The Wanderers

by Mary Johnston

When the moon was an hour high they came to an islet known to be desolate, a mere hand’s breadth of waste sand and rock, blanched by the moon. The favourable wind had fallen, and the rowers wished not to row through this night. They pushed prow upon the shelving sand, they left the boat and took with them those captured women. They had store of meat and wine. They ate and drank, sitting in the moonlight upon the sand, above the murmuring sea, and they set food and drink before their captives. Their tongue and the women’s tongue had one origin. Victor and vanquished understood much of each other’s speech. “Eat, drink!” said the sea-rovers. “Our country is going to be your country.” When they themselves had finished their meal, then, with noise and laughter, they cast lots. The moon shone very brightly, a soft daylight seemed to visit the place.

Sandanis was the island king. He cast no lot, but made his choice at once, and her he chose was for the king alone. “I take the flame-top,” he said.

The king’s comrades laughed and clamoured. “O Sandanis, she will turn thee red too! She is demon!”

“I am her demon bridegroom,” said Sandanis with answering laughter. “I have come from afar to her!”

The moon climbed to her meridian, and all the islet was bathed in light. It was light upon the beach where life lay, shaped into men and women; it was light where the sea-rovers’ king held between his arms Lindane whom he had bound. The dawn when it came hardly made it seem more light. The dawn reddened, burned scarlet in sea and in sky. The wide-winged birds sailed and circled and with harsh voices uttered their cry to the morning. The sun sprang out of the sea, and he was red and strong. Sandanis and his companions once more bestowed those captive women in the boat and pushing from the desolate isle, themselves leaped in and lifted oars. The favourable wind sprang forth again; they hoisted sails and steered for the island that they called home.

Five days they sailed or rowed as the wind sent them on or failed them. The second night Lindane’s teeth met in Sandanis’s shoulder. In return he struck her so mighty a blow that she lay stunned, the moonlight blanching her backward-drawn face. Sandanis, regarding her, felt he knew not what of ruth. He bathed his own wound with wine and he forced wine between the Amazon’s lips. She stirred, opened her eyes and raised herself upon her hand. “Flame-top!” he said, “where did you learn to bite so hard?”

But “Let me go!” was all her answer. “Let me go!” and the ruth passed for that time from his heart.

When the sixth morning broke it showed the island. The sea-rovers broke into a chant of rejoicing for home, but the women they had rapt away looked on a picture of their own home, their home that the morning did not show.

Limestone cliffs had the island with woods climbing to mountain pastures, and above these a rounded mountain-top. Many springs it had, and sunny glades, and deep ravines where the shade was black. Huge spreading trees it had, and blossomy meads and hillsides planted with the vine, and fields of waving grain. It owned sheep and goats and oxen, horses and herds of swine, fed by the each-year-renewed rain of beech-nut and acorn. Coming to the human, herdsmen were there, shepherds and shepherdesses, and tillers of the earth, both men and women. Artisans also the island held, though not so many of these. But carpenter, mason, and smith were there, shipwright and bowyer and others beside. And old prowess in such lines and now old custom had given these and like crafts to men. Certain crafts leaned to women and women were traders-in-little. Household offices fell to women, and women ground at the mills, and all the garments, whether for use or ornament that the people wore, were of their weaving and fashioning, and the food they prepared and cooked, and in their hands was the cleanliness of all, and they kept alight the fires. Also they bore and long suckled the children, and gave them their early training.

Above the mass of the island population, men and women, bond and free, stood in self-seized and self-confirmed rank the warlike sort, the fillers of long boats, the sea-eagles swooping upon other islands and the shadowy mainland, traders-in-great on occasion, raptors of goods and of lives when that better suited. Out of this body of war men, young and in prime and old, had risen by degrees the elder-wise, the firm and politic, to become a council and point the road their history should tread, and at last from captains, chiefs, and counsellors had come the chief of chiefs, the casting voice, the king. And all these were men, and when they died they left to their sons. Next in caste stood the attendants and ministers and interpreters of the gods, and these were men and women, as the gods themselves were male and female. But, aided by that topmost caste, the priest was gaining over the priestess, the god over the goddess. The highest god, the ruler of the rest, was held to be by nature male. In the island, man and woman professed to heal the body. But the dominant wind blew for the man-physician and against the woman. Both men and women made minstrelsy, and men and women wove the dance. But in the island they that bore rule and heaped together the fruit of war and directed public action were men. And the servants of the gods that were strongest to persuade or to awe were men.