ch the shore; but
when you have landed, cast it far from you back into the sea." He
did as the sea-bird instructed him, he stripped himself naked, and
fastening the wondrous girdle about his middle, cast himself into the
seas to swim. The bird dived past his sight into the fathomless abyss
of the ocean.

Two days and two nights he spent in struggling with the waves, though
sore buffeted, and almost spent, never giving up himself for lost,
such confidence he had in that charm which he wore about his middle,
and in the words of that divine bird. But the third morning the winds
grew calm and all the heavens were clear. Then he saw himself nigh
land, which he knew to be the coast of the Phaeacians, a people good to
strangers, and abounding in ships, by whose favour he doubted not that
he should soon obtain a passage to his own country. And such joy he
conceived in his heart, as good sons have, that esteem their father's
life dear, when long sickness has held him down to his bed, and wasted
his body, and they see at length health return to the old man, with
restored strength and spirits, in reward of their many prayers to
the gods for his safety: so precious was the prospect of home-return
to Ulysses, that he might restore health to his country (his better
parent), that had long languished as full of distempers in his
absence. And then for his own safety's sake he had joy to see the
shores, the woods, so nigh and within his grasp as they seemed, and he
laboured with all the might of hands and feet to reach with swimming
that nigh-seeming land.

But when he approached near, a horrid sound of a huge sea beating
against rocks informed him that here was no place for landing, nor any
harbour for man's resort, but through the weeds and the foam which the
sea belched up against the land he could dimly discover the rugged
shore all bristled with flints, and all that part of the coast one
impending rock that seemed impossible to climb, and the water all
about so deep, that not a sand was there for any tired foot to rest
upon, and every moment he feared lest some wave more cruel than the
rest should crush him against a cliff, rendering worse than vain
all his landing: and should he swim to seek a more commodious haven
further on, he was fearful lest, weak and spent as he was, the winds
would force him back a long way off into the main, where the terrible
god Neptune, for wrath that he had so nearly escaped his power, having
gotten