Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/44

 whole expanse—one and all, east and south, and south-west, with his storms thronging at his back, and roll huge billows shoreward. Hark to the shrieks of the crew, and the creaking of the cables! In an instant the clouds snatch sky and daylight[o] from the Teucrians' eyes—night     5 lies on the deep, black and heavy—pole thunders to pole; heaven flashes thick with fires, and all nature brandishes instant death in the seaman's face. At once Æneas'[o] limbs are unstrung and chilled[o]—he groans aloud, and, stretching his clasped hands to the stars,         10 fetches from his breast words like these:—"O happy, thrice[o] and again, whose lot it was, in their fathers' sight, under Troy's high walls to meet death! O thou, the bravest of the Danaan race, Tydeus' son,[o] why was it not mine to lay me low on Ilion's plains, and yield this fated life to     15 thy right hand? Aye, there it is that Hector,[o] stern as in life, lies stretched by the spear of Æacides[o]—there lies Sarpedon's[o] giant bulk—there it is that Simois[o] seizes and sweeps down her channel those many shields and helms, and bodies of the brave!" 20

Such words as he flung wildly forth, a blast roaring from the north strikes his sail full in front and lifts the billows to the stars.[o] Shattered are the oars; then the prow turns and presents the ship's side to the waves; down crashes in a heap a craggy mountain of water. Look! 25 these are hanging on the surge's crest[o]—to those the yawning deep is giving a glimpse of land down among the billows; surf and sand are raving together. Three ships the south catches, and flings upon hidden rocks—rocks     30 which, as they stand with the waves all about them, the Italians call Altars, an enormous ridge rising above the sea. Three the east drives from the main on to shallows and Syrtes,[o] a piteous sight, and dashes them on shoals, and embanks them in mounds of sand. One in which the Lycians were sailing, and true Orontes, a            35 mighty sea strikes from high on the stem before Æneas' very eyes; down goes the helmsman, washed from his post, and topples on his head, while she is thrice whirled