“Haste thee, Scar; we go out for the fishing!”
I hurried toward the boat, for I knew what was my present duty since there were but six of us to man the boat, which made but a scanty crew. We were not to row far, however, only to a place nearby the islands where the fishing was most promising, so that all the oarsmen usual were not needed. My companions were already in their places when I reached them, and lightly chided me for my delay. I took my seat upon the rowing bench and grasped an oar and soon we were sweeping toward a passage between the islands. There were in all the world no better seamen than we of the Phœnicia which had begun to live fairly with the founding of our village, Akko.
We were not great people as compared with these who were behind the mountains of Lebanon, which protected us on the east—there were as yet but some five thousand of us to occupy the narrow land between the mountains and the sea—but we had prospered greatly since venturing from the home of our forefathers, where the great Euphrates finds the southern ocean. It was well for us that we had found this palm and wild vine-clad country, rock-walled and safe as might be from invasion, and had taken up our abode here, and sent to our kindred telling them of the soil’s richness and of the many spoils of the sea, and so they were following us, band after band, forming new villages to the north along the coast. Of these were Sidon and Tyre, though as yet they were but hamlets. As for us in Akko, we could ask no better fortune than was already ours. We were possessors of only this close-bounded and curtailed domain—but what a land! Never was one fairer or richer or better suited to the needs of such as we. The palms which grew in forests along the sea-lapped sand and wide beaches supplied abundant timber for our houses, while for our ships!—already our great biremes were becoming stately—there were the cedars of Lebanon thick upon the range behind us, and oak and other woods of strength. Back of the sandy coast belt was the fertile plain, yet to become a region of gardens and orchards and cornfields, a land for the pomegranate and the orange. Still further back rose the green, low-lying hills, great slopes whereon would grow most healthily the vine, the olive and the mulberry, all of which we cultivated zealously, and then, as the hills rose into mountains, came the ruder spaces clothed here and there with forests of oaks, chestnut, sycamore and terebinth, and, best of all, the mighty cedars, of which I have already told. There were harbours at points along the coast, made naturally by the many small islands which formed a barrier against the incoming sea. We were settled in a land of abundance and one also of safety and security, for from the mountains at the south ran out a great promontory ending in a precipice at the sea and rounded by only a narrow path, while to the north were defences, raised by nature, not less formidable. To the west of us in our front lay the great sea, the Mediterranean, as men learned to call it, blue as the sky above it, teeming with the fish we needed, and treasure-bottomed because of the rare things which, by lucky happening, we found there. Far in the offing above the tideless waters could be seen a dim blue speck where the sky and water blended, the island Yatnan—the Cyprus of the future—an island of kindly people to be some time followed by others called the Greeks, with whom we were already beginning to do a little trading.
For we were traders! Traders, boat-builders and sea adventurers were we, above all other peoples. The world had learned to barter, it may be from those who had first discovered copper, which all men needed and for which they would exchange that which they had, and we were those who had already made bartering our chief and earnest occupation. This had been the way with us even at the mouth of the Euphrates, whence we had come and where between contemptuous Babylonian and rude Assyrian we had been much oppressed, and so had fled to find this treasure strip. Warriors we had never been, though sometimes, at bay, we had fought well, nor had we been skilful hunters within the memory of our generation. Dark-haired and swarthy, sprouted from an ancient race to the south, some said, we had come to this new land to make, if we might be favoured of our dark god, a better future. Most skilled were we in the many arts, but better still, for us, in traffic in that which we made. We dealt much with the stronger races which endured but did not mingle with us. Now we were to trade from our own land as a vantage ground. The outcome was what no man could dream.
We had built our houses at Akko and had sowed our fields and planted our trees and vines and had builded our boats, and in them had already begun to range the coasts for such trade as might be found, though not so far at first, because as yet we had few goods for barter save the fine linen which the women wove so well, and wool, and cedar timber, and besides, we were not yet acquainted with the strange shores. Our first trade, as I have said, was with the people of the large island Yatnan, which was so near to us, and from this alone arose in time a mighty business of ours, for in Yatnan was much copper, and the people were such we did not fear. Soon, too, there came to us such aid from what the sea gave us, that our traffic, we were assured, must surpass all we had hoped for, our fabrics having given to them suddenly a value never known before.
The bireme in which we went to the fishing was shared with me in its ownership by my comrades Aradnus and Malchus, and it was to Malchus that our people owed a part of their coming vast good fortune. Malchus had many fancies, and among these was one for a collection of the glittering different shells we found upon the shore or in the waters we dredged for shell-fish, of which there were many edible and nourishing. Once in an oyster he had found a pearl of quality, and so it came that he was ever curious to learn what his shells might hold. Much we derided him for his useless searching, but he made answer only that there were many things yet to be learned, and the issue proved him right. Among the shell-fish counted useless by us, because we found them tasteless, were two kinds, each of spiral form and ending in a rounded head, but one sort more rough and spinous than the other. It was after breaking one of each sort of these twisted shells that Malchus discovered a curious thing.
