Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/79

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Then, overcome by the potent drink, the savage lay down to sleep. Ulysses had prepared the thin end of a huge club of olive-wood, and this, pointed and well hardened in the fire, he and his comrades thrust into his single eye-ball, boring it deep in, "as the shipwright doth an auger." Roaring with pain, and now fairly sobered, Polyphemus awoke, and shouted for help to his brother-Cyclops who dwelt in the neighbouring valleys. They came; but to all their questions as to what was the matter, or who had injured him, he only answered "Noman!"—and his friends turned away in disgust. After groping vainly round the cave in search of his tormentors, Polyphemus rolled the huge stone from the mouth of his den, and let his sheep go out, feeling among them for his captives, who would probably try thus to escape. But again the wit of the Ithacan chief proved too subtle for his enemy. The great sheep had been cunningly linked together three abreast, and every middle sheep carried a Greek tied under his belly; Ulysses, after tying the last of his companions, clinging fast to the wool of a huge ram, the king of the flock. So did they all escape to rejoin their anxious comrades. But when all had embarked, and rowed to a safe distance, then Ulysses stood high upon his deck, and shouted a taunting defiance to his enemy. The answer of Polyphemus was a huge rock hurled with all his might towards the voice, which fell