all my wishes; in the sight of
her, and of my country earth. If any god, envious of my return, shall
lay his dreadful hand upon me as I pass the seas, I submit: for the
same powers have given me a mind not to sink under oppression. In wars
and waves my sufferings have not been small."

She heard his pleaded reasons, and of force she must assent; so to her
nymphs she gave in charge from her sacred woods to cut down timber,
to make Ulysses a ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to
their soft fingers, yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard: and Ulysses
busily bestirred himself, labouring far more hard than they, as was
fitting, till twenty tall trees, driest and fittest for timber, were
felled. Then like a skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks,
using the plane, the axe, and the auger, with such expedition, that in
four days' time a ship was made, complete with all her decks, hatches,
side-boards, yards. Calypso added linen for the sails, and tackling;
and when she was finished, she was a goodly vessel for a man to sail
in alone, or in company, over the wide seas. By the fifth morning she
was launched; and Ulysses, furnished with store of provisions, rich
garments, and gold and silver, given him by Calypso, took a last
leave of her, and of her nymphs, and of the isle Ogygia which had so
befriended him.

CHAPTER V

_The tempest.--The sea-bird's gift.--The escape by swimming.--The
sleep in the woods._

At the stern of his solitary ship Ulysses sat, and steered right
artfully. No sleep could seize his eye-lids. He beheld the Pleiads,
the Bear which is by some called the Wain, that moves round about
Orion, and keeps still above the ocean, and the slow-setting sign
Bootes, which some name the Waggoner. Seventeen days he held his
course, and on the eighteenth the coast of Phaeacia was in sight. The
figure of the land, as seen from the sea, was pretty and circular, and
looked something like a shield.

Neptune returning from visiting his favourite AEthiopians, from the
mountains of the Solymi, descried Ulysses ploughing the waves, his
domain. The sight of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus's sake,
his son, whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart on fire;
and snatching into his hand his horrid sea-sceptre, the trident of his
power, he smote the air and the sea, and conjured up all his black
storms, calling down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the
earth into the sea, as