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Rh pastime I took seven of my comrades and went into the forest, wishing to have a look everything. I had not yet gone quite five furlongs when I found a temple of Poseidon, as the inscription indicated, and not far from it a number of graves with stones on them. Near by was a spring of clear water. We also heard the barking of a dog, smoke appeared in the distance, and we made out something like a farmhouse, too.

Advancing eagerly, we came upon an old man and a boy very busily at work in a garden which they were irrigating with water from the spring. Joyful and fearful at the same instant, we stopped still, and they too, probably feeling the same as we, stood there without a word. In course of time the old man said: “Who are you, strangers? Are you sea-gods, or only unlucky men like us? As for ourselves, though we are men and were bred on land, we have become sea-creatures and swim about with this beast which encompasses us, not even knowing for certain what our condition is—we suppose that we are dead, but trust that we are alive.” To this I replied: “We too are men, my good sir—newcomers, who were swallowed up yesterday, ship and all: and we set out just now with the notion of finding out how things were in the forest, for it appeared to be very large and thick. But, some divinity, it seems, brought us to see you and to discover that we are not the only people shut up in this animal. Do tell us your adventures—who you are and how you got in here.” But he said he would neither tell us nor question us before giving us what entertainment he could command, and he 289