The country of the Amazonian women ran in deep mountain gorges back from the sea to a tableland and certain forested peaks. At the foot of the gorge spread salt meadows, flat and green, overbreathed by the fragrant sea wind. Here was capital pasturage, and here on a day came down from the plateau a dozen mounted women driving before them flock and herd. The day was warm, the meadows bright. These gave to shining sands, the sands to sapphire sea. Behind the level green sprang the wood. Lowing and bleating, cattle and sheep came to the grass. The drovers saw all disposed, then, hot and tired with much work from dawn till noon, dismounted, fastened their horses in the wood and went down to the sea. Having bathed, with laughter and play, they stretched themselves upon the sand and opened a great wallet that held bread and dried meat, and untied the mouth of a wine skin.

Their town was built three leagues away, in a cup of the mountain excellently guarded by grey crags. They thought that it had always been there, though indeed the old wise women said no. They said that their mothers had told them that their mothers’ mothers had heard of a time when there was a battle at the edge of the world, and that then fifty women, fleeing, had climbed to these mountains and here built a town and kept ancient customs. These were the ancestresses and divine! However that might be, here was now the town and the people. A queen ruled them.{140} On certain ritual days of the year they had intercourse with men of two neighbouring nations. Of the children born they kept the girls, but when the boys had seen twelve summers they sent these to the father nation. Year by year their ways of life, at first not so strange, grew to seem strange and stranger yet to the peoples who heard of them and elaborated and legended what they heard. To themselves it was old nature, very right and proper, dear, familiar life!

The drovers lying upon the sand, between the blue sea and the salt meadow, were all on the younger side of prime. Among them was Lindane, the Queen’s daughter. The sea-wind caressed them, they heard the contented voices and movements of the grazing beasts, they had bread and red wine and sweet rest. When they had eaten they posted two watchers, and the rest closed their eyes.

To the left of where they lay dipped into the sea a hook of land, a long, crooked finger of Mother Earth. The watchers looked inland toward the wealth in the meadows, the horses fastened in the wood. The world hereabouts went little to sea; the sea made no danger save to small fishing craft in rough weather. The watchers never saw until too late the long, dark boat, fifty-oared, with sails beside, with carven prow, that stole around the crooked finger.... The watchers heard the sails when they rattled down, and sharply turned to see the prow touch the sand and the men leap forth—and all so close the eyes might be seen! “Awake! Awake!” cried the watchers and snatched bow and quiver. The ten sprang up, seized weapons; all raced for the wood and those tied steeds. Close after them, with shouts, came the sea-rovers.

There were fifty and five strong young men, strong and{141} untamed as eagles, swoopers from islands below the horizon. The chief was Sandanis. Elsewhere upon the far-stretching mainland coast they had lifted spoil in their talons, robbing towns that spoke a dialect akin to their own. The long boat held wrought gold and brass, rich woven goods, strange weapons, objects of value. Here upon this strand was stopping only to fill the water casks. But when they saw the sleeping forms the sea-eagles again set beak and talon.

At first they did not know the twelve for women, for they were not habited like the women of the islands or of any country that the sea-rovers knew, and they were tall and deeply bronzed, and they showed a practised hand with javelin and with bow and arrow. They ran like deer, and the sea-rovers ran at their heels. They menaced the pursuit as they ran, then, reaching the wood, plunged past tree and swinging vines to the tethered horses. They waited not to untie, but each stripping knife from sheath, severed the bridle and sprang to steed. One further minute and they might have shown clean heels, won away to their mountain fastness. But the fifty were on them, keen as winter wolves, knife-armed, javelin-armed, knowing their quarry now for the famed women! A hundred hands caught at bridle and mane, or used knife or flung javelin against the horses. Of these several sank to earth, others, rearing, beat with their hooves at the foe. One only escaped, making with its rider at a furious gallop for the trail, the upward-running gorge and the crag-guarded town.

