youth of good looks and good family, who could scarcely keep his eyes off the girl, was named Dagonas.
But she came aboard with Reid for the final test, the test of the ram, before the vessel was officially dedicated. The governor had released a hulk, traded to the state for cannibalizing by a merchant owner who hadn’t considered it worth his while to make those repairs which Sarpedon now carried out. A rival gang, envious boys and skeptical shell-backs, agreed to man the target craft and show up the radicals. Boats came along to rescue whoever got dunked.
It was clear and brisk offshore, whitecaps marching, the by now almost permanent black column out of Pillar Mountain shredded by a gleefully piping wind. Overhead trailed a flight of storks, homeward bound from Egypt to the northlands, heralds of spring. The ram ship leaped and rolled. Its sides were gay with red and blue stripes; on the sails were embroidered dolphins. The waters rushed, the timbers talked, the rigging harped.
Erissa, forward on the upper deck beside Reid, clapped her hands. The hair streamed back off her shoulders, the skirt was pressed against her loins. “Oh, see!” she cried happily. The vessel came about in a rattle of booms, gaffs, and blocks. It had just passed the bows of the conventional ship, which trudged along on oars, unable to come any-where near the wind.
“Stop your fancyfooting and let’s have some action!” bawled the distant skipper.
“Well, I suppose we should,” Reid told Sarpedon, “having proved they can’t lay a grapnel on us.” They looked at each other in shared unsureness. The boys on the thwarts raised a yell.
Standing off, the rammers lowered sail, racked masts, and broke out oars. The target crew poised uneasily at their own oars. They knew what happened in a collision. Both hulls were stove in, along with the ribs of any rowers who didn’t get clear.
Reid went aft to his, quartermaster. “You remember the drill,” he said. “Aim for the, center, but not straight. That could leave us hung up on them. The idea is to rip out the stakes and sheer off”
“Like a bull goring a bear,” Erissa said.
“May that be no evil omen for you, Sister,” the man responded.
“Gods forfend!” Dagonas called, at his bench just below. Erissa smiled down upon him. Reid saw how smooth and lithe the boy’s body was. His own—well, he kept in fair shape. And Erissa was clutching his hand.
The craft, began to move. The coxswain’s chant gathered speed until water seethed white and the hull sprang forward. Abruptly the target:was horrible in its nearness. As directed, it tried to take evasive action. As expected, the rudder-and-tiller combination was so much more efficient than steering oars that no escape was possible.
Reid’s people had rehearsed the maneuver often, against nets supported on logs. Oars on the inner side snapped erect those on the outer continued driving. The noise and shock were less than he had anticipated. Disengaging was awkward—obviously more practice needed there—but it was managed. By then, the struck galley lay heeled far over. Wooden and unloaded, it didn’t sink; but presently it floated awash and the waves were pounding it to pieces.
Cheers pealed from the victors. The vanquished were too busy, swimming to the boats for a response. Reid and Sarpedon made a thorough inspection. “No harm that I can see,” the yardmaster declared. “This ship by itself could drive off a fleet.” He embraced the American. “What you’ve done! What you’ve done!”
Erissa was there. “You are a god,” she sobbed. They dared not kiss in public, but she knelt and held him around the knees.
Again Atlantis swarmed with preparations for festival. But this was the great one. In the resurrection of Asterion lay that of the world and its dead.
First he must die and be mourned. Forty days before the vernal equinox, the Keftiu hooded altars, screened off caves and springs, bore through the streets their three holy symbols reversed and draped in black, rent their garments, gashed their flesh, and cried on Dictynna for mercy. For thirty days thereafter, most of them abstained from meat, wine, and sexual intercourse; and in their homes, lamps burned perpetually so that beloved ghosts might find the way back.
Not that business stopped. After all, seaborne traffic was starting up again. And however devout, the Keftiu were incapable of long faces for many hours in a row. And the last ten of the forty days were to be pure celebration. The god would not yet have come from hell to claim that Bride Who was also his Mother and Grandmother, but man’s forward-looking joy helped make sure that he would.
Beneath somberness and decorum, excitement bubbled even on the temple isle. Soon the maidens would take ship for. Knossos, to dance with the bulls and the youths: soon, soon. Erissa worked her class daily. Reid stood by, gnawing his nails.
Why did Lydra keep refusing to see him? She couldn’t be that busy. Lord knew she had ample time for Diores, when the Achaean showed up on his frequent missions. Why was she doing nothing about evacuation? She said, when Reid got together the boldness to grab a chance to drop her a few words that she and he alone understood, she said she was in touch with the Minos; and true, boats shuttled across the sixty-mile channel between, written messages borne by male old-timers in her service who were, both illiterate and close-mouthed; she said the matter was under advisement, she said.
Meanwhile the volcano spewed smoke and, ever oftener, flames. Its fine ash made the fields dusty. Sometimes at night you saw fresh lava flow glowing from the mouth; next morning you saw new grotesqueries on those black flanks, and steam puffing white from fumaroles. The ground shivered, the air rumbled. In the taverns men spoke dogmatically and at length of what precautions should be taken against the possibility of a major eruption. Reid didn’t notice that anybody actually did much. Of course, they never imagined what the blowup was going to be like. He himself couldn’t.
If he could tell them!
Well, at worst there were plenty of well-found boats. Practically every Atlantean family owned one and could put to sea, provisioned, on a few hours’ notice. But they couldn’t keep the sea too long; and he didn’t know just when the hammer would fall; and he did know that the time was very short now for him and Erissa to stand on a starlit hilltop, so close together that Pamela and the children couldn’t get in between, and for her to breathe, “We’ll be wedded right after the festival, right after, my darling, my god,” while the mountain growled at his back unheeded save for the glow it cast upon her.
Rain fell anew, but gently, little more than a springtime mist that quickened the earth and if it lasted until morning would not hinder the procession of the maidens to the ships for Crete. But beyond its coolness and the damp odors it awoke lay absolute night.