truggled to break his bonds, but they held fast. So he was
the first to hear the Sirens' song and live. And some say he was the
last as well, for in despair, thinking their music had lost its power,
the maidens threw themselves into the sea.

[Illustration: Ulysses defying the Cyclops.]

Next the wanderers came to a narrow strait, on one side of which was
Charybdis, a dread whirlpool from which no ship could escape, and on the
other was the cave of Scylla, a monster having six snake-like heads,
with each of which she seized a man from every passing ship. Choosing
the lesser evil, the bold Ulysses sailed through the strait close to
Scylla; and six poor wretches were snatched by the monster from the deck
and devoured, but the rest escaped.

[Illustration: Menelaus. Paris. Diomedes. Ulysses. Nestor. Achilles.
Agamemnon.]

Then they came to an uninhabited island, filled with herds of cattle.
These were held sacred to the sun, and no man might slay or eat them
without being punished by the gods. This Ulysses knew well, and warned
his men against touching them; but great tempests now swelled up, and
for a whole month the sailors could not leave the island. Their
provisions gave out and they were starving. Then their leader wandered
away looking for help, and while he was gone they slew some of the oxen
and ate their fill. The storm died, and, Ulysses returning, they again
set sail; but at once came a terrific hurricane, upset the ship, and
drowned all of the guilty ones. Ulysses had not eaten the flesh of the
oxen; and he alone was saved, clinging to a spar, and was tossed on the
island of the nymph Calypso. After a long sojourn he escaped from here
on a raft. But his old enemy Neptune again raised a storm, which broke
his raft; and, naked and almost dead, he was thrown upon another shore,
from which at last the pitying people sent him home. He had been away
twenty years.

His fair wife Penelope had been for four years past pestered with
suitors, who declared that Ulysses must be dead. She put them all off,
by saying that first she must finish a wonderful cloth she was weaving;
and on this she undid each night what she had done in the day. Meanwhile
they stayed in the palace, haughty and insolent, terrifying everybody,
in defiance of the protests of Ulysses' infant son, now grown to be
almost a man.

The wanderer, coming alone and finding how things were, feared they
would slay him; so, disguised as an old beggar man,