Nathos

“ Who shall soon be more lost than a falling star,
And am now as a blown flame in the front of war!
Nathos was sad when he heard this lament from the mouth of Darthool, and Ailne and Ardan looked at each other and whispered that it was the beginning of the end. Nevertheless, they did not fear to confront the days to come, for whatsoever the decrees of Fate may be a brave man does not draw back, but goes forward upon the way set before him. But Nathos was in a dream, and so heeded little, content too to chide Darthool because that she laid so much stress on vain imaginings. ”

“ They move in the gloom of their course. The sons of Usnoth move in darkness, from the wrath of Cairbar of Erin. Who is that, dim, by their side? The night has covered her beauty! Who is it but Darthula, the first of Erin's maids? She has fled from the love of Caribar, with blue-shielded Nathos. But the winds deceive thee, O Darthula! They deny the woody Etha to thy sails. These are not the mountains of Nathos; nor is that the roar of his climbing waves. The halls of Cairbar are near; the towers of the foe lift their heads! ”

“ Otherwise it is never the waters of the Moyle that we shall see, but only the red flame in the eyes of Concobar.”220
Even while Nathos spoke his eyes grew hard, and his hands slipped to the javelin he had by his side. While Darthool watched him in amaze, he swung the iron-pointed shaft at a place where a bent bracken hung listless in the air.
“Is it a wolf?” cried Darthool, in sudden affright.
“It is worse than a wolf,” answered Nathos; “for if thou wilt go to that place thou wilt see either a slain man, or the form of a man, in the grass beneath the bracken.” ”

“ He saw the coming of the heroes. He called his chiefs to war. Why should I tell to Nathos, how the strife of battle grew? I have seen thee in the midst of thousands, like the beam of heaven's fire: it is beautiful, but terrible; the people fall in its dreadful course. The spear of Colla flew. He remembered the battles of his youth. An arrow came with its sound. It pierced the hero's side. He fell on his echoing shield. My soul started with fear. I stretched my buckler over him; but my heaving breast was seen! Cairbar came with his spear. He beheld Seláma's maid. ”

“ At that, Nathos lightly laughed.
“Truly, I am seeing Concobar as a man sees his own shadow in the water. He is a great king in Uladh, but he is no more in Alba than any hero of the Red Branch. Come, Darthool; across the Moyle are the pine-green shores of Alba. It is a fair, beautiful land. The sea-lochs reach far among pine-clad hills, and green pastures are on the slopes of the great mountains and around the shadowy, inland waters. The forests are full of deer and wild birds, the rivers and lochs of fish, the pastures of cattle and sheep and swift brown mares. ”

“ II.—Darthula
Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! The silence of thy face is pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O moon! Look from thy gates in the sky. Burst the cloud, O wind, that the daughter of night may look forth, that the shaggy mountains may brighten, and the ocean roll its white waves in light!
Nathos is on the deep, and Althos, that beam of youth. Ardan is near his brothers. ”

“ I am no queen, Nathos, nor am I of the Tuatha-De-Danann, but am a woman as other women are. If I am beautiful in thine eyes, of that I am right glad, for thou art fairer to me than any man I have seen or dreamed of, and my pulse leaps when thine eyes look into mine. I am Darthool, the daughter of Felim the Harper ”

“ Tell me, Nathos, son of Usna, is it the wont of thy people in Alba to stand by agape when a woman speaks? Who is Usna, or what? If he is a king, is he overlord of swineherds? If it is a place, is it the rough bogs of the hills where sword-clad men do not go, but only a poor folk clad rudely in skins?”
Still they answered nothing.
“Were ye whipt into silence when ye were young, ye that stand there wordless as dogs? If indeed ye be the sons of Usna, then truly Concobar MacNessa must be in sore want of men at Emain Macha!” ”

“ The tear started from car-borne Nathos. He turned his eyes to his brothers. Their spears flew at once. Three heroes lay on earth. Then the light of their swords gleamed on high. The ranks of Erin yield, as a ridge of dark clouds before a blast of wind! Then Cairbar ordered his people, and they drew a thousand bows. A thousand arrows flew. The sons of Usnoth fell in blood. They fell like three young oaks, which stood alone on the hill. ”

