The Bull from the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

herd, and promised him this one if he would help me to take it. Then I went to work.
    Podargos had his back to me, switching his tail at flies. I licked my finger to feel the wind, hoping the heifer’s scent might draw him. But the breeze blew from the sea.
    Out on the sea-meadow I stepped, a pace at a time. The soil was caked and sun-dried, not good to run on. I did not want to get too far from the tree. I pitched a stone or two, but they fell far short of him. So I went further out, alone with my short noon shadow among dry yellow flowers, and threw again. The stone just hit him, though nearly spent, and he looked over his shoulder. I waved, to draw him. He would be fast as a war-chariot, once he charged. He swung down his head, and gave me a hard look, as if to say, “I am resting now; be thankful, and do not tempt me.” And he moved a little away.
    The slap of the waves on the shore-line sounded in my ears; and with them the voice of old Mykale. “Loose not the Bull from the Sea!” And I thought, “He has been loosed, and I must bind him; the luck of my reign is in it. Why do I wait?”
    I ran straight out, halfway to him. He was watching me, one foot stirring the dust. I put two fingers in my mouth, and whistled hard the fanfare of the Bull Court, which they play when the bull is loosed into the ring.
    He pricked his ears. Then he planted his forefeet squarely and lowered his head; but he did not charge. He was saying, as clearly as speech, “Oho, a bull-dancer. Why so far off, if you know the game? Come up, little bull-boy, come up and dance with me. Take the bull by the horns.”
    He had the wisdom of god-filled things. I should have known he would draw me back to the bull-dance, which was sacred when the first earth-men fought each other with axes and knives of stone. I lifted my arm, as so often in the ring at Knossos, and gave the team-leader’s salute.
    It was strange to hear no shouting from the benches. “Well,” I thought, “It will be stranger to have no team.” That made me laugh. One would do nothing in the ring, without the madness of the god.
    His hoof raked once. Then, quick as I remembered him, he charged head-on.
    Most precious in the ring is the counsel of the dying. Knowing he gored right-ways, I feinted left to straighten him; then grasped at the stained and painted horns. My fingers and palms had lost the leather hardness of the Bull Court, but kept their strength. I swung upward with him, feet over head, feeling him steady to my weight as a familiar thing. A knowledge passed between us. And I felt a welcome. He was in a strange land, far from home, where men and dogs had baited him, the sacred sun-child used to the homage of a king. The touch and the weight, the grip of a bull-boy, cheered his slow inbred wits. He felt more like himself.
    Only with the bull-dance would I coax him to come my way. So I made myself a whole team in one. That was the last and greatest dance of Theseus the Athenian, leader of the Cranes, which I danced alone at Marathon for the gods and for the dead.
    When I came down from the vault there was no one there to catch me, or to play the bull away. But he was as unused to this state of things as I was, and his mind was slower; it was that which saved me. I would dodge when he turned, and come round to meet him, and leap again, always working nearer to the tree, till my hands were skinned from the horns and my arms began to shake with weariness. I stood to leap again, thinking, This time he will feel me flagging; then he will strike.” But he looked past me, snuffing the air, and ran on to the tree. The heifer lowed softly, and lifted her yellow tail.
    I stood panting, aching and raw, till I saw he had forgotten me. Then I crept up, and fixed the hobble to his hind leg, and scrambled into the boughs.
    He did not feel it just at first, having pleasanter business. Then he lugged and tugged till the whole tree quivered. The trunk was two men thick and must have stood a