Yet mounted or with foot upon the ground, the remaining Amazons fought for life and freedom. They fought with knife and shortened javelin, being unable to use bow{142} and arrow in the close conflict. They fought strongly, with skill, with desperation and tenacious courage. Lives were lost from among the sea-rovers, bitter wounds were given. But the sea-rovers were fifty and they who had brought the cattle to the salt meadows were twelve. And one was gone and two were slain and two had death hurts. The seven that were left were overpowered, dragged to earth and bound with thongs and cords.

Lindane, the Queen’s daughter, fought with Sandanis, the king of the sea-rovers, a second strong man giving him needed help. It took the two to bind her. Sandanis’s hands upon her wrists, the other’s against her shoulders, they forced her down the sands, they lifted and flung her over the boat side. All the seven were brought to the boat and guarded there while the sea-rovers gathered wood and burned their dead.

The sea-rovers drew out to no great length the details of that rite. In their minds was a humming thought of the fled Amazon and of possible rescue. Kindling the pyre, they left it blazing there, at the edge of the wood. A forewind had sprung up and they took advantage. Making sail in haste, they left behind the golden sands and the salt meadows and the dark, mounting forests of that land.

The sun went down, the moon came up. The women yet lay where they had been flung. Then Lindane rose to her knees, and with her two or three of the more resilient sort. They looked astern, and by the light of the great full moon saw, sinking from them, their country-shore and all it held of home and friends. Lindane, straining at her bonds, broke them, and with her doubled hands struck Sandanis that was nearest to her. Sandanis, thinking himself conqueror, laughed. He seized the Amazon’s wrists,{143} struggled with her, and nodded to his helper to wrap the thong about her arms. Enmeshed again, she turned her head and prayed to the sea.

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{144} 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 hu{145}man, 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{146} 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.

To this island came the Amazon.

The cliffs lifted higher, the green grew brighter, the sea-eagles saw their harbour and its small white quay, and their town on the hill above the sea, saw the folk hastening down from the gates. They raised a home-coming song, welcoming shouts rang from the water-side. The boat flew on with sail and oar. The sails rattled down, the oars sent it forward, it lay beside the gleaming, landing place. Arms were outstretched, there prevailed a leaning down, a springing up, shouts, vaunts, welcomes, a swarm of bodies, a humming of the mind. Here was home-in-triumph for the sea-eagles; here was land-of-captivity for the women from that old continent.

 

The house of Sandanis! That was a very great house according to the notions of the island and the time. It was filled with bond and free, but with more of the bond than the free. When they reached it, built above the town, and entered a court that enclosed for shade two vast sycamores, forth from the inner rooms to meet her son came the widowed woman, the old island queen. With her moved her two daughters, Lindace and Ardis, and behind them pressed the women of the household.

The king’s men who had robbed with the king took each to his own house his share of the spoil that had been heaped{147} in the king’s court and portioned there. Brass and gold had been heaped, and weapons and implements and rich stuffs and adornments, and among these had place the captives from that ancient strand. With a beating of voices a crowd entered the court. Sun and shade struggled there. Women were weighed against gold and brass. All things were parted and in the mean time the feast was made and set in Sandanis’s hall. Bondsmen took away to each sea-rover’s house his chosen spoil. To the six of greatest fame went the six Amazons, companions of Lindane. But in the court, beneath the hugest sycamore, yet rested the gold and brass, the weapons, the rich stuff and the woman set apart to Sandanis the king. The crowd of the unconsidered dwindled. The chief men passed with Sandanis into his kingly hall, there to feast and carouse and recite mighty deeds.

The island folk had looked with curiosity upon those stranger women, unlike other women, different from what the gods had created women to be! Hands had touched them, voices had beaten against them. But now six of the seven had been taken away, and all the crowd was dwindling. There came and stood before the Amazon shared to the king three priests of the island, priests of a warlike god who was become the chief deity. One was a man past middle-age, a dark enthusiast. The other two were younger.

“Woman-out-of-nature,” said the first, “who is your country-god?”

Lindane sat silent among goods and weapons and cunningly wrought ............