Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/164

128 companions; but weeping they mourned for the others. But I did not allow them to weep, but I nodded to each with my eyebrows; and I ordered them quickly, lifting the many beautiful-haired cattle into the ship, to sail over the briny main. They immediately embarked and sat down on the benches, and sitting in order they smote the hoary sea with their oars. But when I was so far distant, as one makes himself heard shouting out, then I addressed the Cyclops with reproaches:

O Cyclops, thou wast not indeed destined to eat the companions of a weak man in thy hollow cave, with strong might. But truly thou wert destined to find thy evil deeds, thou cruel one! Since thou didst not fear to eat strangers in thine house; therefore Jove and the other gods have been revenged upon thee.'

Thus"Thus [sic] I spoke; but he immediately was more wrath in his heart; having broken off the top of a large mountain he hurled it, and threw it before the black-prowed ship, [and it wanted little to reach the extreme part of the rudder;] and the sea was disturbed by the descending rock; and a refluent wave, an inundation from the sea, immediately bore the vessel towards the shore, and made it approach so as to reach the continent. But I, seizing with my hands a long pole, thrust it away; and exhorting my companions, I commanded them to lay on their oars, that we might escape from evil, nodding with my head; and they, falling forward, rowed. But when at length we were twice as far distant, having passed over the sea, then too I addressed the Cyclops; and my companions around hindered me, one here, one there, with mild words: 'O foolish one, why dost thou wish to irritate a fierce man? who even now has hurled a bolt into the sea, and driven our ship again to the shore, and surely we thought that we should perish there. But if he heard any one speaking or calling out, he would dash our heads together, and our ship's planks, striking us with the rough marble; for he throws so far.'

"Thus they spoke, but they did not persuade my strong-hearted mind, but I again addressed him with wrathful feelings: 'O Cyclops, if any one of mortal men should inquire of thee about the unseemly blindness of thine eye, say that Ulysses,