"I stuck to the ship till the sea
knocked her sides from her keel (which drifted about by itself) and
struck the mast out of her in the direction of the keel; but there
was a backstay of stout ox-thong still hanging about it, and with
this I lashed the mast and keel together, and getting astride of them
was carried wherever the winds chose to take me.
"The gale from the West had now
spent its force, and the wind got into the South again, which
frightened me lest I should be taken back to the terrible whirlpool
of Charybdis. This indeed was what actually happened, for I was borne
along by the waves all night, and by sunrise had reached the rock of
Scylla, and the whirlpool. She was then sucking down the salt sea
water, but I was carried aloft toward the fig tree, which I caught
hold of and clung on to like a bat. I could not plant my feet
anywhere so as to stand securely, for the roots were a long way off
and the boughs that overshadowed the whole pool were too high, too
vast, and too far apart for me to reach them; so I hung patiently on,
waiting till the pool should discharge my mast and raft again - and a
very long while it seemed. A juryman
[krînô] is not more glad to get home to
supper, after having been long detained in court by troublesome
cases, than I was to see my raft beginning to work its way out of the
whirlpool again. At last I let go with my hands and feet, and fell
heavily into the sea, hard by my raft on to which I then got, and
began to row with my hands. As for Scylla, the father of gods and men
would not let her get further sight of me - otherwise I should have
certainly been lost.
"Hence I was carried along for
nine days till on the tenth night the gods stranded me on the Ogygian
island, where dwells the great and powerful goddess Calypso. She took
me in and was kind to me, but I need say no more about this, for I
told you and your noble wife all about it yesterday, and it is
hateful [ekhthron] for me to say the same thing over
and over again."
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
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