the sea, and shroud Caphereus' heights.
Swiftly upsprang they, ere their king's command
Was fully spoken. Mightily moaned the sea
As they rushed o'er it; waves like mountain-cliffs
From all sides were uprolled. The Achaeans' hearts
Were terror-palsied, as the uptowering surge
Now swung the ships up high through palling mist,
Now hurled them rolled as down a precipice
To dark abysses. Up through yawning deeps
Some power resistless belched the boiling sand
From the sea's floor. Tossed in despair, fear-dazed,
Men could not grasp the oar, nor reef the sail
About the yard-arm, howsoever fain,
Ere the winds rent it, could not with the sheets
Trim the torn canvas, buffeted so were they
By ruining blasts. The helmsman had no power
To guide the rudder with his practised hands,
For those ill winds hurled all confusedly.
No hope of life was left them: blackest night,
Fury of tempest, wrath of deathless Gods,
Raged round them. Still Poseidon heaved and swung
The merciless sea, to work the heart's desire
Of his brother's glorious child; and she on high
Stormed with her lightnings, ruthless in her rage.
Thundered from heaven Zeus, in purpose fixed
To glorify his daughter. All the isles
And mainlands round were lashed by leaping seas
Nigh to Euboea, where the Power divine
Scourged most with unrelenting stroke on stroke
The Argives. Groan and shriek of perishing men
Rang through the ships; started great beams and snapped
With ominous sound, for ever ship on ship
With shivering timbers crashed. With hopeless toil
Men strained with oars to thrust back hulls that reeled
Down on their own, but with the shattered planks
Were hurled into the abyss, to perish there
By pitiless doom; for beams of foundering ships
From this, from that side battered out their lives,
And crushed were all their bodies wretchedly.
Some in the ships fell down, and like dead men
Lay there; some, in the grip of destiny,
Clinging to oars smooth-shaven, tried to swim;
Some upon planks were tossing. Roared the surge
From fathomless depths: it seemed as though sea, sky,
And land were blended all confusedly.

Still from Olympus thundering Atrytone
Wielded her Father's power unshamed, and still
The welkin shrieked around. Her ruin of wrath
Now upon Aias hurled she: on his ship
Dashed she a thunderbolt, and shivered it
Wide in a moment into fragments s