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a gift for their father’s new bride; a deadly poisonous robe that would slay first Brynhild and then King Grim when he tried to save his daughter. It must have been the saddest hour of my life when I saw the flash of laughter in Jason’s eyes, yes, he laughed out loud with Queen Hypsipyle when the song reached its climax in the description of how the scorned wife murdered her own children. For this deed Gudrun employed no sorcery, merely locked herself in the house with Hogni and Gjuki, Sigurd’s sons, and hunted the little boys down before hacking them both to death with their father’s halberd. After this Gudrun wrapped herself in the swan’s-feather cloak and took to the skies, gleaming silver-white against the newly kindled winter moon. Sigurd Fafnir’s-bane, meanwhile, gave way to despair and ended his days a beggar.
    ‘Overcome with giggles, the sisters of Lemnos chimed in with the dusky poetess as she sang the final lines:
     
Unquenchable and terrible is the hate
that quickens when the fires of love abate.
     
    ‘Of course, Jason was intoxicated with wine and the presence of the queen who lay pressed to his side, entwining him in her white arms and raising her left knee to lay it against his inner thigh – but in my heart I hope that he heard an echo of his future in the poem and hid his dread with this pretence so that the rest of us would not be daunted. Yet if it occurred to any of the sailors that the events of the poem had a strange resonance with the destination of the Argo and her valiant captain, the thought had evaporated like yesterday’s rain shower by the time the men rose, befuddled and satisfied, from their couches. It was not until years later when we finally learnt the truth about the terrible fate of the men of Lemnos that we understood why their womenfolk’s humour was so black.
    ‘That same night while the crew of the Argo lay with Hypsipyle’s court ladies, the men who were guarding the ship witnessed a strange event. The lad Hylas, page of Heracles, told how at midnight a tall, dark, slender-limbed woman appeared on the shore. She walked with light steps to a bank of seaweed, drew from beneath it a silver-grey sealskin, swept it around herself and made for the sea. A wave greeted her, enveloping the supple body like a green-black shawl, and the seal slipped away through the sea like a note leaping from the string of a lyre.
    ‘This was the seal woman Psamathe, sister to the sea nymph Thetis, the same who piloted the Argo on her homeward voyage through the Straits of Messina where the she-monsters Scylla and Charybdis lay in wait beneath the cliffs on either side, eager to feast on our flesh.’

V
     
    ON 13 APRIL I noted in my diary that the weather was fine though a little nippy. I imagine there’s a calm here most of the year round since we are enclosed by mountains and I have difficulty working out where the wind could come from. It’s as if we were in a funnel where only the upper airs are visible – and tangible, for here it can really bucket down with rain, as I discovered at noon when I came up on deck intending to fish for more cod.
    Even if it hadn’t been raining, any further attempt at fishing would have been hampered by my inability to find my tackle, though I had conscientiously put it away in a box full of marlin spikes and other such paraphernalia that stood in the corner behind the big capstan. I suspect the purser’s lady friend of having a hand in this, as ever since our slap-up dinner yesterday evening she has been distinctly crabby, even actively hostile towards me. This morning when I came to the breakfast table she got up at once, asked the company to excuse her and walked out of the saloon without a glance in my direction.
    Her change of heart occurred after she saw me give the ship’s cook (or ‘chef’, as he’s called) the big cod, which he then prepared and served according to my instructions. Today at lunchtime a soup was made from the head and