The sea people are raided by the Northmen

The Northmen’s raid, as recounted in the sea woman’s embedded story, transforms a meeting the sea people approached in welcome into an episode of capture and violence. A net takes members of the sea woman’s family; the captives are carried off and mistreated; and the people left behind must protect the injured while warning other families. The tale also becomes a present event when Marie-Josèphe enters its imagined world, falters under its weight, and is watched by Yves de la Croix and Jean-Baptiste Fagon as she finishes it.

Background and First Encounter

The story begins from a contrast between a long period of peace and the new danger posed by people arriving in ships. The sea people had previously greeted the Minoans, and when they encounter the dragon-prowed vessel they approach it curious and unafraid, ready to welcome its crew in the same spirit. Their confidence is not presented as ignorance of the sea, but as an expectation shaped by an earlier encounter that had not made them fear the men of land.

The change comes when a great net falls among them. It captures one of the sea woman’s brothers and two of her sisters while men aboard the ship laugh and shout. They take the captives out of the water without responding to their cries. The details make the raid a reversal of hospitality: the sea people approach the ship as potential hosts, while the men treat them as prey and their distress as entertainment.

Capture and Abuse

The Northmen set their ship in motion with sails and long oars. The free sea people follow, horrified, as the captives’ screams carry through the wooden sides of the vessel and into the surrounding water. The account gives the pursuit a painful limit: the survivors can follow the ship, but they cannot prevent their friends from being taken away. The vessel that carried the visitors into the sea people’s waters becomes the instrument of their removal.

The captured sea man is tied to the ship’s dragon prow. His cries warn the Northmen of rocks and reefs, so they use his distress as a practical aid to navigation. At times they aim the figurehead toward the rocks and laugh at his cries. The episode joins cruelty to utility: they exploit the captive’s knowledge while deliberately turning the danger of the sea into a further occasion for mockery.

The sea women are also subjected to abuse against their will and later cast overboard in an injured state. The account makes clear that their treatment is an assault, without lingering over its physical details. Their return to the water does not end the harm or restore safety. Instead, it leaves the surviving sea people to care for those who have been hurt while the raiders depart.

Survival and Warning

The sea people comfort the injured women. That act of care is followed immediately by another threat: sharks gather near the group, drawn by the blood in the water. The survivors must respond both to the consequences of the raid and to the danger that those consequences bring. They turn outward, forming a protective circle around the injured and the children rather than abandoning those most at risk.

They sing a description and warning into the sea so that other families can hear what happened and beware of the men of land and their raiding ships. The song has a practical purpose: it carries knowledge beyond the people present, making their experience a warning for others. In the story, communication is therefore part of survival. The survivors cannot undo the capture, but they can try to keep another family from approaching the ships without warning.

Retelling and Immediate Consequences

The raid is presented within a story Marie-Josèphe speaks and sings, and the boundary between telling and imagining grows indistinct. She finds herself surrounded by the sea, swimming and living among sea people and children before the arrival of the ship shifts the scene into violence. Her immersion makes the history more than an account delivered at a distance: the story overwhelms her as she reaches the captives’ treatment and asks the sea woman to let her stop.

The sea woman insists that Marie-Josèphe finish the story, recalling the promise to bring it to its end. Marie-Josèphe continues through the survivors’ care, the gathering sharks, and the warning song. When Yves de la Croix and Jean-Baptiste Fagon arrive, they find her inside the story, visibly shocked and in tears. She hides her face after stammering out the conclusion; the scene records both her horror on the sea woman’s behalf and her fear and embarrassment at being witnessed in such distress.

As an embedded account, the raid gives the sea people’s danger a history and a voice. Its sequence moves from welcome, to capture, to care and warning; the final movement is not a victory over the raiders but an effort to protect those who remain. The song carries that effort beyond the immediate survivors, while Marie-Josèphe’s struggle to finish shows the emotional cost of receiving the story rather than treating it as a detached report.