elm, and waved a last farewell to his gentle friend. A fair
breeze wafted him swiftly from the shore, and ere long that lovely
island, at once his home and his prison for seven long years, became a
mere shadow in the distance. All night he sat sleepless, tiller in
hand, watching the pilot stars, the Pleiades, and Booetes, and the
Bear, named also the Wain, which turns on one spot, and watches Orion,
and never dips into the ocean stream. For the goddess Calypso had
bidden him keep that star on the left hand as he sailed the seas. Thus
he voyaged for seventeen days, and on the eighteenth he saw afar off,
dimly outlined, a range of hills, rising, like the back of a shield,
above the horizon's verge.

Now Poseidon, his great enemy, had been absent for many days on a far
journey, and thus had taken no part in the council at Olympus when
Zeus had issued his order for the release of Odysseus. Just at this
time he was on his way back to Olympus, and caught sight of the bold
voyager steering towards the nearest land. "Ha! art thou there?" said
the implacable god, shaking his head; "and have the other powers
plotted against me in my absence, to frustrate my just anger? Thy
wanderings are well-nigh over, poor wretch! But thou shalt taste once
more of my vengeance, before thou reachest yonder shore."

So saying the lord of ocean took his trident and stirred up the deep;
and the clouds came trooping at his call, covering the sky with a
black curtain. Soon a great tempest broke loose, blowing in violent
and fitful blasts from all the four quarters of heaven. Then pale fear
got hold of Odysseus, as he saw the great curling billows heaving
round his frail craft. "Woe is me!" he cried, "when shall my troubles
have an end? Surely the goddess spoke truth, when she foretold me that
I should perish amid the waves, and never see my home again. Here I
lie helpless, given over to destruction, the sport of all the winds of
heaven. Happy, thrice happy, were my comrades who fell fighting
bravely and found honourable burial in the soil of Troy! Would that I
had died on that great day when the battle raged fiercest over the
body of Pelides; then should I have found death with honour, but now I
am doomed to a miserable and dishonoured end."

The words were hardly uttered when a huge toppling wave struck the
raft with tremendous force, carrying away mast and sail, and hurling
Odysseus into the sea. Deep down he sank, and the waters darkened over
h