“ Yet well she knew that Nathos had guessed aright, and that even now were the footsteps of fate drawing close. For none can prevail against destiny.
Once more a loud cry was heard, and a voice called upon Nathos and the sons of Usna.
“Of a surety, that is the voice of a man of Erin,” said Nathos eagerly, for his heart was fain to see an Ultonian again, and to hear of the Red Branch and of the fate of248 Uladh, and as to whether Concobar reigned still.
“Indeed, it is not so,” answered Darthool, and turning the great glory and beauty of her eyes upon Nathos she bade him play on. ”

“ Nathos was made commander of King Cormac's army at the death of Cuthullin, and for a time upheld the tottering throne. But the rebel grew stronger and stronger, and at length found means to murder the young king; whereupon the army under Nathos deserted. Nathos was now obliged to quit Ireland, and Dar-Thula fled with him. A storm drove the vessel back to Ulster, where Cairbar was encamped, and Nathos, with his two brothers, being overpowered by numbers, fell. Dar-Thula was arrayed as a young warrior; but when her lover was slain "her shield fell from her arm ”

“ Her soul trembles at the blast. She turns her ear towards the tread of his feet. The tread of his feet is not heard. "Where art thou, son of my love! The roar of the blast is around me. Dark is the cloudy night. But Nathos does not return. What detains thee, chief of Etha? Have the foes met the hero in the strife of the night?"
He returned, but his face was dark. He had seen his departed friend! It was the wall of Tura. [3] The ghost of Cuthullin stalked there alone: The sighing of his breast was frequent. The decayed flame of his eyes was terrible! His spear was a column of mist. ”

“ Nathos, I pray of thee that thou wilt go straightway to Dun Delgan, where the great and noble lord Cuchulain is, and abide with him for a while. There we shall be safe. Listen, I pray thee: I see thine own shadow creeping up thee, and a dark259 cloud overhead, and a cloud of clotted blood it is by the same token.”
“Fair woman, there is some guile upon thy delicate thin lips. Why shouldst thou see evil everywhere? Be assured that neither I nor Ailne nor Ardan will turn aside from our quest of Concobar the king.” ”

“ Nevertheless, he could not come straightway, for Concobar knew that the swineherd had spoken to him of Darthool, and it was for this, and having seen and spoken with the girl, that the king had put the man to death—though for that, added Nathos, little did the swineherd care, for he died laughing and mocking, and, when he lay still, there was a smile upon his face.209
“And that was because Darthool had looked into his eyes, Nathos, son of Usna.”
“Truly, he died well. I know a prince among men who also would die gladly if Darthool would look into his eyes with love.” ”

“ So great was the fear in which the three sons of Usna were held, and so strong were they in their mountain home, that none dared to approach them with the flaming brand.
Thus three years passed, and in all the wide reaches of the world there was no man so happy as Nathos and no woman so happy as Darthool; and after these there were none so happy as Ailne and Ardan, who were well content to live so that they might be near the beautiful wife of Nathos, their sister, Darthool, fairest of all women in the world. ”

“ The swineherd was still now. Neither king nor raven,208 neither man nor hoodie-crow, neither spear-shaft nor kite could now hurt him. It was better to be alive than to be dead, but it was well to be dead.
So Lavarcam turned, and went over to the camp in Emain Macha where the sons of Usna were. There she saw Nathos, and told him privily that Darthool longed to see him, and that the forest was open to the stealthy flight of the owl as well as to the soaring hawk. ”

“ Mean and ordinary though the surroundings of the story may seem, the heroine Natasha is like one of the noble victims of Greek tragedy; she is Antigone with the passion of Phædra, and it is impossible to approach her without a feeling of awe. Greek also is the gloom of Nemesis that hangs over each character, only it is a Nemesis that does not stand outside of life, but is part of our own nature and of the same material as life itself. Aleósha, the beautiful young lad whom Natasha follows to her doom, is a second Tito Melema, and has all Tito’s charm and grace and fascination. ”

