bent over the bulwarks and gazed steadily upon the sea. Then he saw that
the wide sea round the ship was covered, as far as the eye could reach,
as it were with a blood-red scum. Hither and thither the red stain was
tossed like foam, yet beneath, where the deep wave divided, the Wanderer
saw that the streams of the sea were grey and green below the crimson
dye. As he watched he saw, too, that the red froth was drifted always
onward from the South and from the mouth of the River of Egypt, for
behind the wake of the ship it was most red of all, though he had not
marked it when the battle raged. But in front the colour grew thin, as
if the stain that the river washed down was all but spent. In his heart
the Wanderer thought, as any man must have deemed, that on the banks of
the River of Egypt there had been some battle of great nations, and
that the War God had raged furiously, wherefore the holy river as it ran
forth stained all the sacred sea. Where war was, there was his home, no
other home had he now, and all the more eagerly he steered right on to
see what the Gods would send him. The flight of birds was over and past;
it was two hours after noon, the light was high in the heaven, when,
as he gazed, another shadow fell on him, for the sun in mid-heaven grew
small, and red as blood. Slowly a mist rose up over it from the South,
a mist that was thin but as black as night. Beyond, to the southward,
there was a bank of cloud like a mountain wall, steep, and polished,
and black, tipped along the ragged crest with fire, and opening ever
and again with flashes of intolerable splendour, while the bases were
scrawled over with lightning like a written scroll. Never had the
Wanderer in all his voyaging on the sea and on the great River Oceanus
that girdles the earth, and severs the dead from the living men--never
had he beheld such a darkness. Presently he came as it were within the
jaws of it, dark as a wolf's mouth, so dark that he might not see the
corpses on the deck, nor the mast, nor the dead man swinging from the
yard, nor the captain of the Phoenicians who groaned aloud below, praying