ars, as they sailed away from the land of the Cyclopes.

But before they were out of sight of land, the bold Odysseus lifted up
his voice and shouted across the water:

"Hear me, Polyphemus, thou cruel monster! Thine evil deeds were very
sure to find thee out. Thou hast been punished because thou hadst no
shame to eat the strangers who came to thee as thy guests!"

The voice of Odysseus rang across the waves, and reached Polyphemus as
he sat in pain at the mouth of his cave.

In a fury the giant sprang up, broke off the peak of a great hill
and cast it into the sea, where it fell just in front of the ship of
Odysseus.

So huge a splash did the vast rock give, that the sea heaved up and
the backwash of the water drove the ship right to the shore.

Odysseus snatched up a long pole and pushed the ship off once more.
Silently he motioned to the men to row hard, and save themselves and
their ship from the angry giant. When they were once more out at sea,
Odysseus wished again to mock Polyphemus.

In vain his men begged him not to provoke a monster so mighty that he
could crush their heads and the timbers of their ship with one cast of
a stone. Once more Odysseus shouted across the water:

"Polyphemus, if any one shall ask thee who blinded thee, tell them it
was Odysseus of Ithaca."

Then moaned the giant:

"Once, long ago, a soothsayer told me that Odysseus should make me
blind. But ever I looked for the coming of a great and gallant hero,
and now there hath come a poor feeble, little dwarf, who made me weak
with wine before he dared to touch me."

Then he begged Odysseus to come back, and said he would treat him
kindly, and told him that he knew that his own father, the god of the
sea, would give him his sight again.

"Never more wilt thou have thy sight," mocked Odysseus; "thy father
will never heal thee."

Then Polyphemus, stretching out his hands, and looking up with his
sightless eye to the starry sky, called aloud to Poseidon, god of the
sea, to punish Odysseus.

"If he ever reaches his own country," he cried, "let him come late
and in an evil case, with all his own company lost, and in the ship of
strangers, and let him find sorrows in his own house."

No answer came from Poseidon, but the god of the sea heard his son's
prayer.

With all his mighty force Polyphemus then cast at the ship a rock far
greater than the first. It all but struck the end of the rudder, but
the huge waves that surged up fr