Jonah, who at first had been terribly alarmed, did not disguise his satisfaction that we were not going any closer to the mountain. "All very well in the distance," he said; "it is the kitchen of Nergal, the old cock, whose head is up in the sky and his feet here on earth. Yes, it is his kitchen; where he roasts his behemoths and leviathans; his smallest platter is a good deal bigger than this deck. But the time is coming when El-Adonai shall demolish him, and the children of Israel shall feast upon him and his dainties!"
"Hold your tongue, you fool!" said Chamai. "None of your idiot stories of Dan, and your fables of the drunken Ephraimites!"
"Neither stories nor fables!" retorted Jonah; "have you not a proof before your eyes that it is all true? What will the people of Eltekeh say when I tell them I have seen Nergal's kitchen?"
"Hush! I say! Shut up!" And as Chamai spoke, he gave the giant a violent blow across his mouth with his open hand.
"Humph!" he growled; "I must hold my tongue, must I?"
We now made rapid headway towards the north, and as we approached the strait, Himilco and his sailors amused themselves by working up Aminocles and the other Phocians to the highest pitch of terror.
"That is the mountain of the Cyclopes that you have been looking at," he said to them; "now's your time to look out sharp to the right and left, and you shall see Scylla and Charybdis. You know who they are. They are the ravenous monsters that swallow up whole ships and all their crews. Listen! you can hear them roaring now; they seem desperately hungry."
"I remember," said one of the sailors, "seeing Charybdis suck in three gaouls and two galleys at one draught, just as easily as I could drain a cup of wine."
"And would you believe," interposed the man who was at the helm, "that I have seen the heads of Scylla shatter a whole fleet with such violence that the admiral was pitched clean over there into the jaws of the volcano?"
Himilco, of course, could not allow himself to be outdone by the men, and proceeded to say: