it seemed, with clouds, through the darkness
and indistinctness which prevailed, the billows rolling up before the
fury of all the winds, that contended together in their mighty sport.

Then the knees of Ulysses bent with fear, and then all his spirit
was spent, and he wished that he had been among the number of his
countrymen who fell before Troy, and had their funerals celebrated by
all the Greeks, rather than to perish thus, where no man could mourn
him or know him.

As he thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and
washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he
struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet
held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed
winds that struck it, sails and sail-yards fell into the deep, and he
himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above,
wave so met with wave, as if they strove which should depress him
most, and the gorgeous garments given him by Calypso clung about him,
and hindered his swimming; yet neither for this, nor for the overthrow
of his ship, nor his own perilous condition, would he give up his
drenched vessel, but, wrestling with Neptune, got at length hold of
her again, and then sat in her bulk, insulting over death, which he
had escaped, and the salt waves which he gave the sea again to give to
other men: his ship, striving to live, floated at random, cuffed from
wave to wave, hurled to and fro by all the winds, now Boreas tossed it
to Notus, Notus passed it to Eurus, and Eurus to the west wind, who
kept up the horrid tennis.

Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea beheld; Ino Leucothea, now a
sea-goddess, but once a mortal and the daughter of Cadmus; she with
pity beheld Ulysses the mark of their fierce contention, and rising
from the waves alighted on the ship, in shape like to the sea-bird
which is called a cormorant, and in her beak she held a wonderful
girdle made of sea-weeds which grow at the bottom of the ocean, which
she dropt at his feet, and the bird spake to Ulysses, and counselled
him not to trust any more to that fatal vessel against which god
Neptune had levelled his furious wrath, nor to those ill-befriending
garments which Calypso had given him, but to quit both it and them and
trust for his safety to swimming. "And here," said the seeming bird,
"take this girdle and tie about your middle, which has virtue to
protect the wearer at sea, and you shall safely rea