"You have been long expected, my good friends," said she. "I and my
maidens are well acquainted with you, although you do not appear to
recognize us. Look at this piece of tapestry, and judge if your faces must
not have been familiar to us."

So the voyagers examined the web of cloth which the beautiful woman had
been weaving in her loom; and to their vast astonishment they saw their
own figures perfectly represented in different colored threads. It was a
lifelike picture of their recent adventures, showing them in the cave of
Polyphemus, and how they had put out his one great moony eye; while in
another part of the tapestry they were untying the leathern bags, puffed
out with contrary winds; and farther on, they beheld themselves scampering
away from the gigantic king of the Laestrygons, who had caught one of them
by the leg. Lastly, there they were, sitting on the desolate shore of this
very island, hungry and downcast, and looking ruefully at the bare bones
of the stag which they devoured yesterday. This was as far as the work had
yet proceeded; but when the beautiful woman should again sit down at her
loom, she would probably make a picture of what had since happened to the
strangers, and of what was now going to happen.

"You see," she said, "that I know all about your troubles; and you cannot
doubt that I desire to make you happy for as long a time as you may remain
with me. For this purpose, my honored guests, I have ordered a banquet to
be prepared. Fish, fowl, and flesh, roasted, and in luscious stews, and
seasoned, I trust, to all your tastes, are ready to be served up. If your
appetites tell you it is dinner-time, then come with me to the festal
saloon."

At this kind invitation, the hungry mariners were quite overjoyed; and one
of them, taking upon himself to be spokesman, assured their hospitable
hostess that any hour of the day was dinner-time with them, whenever they
could get flesh to put in the pot, and fire to boil it with. So the
beautiful woman led the way; and the four maidens (one of them had
sea-green hair, another a bodice of oak-bark, a third sprinkled a shower
of water-drops from her fingers' ends, and the fourth had some other
oddity, which I have forgotten), all these followed behind, and hurried
the guests along, until they entered a magnificent saloon. It was built in
a perfect oval, and lighted from a crystal dome above. Around the walls
were ranged two and twenty thrones, overhung by