But in
this extremity she prompted him that never failed him at need. Minerva
(who is wisdom itself) put it into his thoughts no longer to keep swimming
off and on, as one dallying with danger, but boldly to force the shore
that threatened him, and to hug the rock that had torn him so rudely;
which with both hands he clasped, wrestling with extremity, till the rage
of that billow which had driven him upon it was passed; but then again the
rock drove back that wave so furiously that it reft him of his hold,
sucking him with it in its return; and the sharp rock, his cruel friend,
to which he clung for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in
parting that he fell off, and could sustain no longer; quite under water
he fell, and, past the help of fate, there had the hapless Ulysses lost
all portion that he had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his
wisdom in that peril to essay another course, and to explore some other
shelter, ceasing to attempt that landing-place.
She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to the mouth of the fair
river Callicoe, which not far from thence disbursed its watery tribute to
the ocean. Here the shores were easy and accessible, and the rocks, which
rather adorned than defended its banks, so smooth that they seemed
polished of purpose to invite the landing of our sea-wanderer, and to
atone for the uncourteous treatment which those less hospitable cliffs had
afforded him. And the god of the river, as if in pity, stayed his current,
and smoothed his waters, to make his landing more easy; for sacred to the
ever-living deities of the fresh waters, be they mountain-stream, river,
or lake, is the cry of erring mortals that seek their aid, by reason that,
being inland-bred, they partake more of the gentle humanities of our
nature than those marine deities whom Neptune trains up in tempests in the
unpitying recesses of his salt abyss.
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