bleed with her slipper when I only wanted good things for her. But I have resigned myself and will say nothing and will not even weep lest I lose the sight of my one remaining eye, so bitterly have I already wept on your account in the countries to which your accursed madness has led us. I merely say at once, to avoid subsequent mistakes, that this is my last voyage since my stomach tells me so, but I shall not bother even to reproach you, for the bare sight of you and your physician’s smell are deeply revolting to me. I have put our things together and am ready to depart, for without the scarab you cannot venture out to sea in a ship, and without the scarab I cannot hope to travel the land route to Zemar and preserve my life, so I go with the scarab and either die on board or drown in the sea with you — and my only consolation is that all this you wrote with your stick on my bottom the day you bought me from the slave market in Thebes.”
I greatly marvelled at Kaptah’s reasonable attitude until I learned that he had inquired among the seafarers in the harbour concerning remedies for seasickness and had bought magic talismans from them. Before we sailed, he tied his talismans about his neck and fasted and drank an intoxicating herbal mixture so that when he stepped aboard his eye was staring like that of a boiled fish, and he begged in a voice thick as porridge for fat pork meat, which the sailors had assured him was the best preventive of seasickness. He lay down on his bunk and fell asleep with a pig’s shoulder blade in one hand and the scarab gripped in the other. The chief guard took our clay tablet and bade us farewell after which the oarsmen unshipped their oars and rowed us out of the bay. Thus began the voyage to Crete, and outside the harbour the captain made sacrifice to the sea god and to the secret gods of his cabin and then gave the command to hoist sail so that the vessel heeled over and began to cleave the water while my stomach rose to my throat for ahead was but the endless, rolling sea with no shore in sight.
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Book 8: The Dark House
1
Before and around us rolled the boundless waters for many days, but I feared nothing for Minea was with me, and when she breathed the sea air, she was herself again, with moonlight in her eyes while standing in the bows by the ship’s figurehead, leaning forward and drinking in the air as if she would draw us more speedily along our course with her own strength. The sky over us was blue, and the sun shone, and the wind was not too boisterous but swelled our sails steadily and took us to the right quarter. At least so the captain said, and I had no reason to doubt him. 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 sea birds forsook the ship and flew away having until then circled us with their white wings. Instead, the chariots of the sea god attended us, and dolphins jumped in the water with their smooth backs gleaming. Minea shouted aloud and hailed them in her own tongue, for they brought her greetings from her god.
The sea was not empty, and we sighted a Cretan warship whose hull was hung with copper shields and who greeted us with pennants when she saw that ours was not a pirate vessel. Kaptah rose from his bunk when he found himself able to stand and boasting to the sailors of his journeys to many lands. Realising he was not getting sick, he told of his voyage from Egypt to Zemar, 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 emptying their stomachs to the direction of the wind. He told also of most fearful sea monsters that guarded the Nile delta and could engulf an entire fishing boat if it ventured too far out to sea. The sailors gave as good as he 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 rejoice with them, and they told tales of sea monsters that made the hair rise on Kaptah’s head and sent him running to me with a grey face, to cling to my shoulder cloth. Yet he could not eat the fat pork meat as he threw overboard.
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