Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (58 page)

After a great struggle, however, Hercules had managed to kill the beast, and had helped himself to its skin, which he first used as a weatherproof tent. Upon the occasion of his second labor, which was to kill the Hydra, he had decided to cut up the skin. A complete suit of armor was necessary to protect him, for Hydra poison was much more deadly than the strongest snake venom. So he had fashioned himself garments of lion's hide—rough trousers that covered the lower part of his body, a jacket with long sleeves, boots, and gauntlets. His helmet was the lion's head.

This armor immediately proved its worth. In his battle with the hundred-headed Hydra it had turned aside every one of a thousand vicious bites, and had enabled Hercules to slay his second monster.

N
ow, asleep upon the headland, Hercules was awakened by a terrible windstorm, which he had no way of knowing was aimed especially at him. He donned his armor. The lion skin kept him dry in the lashing rain, and its weight helped anchor him against the savage gusts. The rain turned to hail. Stones of ice pelted down at him. Any one of them could have shattered a man's skull, but they bounced harmlessly off the lion's head that was his helmet.

He watched the trees sway around him, heard them crack, saw them fall. The sea had risen so fast that it was impossible for him to race back over the neck of beach that led to the mainland. Waves were already dashing over it. Hercules was forced to stay where he was.

The headland where he had camped for the night was actually a low hill overlooking the sea. Then, suddenly, it was
at
sea. To please the vengeful Hera, Poseidon had packed three winds into a whirling cyclone and sent it spinning toward Hercules. It tore the spit of land away from the mainland and sent it scudding out into the ocean.

There was nothing Hercules could do. He planted himself there in his lion skin, trying to hold his footing and beginning to understand that such a storm was no freak of the weather but a god's spite—and he knew whose.

The wind dropped as suddenly as it had risen. The moon swam in a rift of cloud. Stars appeared. But the island was still rocking. He saw that the water was churning though there was no wind.

Then, something gigantic rose to the surface. Up, up it came—the huge glistening oval of a fish head—a fish of unbelievable size. It was a shark as big as a whale. It slid out of the water and towered above Hercules.

The terrible jaws gaped; the triple rows of teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Hercules retreated toward the center of his earth raft. The shark slid back into the water and began to circle him, whipping the surface to a froth.

Now, sharks—however large—can slip through the water without making a ripple if they wish. But this one was swimming untypically, and Hercules wondered why it was beating its tail and making such a froth. Then he realized that the churning water was making his island dwindle. Great clumps of soil were slipping off the edge and dissolving in the sea.

“This will never do,” thought Hercules. “If the island goes and I end up in the water with that fellow, he'll have every advantage. I won't stand a chance. I don't exactly relish the prospect of meeting him out of the water, but it's definitely preferable. Of course, it would be best to get away from him completely. But how? Maybe I can move this patch of earth through the water and get back to the mainland. I can't have blown far.”

Hercules picked up a fallen tree and swiftly broke off its smaller branches. He then took the entire tree to the edge of the water and began to use it as an oar, paddling what was left of his island back toward the mainland.

The water had become still. “Where's the shark?” he thought. “Have I lost him?” Then he knew he had not. His oar snapped in his hand. The shark's jaws closed on the thick trunk and broke it as if it were a twig. Hercules hurled the stump of the tree at the shark and retreated hastily from the water's edge.

“This will get me exactly nowhere,” he said to himself. “I'll have to fight the brute. But I'm determined not to fight him in the water.”

Thereupon, he knelt and thrust his arm into the sea. That arm, of course, was encased in a lion-skin sleeve, and the hand wore a gauntlet. He felt the great jaws close upon it. He had expected this. But he knew that the shark's teeth, sharp as they were, could not pierce his sleeve. What he had not counted on was the enormous strength of the jaws. While the teeth were unable to pierce through the lion skin, the jaws could crush. Hercules felt the incredible pressure on his arm; it was being crushed to jelly inside the armored sleeve.

He swelled his bicep and tried to will every small muscle—in arm, and wrist, and hand—to strain against the viselike grip. Bracing himself on his knees and exerting the last tatters of his strength, he swung his arm out of the water, pulling the shark with it.

