ls he had endured, his cheek
and nostrils flowing with froth of the sea-brine, much of which he had
swallowed in that conflict, voice and breath spent, down he sank as in
death. Dead weary he was. It seemed that the sea had soaked through
his heart, and the pains he felt in all his veins were little less
than those which one feels that has endured the torture of the rack.
But when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his recollection
by degrees began to return, he rose up, and unloosing from his
waist the girdle or charm which that divine bird had given him, and
remembering the charge which he had received with it, he flung it far
from him into the river. Back it swam with the course of the ebbing
stream till it reached the sea, where the fair hands of Ino Leucothea
received it to keep it as a pledge of safety to any future shipwrecked
mariner, that like Ulysses should wander in those perilous waves.

Then he kissed the humble earth in token of safety, and on he went by
the side of that pleasant river, till he came where a thicker shade of
rushes that grew on its banks seemed to point out the place where he
might rest his sea-wearied limbs. And here a fresh perplexity divided
his mind, whether he should pass the night, which was coming on, in
that place, where, though he feared no other enemies, the damps and
frosts of the chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death
to him in his weak state; or whether he had better climb the next
hill, and pierce the depth of some shady wood, in which he might find
a warm and sheltered though insecure repose, subject to the approach
of any wild beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course
appear to him, though with some danger, as that which was more
honourable and savoured more of strife and self-exertion, than to
perish without a struggle the passive victim of cold and the elements.

So he bent his course to the nearest woods, where, entering in, he
found a thicket, mostly of wild olives and such low trees, yet growing
so intertwined and knit together, that the moist wind had not leave to
play through their branches, nor the sun's scorching beams to pierce
their recesses, nor any shower to beat through, they grew so thick
and as it were folded each in the other: here creeping in, he made
his bed of the leaves which were beginning to fall, of which was
such abundance that two or three men might have spread them ample
coverings, such as might shield them fr