Escaped that peril, they had not sailed yet an hundred leagues further, when they heard a roar afar off, which Ulysses knew to be the barking of Scylla’s dogs, which surround her waist, and bark incessantly.  Coming nearer they beheld a smoke ascend, with a horrid murmur, which arose from that other whirlpool, to which they made nigher approaches than to Scylla.  Through the furious eddy, which is in that place, the ship stood still as a stone, for there was no man to lend his hand to an oar, the dismal roar of Scylla’s dogs at a distance, and the nearer clamours of Charybdis, where everything made an echo, quite taking from them the power of exertion.  Ulysses went up and down encouraging his men, one by one, giving them good words, telling them that they were in greater perils when they were blocked up in the Cyclop’s cave, yet, heaven assisting his counsels, he had delivered them out of that extremity.  That he could not believe but they remembered it; and wished them to give the same trust to the same care which he had now for their welfare.  That they must exert all the strength and wit which they had, and try if Jove would not grant them an escape even out of this peril.  In particular he cheered up the pilot who sat at the helm, and told him that he must shew more firmness than other men, as he had more trust committed to him, and had the sole management by his skill of the vessel in which all their safeties were embarked.  That a rock lay hid within those boiling whirlpools which he saw, on the outside of which he must steer, if he would avoid his own destruction, and the destruction of them all.

They heard him, and like men took to the oars; but little knew what opposite danger, in shunning that rock, they must be thrown upon.  For Ulysses had concealed from them the wounds, never to be healed, which Scylla was to open:  their terror would else have robbed them all of all care to steer, or move an oar, and have made them hide under the hatches, for fear of seeing her, where he and they must have died an idle death.  But even then he forgot the precautions which Circe had given him to prevent harm to his person; who had willed him not to arm, or shew himself once to Scylla:  but disdaining not to venture life for his brave companions, he could not contain, but armed in all points, and taking a lance in either hand, he went up to the fore deck, and looked when Scylla would appear.

She did not shew herself as yet, and still the vessel steered closer by her rock, as it sought to shun that other more dreaded:  for they saw how horribly Charybdis’s black throat drew into her all the whirling deep, which she disgorged again, that all about her boiled like a kettle, and the rock roared with troubled waters; which when she supped in again, all the bottom turned up, and disclosed far under shore the swart sands naked, whose whole stern sight frayed the startled blood from their faces, and made Ulysses turn his to view the wonder of whirlpools.