“ They grow yams, cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, bananas, taro, bread-fruit, pumpkins, melons, and even here and there Indian wheat.
In the New Hebrides the natives worship oblong stones, from six to eighteen inches in length, in each of which they suppose a divinity, or demon, resides, which they call a Natmas. There is a chip off one end of the stone by which the Natmas effects an entrance. The chief of the tribe is the priest, whose duty it is to propitiate the Natmas, who is of course a malignant being. ”

“ Yet such is the fear now inspired by a Persian armament, that the eight thousand Naxian hoplites abandon their town and their gods without striking a blow, [620] and think of nothing but personal safety for themselves and their families. A sad augury for Athens and Eretria!
From Naxos, Datis despatched his fleet round the other Cyclades islands, requiring from each, hostages for fidelity and a contingent to increase his army. With the sacred island of Delos, however, he dealt tenderly and respectfully. ”

“ Among those islands was Naxos, which ten years before had stood a long siege, and gallantly repelled the Persian Megabatês with the Milesian Aristagoras. It was one of the main objects of Datis to efface this stain on the Persian arms, and to take a signal revenge on the Naxians. [619] Crossing from Samos to Naxos, he landed his army on the island, which was found an easier prize than he had expected. The terrified citizens, abandoning their town, fled with their families to the highest summits of their mountains ”

“ Necho quitted Memphis and made his way towards the Asiatic frontier with the army which his father had left to him. It was no longer composed of the ill-organised bands of the Ethiopian kings or the princes of the Delta, temporarily united under the rule of a single leader, but all the while divided by reciprocal hatreds and suspicions which doomed it to failure. All the troops which constituted it—Egyptians, Libyans, and Greeks alike—were thoroughly under the control of their chief, and advanced in a compact and irresistible mass “like the Nile: like a river its volume rolls onward. ”

“ Byzantine officials, sent to Greece, regarded that classic land, in the phrase of Niketas, as an “utter hole,” an uncomfortable place of exile. The two Greek provinces were governed by one of these authorities, styled prætor, protoprætor, or “general,” whose headquarters were at Thebes. We have from the pen of Michael Akominatos, the last Metropolitan of Athens before the conquest and brother of the historian Niketas, a vivid account of the exactions of these personages. Theoretically, the city of Athens was a privileged community. ”

“ Nantes itself now is akin to a desert—a desert wherein the air is filled with weird sounds of cries and of moans, of furtive footsteps scurrying away into dark and secluded byways, of musketry and confused noises, of sorrow and of lamentations.
Nantes is a city of the dead—a city of sleepers. Only Carrier is awake—thinking and devising and planning shorter ways and swifter, for the extermination of traitors. ”

“ The poor Natchez shared the hospitality of their protectors until their necessities and sorrows were alike relieved by death; their bones repose in a land unknown to their fathers; their spirits may be again mingled in the beautiful regions which they believe to be prepared by the Great Spirit for the fearless warrior, the successful hunter, and the faithful and hospitable Indian, beyond the great lakes. ”

“ Tachôs, deserted by his veterans, fled to Sidon, and thence to Susa, where Artaxerxes received him hospitably and without reproaching him (359 B.C.) ; but the news of his fall was not received on the banks of the Nile with as much rejoicing as he had anticipated. The people had no faith in any revolution in which the Greeks whom they detested took the chief part, and the feudal lords refused to acknowledge a sovereign whom they had not themselves chosen; they elected one of their number—the prince of Mendes—to oppose Nectanebo. ”

“ Turn to the east—there is Myconos, hospitable in this century to the Greek exiles of Psara, a huge granite rock with a town nestling on an arable slope,—some two miles and a half away: and then in the south-east, about twenty miles off, the great island of Naxos, once the foremost of the Cyclades, whose early school of art has left traces here in Delos; next to it, to the south-west, its lesser neighbour, Paros, the mine of marble,—once, in Roman days, protectress of this island; between Naxos and Paros, a gleam of Ios, where old Greece said that Homer lay buried ”