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"But most seemed to be happy about what they had done. So they took our great god, Zoomashmarta, and all the lesser gods, put them aboard their ships and sailed away."
At these words, a cry went up from the sailors and from Namalee; they wept and some gashed themselves.
"No gods!" Namalee cried. "Zalarapamtra is without gods! They are prisoners of Booragangah!"
"We are lost!" a sailor shouted.
The man who was telling the story said, "I heard them say that they would be coming back some day and making sure that we did not build a new great city. They would surprise the people who returned on the ships and would slay them or carry them off as slaves. And this place would know only the air sharks, sweeping above the ruins and eyeing them in vain for life on which to feed."
"We will be powerless without our gods!" another man said.
They found no other survivors. On returning to the ship, the crew spread the news. The captain, informed by Namalee, turned gray and cut himself so deeply in his grief that he came close to dying of loss of blood.
Until they landed, they had all believed that, horrible as the situation was, they would flourish again. After all, they had their gods. Though these might permit disaster to fall upon Zalarapamtra, they would not permit their worshippers to die out. Who then would the gods have to worship them?
They had not considered, of course, that Avastshi and Manvrikaspa had had their gods, and these had permitted their worshippers to die to the last one.
They were a gloomy crew and, what was worse, hopeless. Gloom derived from despair is something that hope can overcome, but hope can only come if something occurs to make things seem not hopeless. Even the arrival in the next three days of five whaling ships did not reassure them. If anything, the addition of more people seemed to add to the despair. The city was almost as silent as when it had held but four people in hiding.
Six more days passed. There was more activity then, since it was necessary to put to air and hunt for food. Captain Baramha died from infection of his wounds and a lack of desire to live. His ship took him out high above the dead seas and, after a short ceremony, his naked body was slid overboard from a plank.
"You still have the gods of the ships," Ishmael said. "Why can't...?"
"They have power only over the ship," she said. "They are very little gods. No, we must have the gods of the city and the greatest god, Zoomashmarta."
"Otherwise you just all give up and die, is that it?" Ishmael said.
They did not reply, and it was evident from their faces that that was exactly what they would do. They were sitting around a number of fires in an underground chamber which had been repaired. The fires were small and comparatively smokeless. Ventilation was provided by holes in the ceiling, and light by giant fireflies in cages. The room quivered with the earth tide.
Ishmael wondered how many human beings were alive on the face of this Earth. If they all had such fatalistic attitudes, they would often encounter situations where it would be easier to give up and let death take over. Was this indeed happening everywhere? Had mankind been so long a voyager in time that he had wearied of the journey? Were the slow red sun and the nearing moon constant reminders that the struggle could end in only one way?
Or were the societies of the South Pacific sea bottoms the only ones to have this attitude? Did groups elsewhere have the unceasing drive, the desire to live, that had possessed human beings in Ishmael's day?
Ishmael looked at Namalee and became angry. It was not right that such a beautiful young woman should be surrendering to death just because of some carved pieces of perfumed ivory.
He stood up and spoke loudly. The others, squatting, looked up at him expectantly. Consciously or not, he realized, they had prayed that he, the stranger, would not be bound by their customs and laws and would give them that spark they lacked.
"When you hunt the great wind whale, you are not cowards," Ishmael said. "I know that. No craven gets into a tiny boat and strikes deep into the head of such a monster and then lets that monster drag him so high and so low with death whistling like the wind past his ears every second.
"And I am sure that when it comes to fighting other men, you are as brave."
He paused, looked around, noting that the women were looking directly at him but that the men were looking at the floor.
"But," he said even more loudly, "you need to get your courage from something outside you! You must have your gods if you are to act like men! Your courage is breathed into you from the outside! It does not live within you and breathe on your heart and make it as hot as the coals of those fires!"
"It is the gods who control this world!" Namalee said. "What can we do without them?"
Ishmael paused. What indeed could they do? Nothing, unless he did something for them first. And he had been so accustomed to the spectator's part, or to a minor role, that he now found it strange and frightening to be the prime mover, the chief actor.
"What can you do without the gods?" he said. "You can act as if you did have them!" And so he paraphrased the dictum of an old German philosopher who could never have dreamed that his words would live again under an enormous red sun at the end of time.
"Once your gods did not exist!" he said. "So the people created them! Your own religion says that! I asked Namalee why, if you did this once, you can't do it again, and she said that it was all right in the old days but is no longer permitted! Very well! But your gods are not destroyed! They are only absent! They have been stolen! So what is to prevent you from stealing them back?
"After all, a god is a god even if he does not dwell in the house of his worshippers! And who knows, it is highly probable that Zoomashmarta allowed this calamity to fall in order to test you. If you find courage in yourselves, and go after Zoomashmarta and take him back, then you have passed the test! But if you sit around a fire and sorrow until your grief kills you, then you have failed!"
Namalee stood up and said, "What would you have us do?"
"You need a man to lead you who does not think quite as you do!" Ishmael said. "I will lead you! I will make new weapons, if I can find the materials, weapons such as no men have known for ages! Or if these weapons ca
"What is that price?" Namalee said.
"You will make me your Grand Admiral," Ishmael said.
He did not feel it necessary to add that he wanted to find a home. He had traveled enough and seen too much to desire more travel and more wonders.
"And you, Namalee, will be my wife," he said. The captains and the officers did not know what to say. This was the first time that a stranger had asked to be elected as Grand Admiral. Didn't he know that Grand Admirals were born into the title? Or, if one died without a son, then the new one was chosen from the ranks of the greatest captains?
Namalee, however, seemed to be happy, and Ishmael knew that he had guessed correctly. She was attracted to him. She might even be in love with him. It was difficult to say at this stage, since the women of Zalarapamtra were taught to be very self-controlled. But she had not told anyone of his attempts to kiss her or their keeping each other warm at nights. And while this restraint might have been caused by gratitude for his having saved her, he liked to think it was more than that.
There was silence for a long time. The men had looked at Namalee and had seen that she was not offended. Far from it. Then they had looked back at Ishmael and had seen a man strong and unafraid.