With his other hand, encased in its lion-skin gauntlet, Hercules smashed at the shark's face. Struck again and again, great blows of the fist that had once knocked down a stone wall and then smashed the helmeted heads of the warriors hiding behind the wall. That fist was now pounding at the shark, breaking every bone in its rubbery head. Its eyes began to bleed. Its jaws slackened. It was dying. Hercules pulled his arm from the loose jaws, and swept the shark into the water. It turned belly up and floated away. Hercules picked up the tree that had been his oar and started paddling again, pushing his patch of earth, much shrunken now, toward a dark place looming upon the moonlit sea. It was an island, he knew, but he wasn't sure which one. This gulf was dotted with islands. He hoped it was not the one where Geryon dwelt. After fighting the shark, he felt he needed a few hours' sleep before meeting the three-bodied monster.

His clump of earth was dwindling rapidly now as Hercules poled it forward with mighty thrusts of the tree trunk. Finally, he reached shallow waters. But he didn't want to swim the remaining distance; there might be another gigantic shark lurking nearby.

Now he felt the last bit of earth crumbling under his feet. He flexed his knees and jumped off with all the power of his mighty thighs. The lion-skin armor was heavy upon him, and he carried spear and sword, bow and arrows. Nevertheless, he leaped through the air and skimmed over the offshore rocks, landing in the tidal pools.

Swiftly he waded onto the beach. Fatigue overwhelmed him. He sank to his knees. But he could not allow himself to stop here. The tide was coming in. With the last dregs of his will he forced himself to crawl up on the beach beyond the tide line and then fell into an exhausted sleep.

12

Clam and Gull

Hercules awoke at dawn, fully refreshed. For no matter how drained of strength he was, this son of Zeus could always replenish himself with a current of his father's energy, that magical voltage that branded the sky with blue lightning.

With strength restored, Hercules took stock of his surroundings. He had landed on a small islet, he saw. A hot, red tab of sun was pushing up over the eastern rim of the earth. It was going to be a brilliant summer day. Looking south, he saw another, larger island some miles away. As the sun climbed, he could see hills upon this island, low hills, thickly wooded, running down into grassy meadows and then to the sea.

Shapes moved upon the meadow; their slow, smooth pace and bulk told Hercules they were cattle. “That must be Geryon's island,” he said to himself. “And those are his cattle grazing. But how am I to get there? I'm not going to swim. One giant shark is enough to last me for a while. My arm still feels half crushed.… But what strangeness is this? All creatures are magnified here, just as the shark was. Those birds up there; they fly like gulls, and their cry is a gull's cry, but they are larger than eagles!”

Indeed, every living creature was monstrously enlarged—for Hera had asked this of Poseidon and the sea god had done as she wished. Hercules was staring at a clam the size of a chariot wheel. The thing was alive, for it was spouting water and beginning to dig itself into the wet sand, sinking out of sight as he watched.

“Oh, no you don't!” cried Hercules. “I have need of you!”

He drew his sword and rushed at the clam. He pried open its shell, then studied what was inside. Hercules never killed any creature unnecessarily. Using his sword as delicately as a surgeon's scalpel, he swiftly severed the tendons, slid the blade under, and flipped the naked clam out of its shell.

“Sorry to evict you, my friend,” said Hercules, “but I must borrow your dwelling place.”

He watched the blob of phlegm that was the naked clam wobble toward the sea. A gull dived, screaming. But the clam slithered safely into the water.

“Yes,” said Hercules. “I think my idea may work.”

He lifted the two massive clamshells and carried them to the edge of the water. There he washed them out thoroughly and scrubbed them with sand, then rinsed them again. Finally, he climbed into one of the shells and closed the other over himself, pulling the two tightly together.

Something hard struck the shell, almost deafening him. But he had expected the shock and braced himself. He felt the shell rising, felt himself being lifted into the air. This is exactly what he had wanted. For gulls, he knew, loved clam meat but were able to break the shells open in only one way, by dropping them onto the rocks. He had noted that the incoming tide had covered the rocks of this islet, but that Geryon's shore was very rocky, girded by tall boulders whose tops poked above the swelling waters. And he had calculated that the only place a gull could break a clam was upon Geryon's shore.

