The Lost Books of the Odyssey Read Online Free Page A

her and moreover nothing is more disgraceful than to acknowledge the presence of the dead.

BACCHAE

    W hen the Trojan shore sank below the horizon I thought about what to do next. There was a sentiment that we should go straight back to Ithaca but I decided we would take the long way back and turn raider till we saw our own harbor—we had a fleet of five ships, every man was lean and hard from years of war and, taken by surprise, the yeoman militias of the coastal cities stood no chance against us.
    We attacked at night, by preference. We put many towns to the torch, speared men in night-dress fumbling for their bows and filled our holds with stolen silver. We struck and sailed on, trying to stay ahead of our reputation, but nothing travels faster than bad news and the day came when we saw grim armed men patrolling the walls of the city we had chosen. We could barely have fit another tripod aboard anyway, so it was time to sail for home.
    It was nearly winter then, the tag end of the sailing season, and flocculent grey fogs covered the sea. Wecould easily have found an island somewhere, someplace out of the way, unlikely to be visited, and spent the winter there fishing and letting idleness smooth off our keen edges, but we were tired of our own society and of our rootless wartime existences and so we did not wait. We would have preferred to sail within sight of land but were afraid of well-armed ships cruising for revenge so we took the straight route over open sea. There was many an old sailor in my crew and none of them had ever made a blue-water crossing of the Middle Sea but I scorned adversity and risked it.
    The days crept by, undifferentiated durations of mist and whitecaps. We kept course as best we could by dead reckoning but the sun and moon rarely peeked out—when they did my mates and I would jump on the opportunity and make our measurements but our calculations were never in agreement. Three ships went missing one night and were not to be found however much we called into the whiteness but it was no great matter, I thought, they could find their own way home.
    On the seventh day of the journey the look-out shouted (his disembodied voice floating down from the fog-enveloped crow’s nest) that he saw orange lights floating above us close ahead, too far up to be a ship. The fog shifted and we saw them from the deck, bright flares drifting high above us. It was hard to be certain if it was the cloud bank or the lights that were moving. The more superstitious men invoked the Hermes of Travelers andmade the sign against the evil eye. I noticed that the lights were spaced evenly and seemed roughly rectangular and told the men to cheer up because we were looking either at the windows of a house on a high island hill or at some unusually symmetric ghosts. Within minutes we found the shore, steep and rocky and covered with short twisted pines. There was a cove and in it a neat little dock. It occurred to me to pass it by—we had treasure enough and supplies to get us home even if we wandered until spring, so why go looking for trouble? But with the impending reality of homecoming and the reversion from warriors to the conditions of husbands, sons and townsmen, the crew were determined to have a holiday. Reluctantly I permitted them to dock and followed as they jumped from the ships, swords in hand.
    The island was small but very steep, really just a small mountain protruding from the sea, its flanks covered with a dripping tangle of redolent pines. A single path zigzagged upward, its stairs cut in the stone and lit by paper lanterns spaced out like stepping-stones so that on reaching a new one the glow of the next was just visible through the fog. Up we hiked, full of uncertainty. At the top we emerged into a clearing before a house with a high roof and an open door. Evenly spaced windows glowed with firelight. As we looked around doubtfully, moved by the house’s beauty and unsure if we were pirates, pilgrims or