" Ulysses made answer: "My men have done this ill
mischief to me; they did it while I slept." "Wretch!" said Aeolus,
"avaunt, and quit our shores: it fits not us to convoy men whom the gods
hate, and will have perish."
Forth they sailed, but with far different hopes than when they left the
same harbour the first time with all the winds confined, only the west
wind suffered to play upon their sails to waft them in gentle murmurs to
Ithaca. They were now the sport of every gale that blew, and despaired of
ever seeing home more. Now those covetous mariners were cured of their
surfeit for gold, and would not have touched it if it had lain in untold
heaps before them.
Six days and nights they drove along, and on the seventh day they put into
Lamos, a port of the Laestrygonians. So spacious this harbour was that it
held with ease all their fleet, which rode at anchor, safe from any
storms, all but the ship in which Ulysses was embarked. He, as if
prophetic of the mischance which followed, kept still without the harbour,
making fast his bark to a rock at the land's point, which he climbed with
purpose to survey the country. He saw a city with smoke ascending from the
roofs, but neither ploughs going, nor oxen yoked, nor any sign of
agricultural works. Making choice of two men, he sent them to the city to
explore what sort of inhabitants dwelt there. His messengers had not gone
far before they met a damsel, of stature surpassing human, who was coming
to draw water from a spring.
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