[Illustration: _Took a last leave of her and of her nymphs_.]
CHAPTER FIVE
The Tempest.--The Sea-bird's Gift.--The Escape by Swimming.--The Sleep in
the Woods.
At the stern of his solitary ship Ulysses sat, and steered right artfully.
No sleep could seize his eyelids. He beheld the Pleiads, the Bear, which
is by some called the Wain, that moves round about Orion, and keeps still
above the ocean, and the slow-setting sign Bootes, which some name the
Wagoner. Seventeen days he held his course, and on the eighteenth the
coast of Phaeacia was in sight. The figure of the land, as seen from the
sea, was pretty and circular, and looked something like a shield.
Neptune, returning from visiting his favourite Aethiopians, from the
mountains of the Solymi, descried Ulysses ploughing the waves, his domain.
The sight of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus's sake, his son,
whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart on fire; and snatching
into his hand his horrid sea-sceptre, the trident of his power, he smote
the air and the sea, and conjured up all his black storms, calling down
night from the cope of heaven, and taking the earth into the sea, as it
seemed, with clouds, through the darkness and indistinctness which
prevailed; the billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that
contended together in their mighty sport.
Then the knees of Ulysses bent with fear, and then all his spirit was
spent, and he wished that he had been among the number of his countrymen
who fell before Troy, and had their funerals celebrated by all the Greeks,
rather than to perish thus, where no man could mourn him or know him.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63