, and make thee father of a beautiful race.'

Aeolus thus returned: 'Thine, O queen, the task to search whereto thou
hast desire; for me it is right to do thy bidding. From thee have I this
poor kingdom, from thee my sceptre and Jove's grace; thou dost grant me
to take my seat at the feasts of the gods, and makest me sovereign over
clouds and storms.'

Even with these words, turning his spear, he struck the side of the
hollow hill, and the winds, as in banded array, pour where passage is
given them, and cover earth with eddying blasts. East wind and west wind
together, and the gusty south-wester, falling prone on the sea, stir it
up [86-120]from its lowest chambers, and roll vast billows to the
shore. Behind rises shouting of men and whistling of cordage. In a
moment clouds blot sky and daylight from the Teucrians' eyes; black
night broods over the deep. Pole thunders to pole, and the air quivers
with incessant flashes; all menaces them with instant death. Straightway
Aeneas' frame grows unnerved and chill, and stretching either hand to
heaven, he cries thus aloud: 'Ah, thrice and four times happy they who
found their doom under high Troy town before their fathers' faces! Ah,
son of Tydeus, bravest of the Grecian race, that I could not have fallen
on the Ilian plains, and gasped out this my life beneath thine hand!
where under the spear of Aeacides lies fierce Hector, lies mighty
Sarpedon; where Simois so often bore beneath his whirling wave shields
and helmets and brave bodies of men.'

As the cry leaves his lips, a gust of the shrill north strikes full on
the sail and raises the waves up to heaven. The oars are snapped; the
prow swings away and gives her side to the waves; down in a heap comes a
broken mountain of water. These hang on the wave's ridge; to these the
yawning billow shows ground amid the surge, where the sea churns with
sand. Three ships the south wind catches and hurls on hidden rocks,
rocks amid the waves which Italians call the Altars, a vast reef banking
the sea. Three the east forces from the deep into shallows and
quicksands, piteous to see, dashes on shoals and girdles with a
sandbank. One, wherein loyal Orontes and his Lycians rode, before their
lord's eyes a vast sea descending strikes astern. The helmsman is dashed
away and rolled forward headlong; her as she lies the billow sends
spinning thrice round with it, and engulfs in the swift whirl. Scattered
swimmers appear in the vast eddy, armour