Chronologically Speaking, Part Five: "The Pool of the Black One"

Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on chronologizing the Conan of Cimmeria stories. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.

September and October 1933 in Weird Tales were a one-two punch of short Conan stories, with "The Pool of the Black One" coming just one month after "Xuthal of the Dusk." Both of them are a bit of a downturn from the highs of "The Tower of the Elephant" and "Black Colossus," but things would bounce back soon enough with "Rogues in the House" in January of '34. Unlike the last two stories explored in this series, "Pool" didn't make the cover and it wasn't the lead story in the October issue; instead, it appeared third.

"Pool" was the first pirate Conan story to be published, but it wouldn't be the last. It features one of the coolest entrances Conan ever makes, swimming up and onto a boat out of seeming nowhere.

• Conan has evidently learned to speak Zingaran, but speaks it with a heavy accent, as has been noted several times by characters hearing his voice for the first time. "she had never heard Zingaran spoken with such an accent as the stranger spoke it."
• Conan is obviously employed as a pirate right now, specifically one of the Barachan Isles. When he's accused of being a pirate, he just smiles. Additionally, he is now a skilled sailor: "He proved himself a skilled sailor, and by far the strongest man any of them had seen."
• Where Conan had previously struggled to grasp social cues in some of the previously-published stories, he is now intimately familiar and comfortable with pirate social conventions, like hazing. "Sancha watched, tense with interest. She had become familiar with such scenes, and knew the baiting would be brutal and probably bloody. But her familiarity with such matters was scanty compared to that of Conan. He smiled faintly as he came into the waist and saw the menacing figures pressing truculently about him. He paused and eyed the ring inscrutably, his composure unshaken. There was a certain code about these things. If he had attacked the captain, the whole crew would have been at his throat, but they would give him a fair chance against the one selected to push the brawl."
• The story mentions Conan's past in Zamora, placing it after "The Tower of the Elephant," at least: "He had roamed the cities of Zamora, and known the women of Shadizar the Wicked. But he sensed here a cosmic vileness transcending mere human degeneracy."
• Conan recognizes a wide range of human diversity in the transfigured human figurines by the titular pool: "These figures, not much longer than a man's hand, represented men, and so cleverly were they made that Conan recognised various racial characteristics in the different idols, features typical of Zingarans, Argosseans, Ophireans and Kushite corsairs."
  • It's possible that this means that Conan has already traveled to Zingara, Argos, Ophir, and Kush, but I think more likely just means that he has met and is familiar with pirates of all of those ethnicities. After all, the Barachan pirates are named for their home base, not their origins.
• Conan mentions the black lotus powder as a smell he remembers, placing this story explicitly after "Xuthal of the Dusk." "'It's that damned fruit they were eating,' he answered softly. 'I remember the smell of it. It must have been like the black lotus, that makes men sleep.'"

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Honestly, I think the thing that is most illustrative about the placement of this story along the timeline is Conan's characterization himself. He is so eminently controlled, so smooth and unbothered. He keeps his mouth shut and is content to just smile and leave comments unremarked upon. We see some of his fabled "gigantic mirth" when he's gambling with the rest of the sailors. It's a Conan much more similar to the King Conan of "The Phoenix on the Sword" and "The Scarlet Citadel" to the brutish outlander of "The Tower of the Elephant" or "Xuthal of the Dusk." He seems to be even more smooth than in his considerable growth shown in "Black Colossus."

​For now, I'm placing this before the King Conan stories.

The updated chronology is here:

1. The Tower of the Elephant
2. Xuthal of the Dusk
3. Black Colossus
4. The Pool of the Black One
5. The Phoenix on the Sword
6. The Scarlet Citadel