With a stone, Malchus cracked the shells apart upon a smooth rock where he could observe them closely. That of one sort thus broken and the creature within it shown, there appeared a shell-fish having a sort of sac behind its head, this sac extending into a sort of vein traversing the body, the whole filled with a liquid whitish in colour and having the smell of garlic. This liquid chanced to gather in a tiny pool in the surface of the rock and, even as Malchus studied it, wondering what its use to the fish might be, it changed before his eyes, as the air reached it, from yellow-white to green, then blue and red, then a deep purple-red and, finally, to crimson, which last colour did not pass away. In the shell of the rougher kind he found a creature with a sac which showed also changing colours, though somewhat different of shade. Much Malchus wondered and, at last, he sought a piece of linen and dipped it in the liquid and found he had a cloth of brighter colour than ever known before. He had discovered a wondrous dye! More of the shell-fish were soon collected and there was much experiment with the dyeing, for we all were full of interest now, and it was found, in the end, that by first dyeing with the matter in the sac of the smoother shell-fish, which was abundant on the rocks near shore, and later with that from the rougher kind, which was found in deeper water, there was gained a purple so royal and brilliant that no other in the world could by any means compare with it. Dark and rich it was, like red blood cooled, and, as it was shifted in the light, a blazing crimson. The rocks and the sea-bottom were covered with myriads of these strange shell-fish, which we caught with baited basket traps let down, and soon our varied cloths gleamed with such hues as would command the desire of all who might look upon them. A marvellous new thing had we for barter, and in the end it brought great fortune, though not all of it remained to Akko. There came a time when vast beds of the shell-fish, and of even more productive quality, were found near swiftly expanding Tyre, and great dyeing was done there, and trade came widely in the colouring and its fabrics until priests, senators, emperors, and the great of all the known world must garb themselves in Tyrian purple as most worthy of their dignity. Surely never were a people’s fortunes so affected as were ours by what might be deemed so small a thing as the juice in the head of a sea creature!
But this discovery of the purple dye had but lately come and diverted us only a little from a host of things of greater purport. Our boats and our plans for our sea-roving as we might extend it, were what absorbed us chiefly. Nowhere were better boats than those we had already learned to build, but we were ever seeking their improvement, since our fortunes were dependent upon them. Biremes, as our boats or ships of the better sort were called, were better than those owned by our fathers, not short and rounded and caulked with bitumen, as had been the boats of only a little time before us, but longer and caulked with tar, which we had learned to make, and, in our latest ventures, double-decked so that the oarsmen could work below while their masters were above them. Good ships were these, riding the rough seas well, and much we prized them. Our only lack was in the oarsmen. We needed galley-slaves, and had but few, and oftentimes the trader and his people must needs take care to the oars themselves. As for me and my companions in sea ventures, we had but two, dark creatures we had found castaways upon a bare island some distance to the south, and certainly of some poor tribe, for the broken canoe we found with them was crude of form and by no means fitted for a sea trip. Blown away they doubtless were from the great continent which bounded the sea on the south, a land almost unknown to us, though we were somewhat acquainted with the people, ancient almost as we, who dwelt on the shores of a great river with many mouths which came into the sea not far from its eastern end. Intelligent the captives proved, in a slow way, and docile enough, though possessed of enormous appetites, which we must gratify or else lose of their strength in the rowing, but which were nevertheless somewhat of a burden on us. However, we hired them to the husbandmen when not upon a voyage, and so regained a little of their keeping cost. We were ever thrifty, we Phœnicians!
More slaves we must have certainly, and it had been resolved, not only by us of the Spearhead—for so we had named our sharp-prowed boat—but by others of the traders, that cruises must be made with that end alone in mind, and it was considered that we might find what we sought in some of the islands which lay beyond blue Yatnan, some of them very small and having on them, very probably, so few people that we might make our foray safely and bring away as many captives as our ships would carry. For this we were to band together in a fleet and join our forces in whatever conflict came, afterward dividing the captives by lot or in any other way we might agree upon. It was while preparations were making for this same expedition that happenings came which greatly changed our plan and had a mighty bearing on our future ways.
One of those who were to take part in the expedition was a most daring and reckless captain having the name of Neco, who but a little before this time had made a voyage to the southward and brought back with him to Akko a cargo of hides, for among us were skilled tanners and cunning workers in leather who supplied many things for our trading, and hides were always desired by them. It so chanced that upon the return voyage of Neco some of the hides which were green and like to spoil were stretched between poles set upright on the deck of the vessel, and that the wind from the south, bearing hardly upon them, pressed the boat most swiftly homeward, the craft requiring only to be steered. And this gave Neco a great thought, and he swore by Moloch that henceforth the wind should serve him and that the labour of the rowing should be so avoided. So vaunting was he in this that he declared that he would yet reach Yatnan and thus return, and the marvel of it was that he did as he had boasted, sailing one day when the wind blew strongly from the east, and returning when it had shifted to the west. Now his pride became overweening, and, having made a great sheet from broad strips of linen sewed together, he spread it nailed between tall uprights and set sail to the southward with a fierce rising wind behind him. His ship disappeared amid the mist and spindrift and nevermore was seen of man. The blast must have been too much for the fixed sail, and the vessel must have buried itself beneath the waves which rolled high upon the day which was the last of Neco.