Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/111

 rock, and trembling at their tread and at the sound of their voices. My wretched fare, berries and stony cornels, is supplied by the boughs, and herbage uprooted yields me food. As I turned my eyes all about, this fleet of yours at last I saw advancing to the shore; with this,     5 prove it what might, I cast in my lot; it is enough to have escaped this race of monsters. Sooner do you destroy this life by any death you please.'

"Scarce had he ended, when on the mountain-top we see the giant himself, moving along with his enormous     10 bulk among his cattle, and making for the well-known shore—a monster dreadful, hideous, huge, with his eye extinguished. A pine, lopped by his own hand, guides him and steadies his footsteps. His woolly sheep accompany him—there is his sole pleasure, the solace of his      15 suffering. After he had touched the waves of the deep and come to the sea, he washes with its water the gore that trickles from his scooped-out eye, gnashing his teeth with a groan; and he steps through the sea, now at main height, while the wave has not yet wetted his tall sides.      20 We, in alarm, hasten our flight from the place, taking on board the suppliant, who had thus made good his claim, and silently cut the cable; then throw ourselves forward, and with emulous oars sweep along the sea. He perceived it, and turned his steps towards the noise he heard. 25 But when he finds he has no means of grasping at us with his hand, no power of keeping pace with the Ionian waves in pursuit, he raises a gigantic roar, at which the sea and all its waters trembled inwardly, and the land of Italy shuddered to its core, and Ætna bellowed through her     30 winding caverns. But the tribe of the Cyclops, startled from wood and lofty mountain, rush to the haven and fill the shore. There we see them standing, each with the empty menace of his grim eye, the brethren of Ætna, lifting their tall heads to heaven, a dire assemblage—like     35 as on some tall peak, skyey oaks or cone-bearing cypresses stand together, a lofty forest of Jupiter, or a grove of Diana. Headlong our crews are driven by keen terror to