him again into his domain, would send out some great whale (of
which those seas breed a horrid number) to swallow him up alive; with
such malignity he still pursued him.

While these thoughts distracted him with diversity of dangers, one
bigger wave drove against a sharp rock his naked body, which it gashed
and tore, and wanted little of breaking all his bones, so rude was
the shock. But in this extremity she prompted him that never failed
him at need. Minerva (who is wisdom itself) put it into his thoughts
no longer to keep swimming off and on, as one dallying with danger,
but boldly to force the shore that threatened him, and to hug the
rock that had torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped,
wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow which had
driven him upon it was past; but then again the rock drove back that
wave so furiously, that it reft him of his hold, sucking him with
it in its return, and the sharp rock (his cruel friend) to which he
clinged for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in parting,
that he fell off, and could sustain no longer: quite under water he
fell, and past the help of fate, there had the hapless Ulysses lost
all portion that he had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his
wisdom in that peril to essay another course, and to explore some
other shelter, ceasing to attempt that landing-place.

She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to the mouth of the
fair river Callicoe, which not far from thence disbursed its watery
tribute to the ocean. Here the shores were easy and accessible, and
the rocks, which rather adorned than defended its banks, so smooth,
that they seemed polished of purpose to invite the landing of our
sea-wanderer, and to atone for the uncourteous treatment which those
less hospitable cliffs had afforded him. And the god of the river, as
if in pity, stayed his current and smoothed his waters, to make his
landing more easy: for sacred to the ever-living deities of the fresh
waters, be they mountain-stream, river, or lake, is the cry of erring
mortals that seek their aid, by reason that being inland-bred they
partake more of the gentle humanities of our nature than those marine
deities, whom Neptune trains up in tempests in the unpitying recesses
of his salt abyss.

So by the favour of the river's god Ulysses crept to land
half-drowned; both his knees faltering, his strong hands falling down
through weakness from the excessive toi