Hercules lay curled in the darkness as he felt himself rushing through the air. “It's working!” he said to himself. “And I've assured myself safe passage, at least as far as the sharks are concerned. All I have to do now is survive the crash when the gull drops me. But it must be flying lower than usual; with me inside, this clam is very heavy.” No sooner had he finished this thought, when he heard the gull scream and felt himself fall. The shell dropped heavily and shattered on the rocks.

Hercules did not rise but lay sprawled among the fragments of clamshell. The lion-skull helmet had protected his head; nevertheless, he had hit the rocks with such force that he was knocked unconscious.

He did not feel the gulls' claws striking his armor nor hear them scream as they quarreled over his body. For gulls are thievish. When one carries a clam over rocks, others will follow and dive after the falling shell, trying to snatch away the meat before its rightful owner can reach it.

It was only when he felt himself being tugged at that Hercules regained consciousness. But he immediately understood what was happening. The gulls, unable to pierce the lion skin, thought he was inside some sort of inner shell, and one of them was trying to lift him in order to drop him again.

Hercules clung to the rocks. His weapons had been knocked from his grasp in the fall, but he swung his fists, punched at the birds, and drove them off. One came at him from behind. He whirled just in time to seize the giant bird and wring its neck with one twist of his great gloved hands. When he flung the dead gull on the sand, the others dived at it in their cannibal way, forgetting him.

“Well, gulls,” said Hercules. “I have repaid you poorly for wafting me safely over the shark-swarming seas, but you should not have returned to the attack.”

He gathered his weapons and struck inland.

13

Hero Meets Monster

With the sun beating down hotly, Hercules felt himself basting in his armor. He stripped off the lion-skin garments and carried them. When he came to a hollow tree he hid the armor inside, marking the place in his mind so that he could find it again. Then, he passed through the wood onto a great meadow, and immediately wished he were back inside his armor.

Three enormous dogs were rushing toward him. He was still near the fringe of trees fortunately. With one powerful leap, he was among the lower boughs of an oak. Just in time. As he caught the bough he felt the hot breath of the dogs upon him. Mastiff they were, large as bull calves.

One after the other they leaped up, trying to catch any part of him in their great jaws. But Hercules was just out of their reach. He sat on the bough, considering them. “They're magnificent,” he said to himself. “As splendid as the cattle they guard. Geryon certainly knows how to pick his animals. I'd hate to kill them. But I'm afraid they have no such reservations about me.”

After pondering this for a while, Hercules drew an arrow from his quiver and studied it. “Pity to do this to a good arrow,” he thought to himself, and snapped the sharp head off the shaft.

In those days, archers used short bows of yew or ash and drew the bowstrings only to their chests. But Hercules used a much longer bow made of antelope horn stiffened by copper wire. His arrows were as long as ordinary spears. And he drew the bowstring in a full-armed way, bending the bow almost in two, pulling the string back past his right shoulder. His arrows sped with deadly accuracy and with such force that, hitting a tree, they would bury themselves up to their feathers.

Now, however, he took the headless arrow and drew his bow only halfway. The blunted shaft traveled at half speed and struck one of the dogs in the rump, knocking it off its feet. It rolled on the ground, yelping in pain, then struggled up, and limped away.

Hercules broke the point off a second arrow and shot it in the same way, hitting the second dog squarely in the nose. This dog, too, rolled on the grass, yelping and whimpering, then scrambled away. Hercules did not have to shoot again. The third dog understood and raced off after his wounded companions.

Hercules waited until they were quite gone, then climbed down from the tree. The cattle, excited by the clamor of the dogs, milled about in a nearby meadow. Hercules decided to circle around the herd instead of passing through it. He still felt stiff and bruised and would have liked to loosen his muscles by wrestling a bull or two, but he also wanted to find Geryon's dwelling place as soon as possible.