But to their feast they fell, dividing the roasted portions of the flesh, savoury and pleasant meat to them, but a sad sight to the eyes, and a savour of death in the nostrils, of the waking Ulysses; who just woke in time to witness, but not soon enough to prevent, their rash and sacrilegious banquet.  He had scarce time to ask what great mischief was this which they had done unto him, when behold, a prodigy! the ox-hides which they had stripped, began to creep, as if they had life; and the roasted flesh bellowed as the ox used to do when he was living.  The hair of Ulysses stood up on end with affright at these omens; but his companions, like men whom the gods had infatuated to their destruction, persisted in their horrible banquet.

The Sun from his burning chariot saw how Ulysses’s men had slain his oxen, and he cried to his father Jove, “Revenge me upon these impious men who have slain my oxen, which it did me good to look upon when I walked my heavenly round.  In all my daily course I never saw such bright and beautiful creatures as those my oxen were.”  The father promised that ample retribution should be taken of those accursed men:  which was fulfilled shortly after, when they took their leaves of the fatal island.

Six days they feasted in spite of the signs of heaven, and on the seventh, the wind changing, they set their sails, and left the island; and their hearts were cheerful with the banquets they had held; all but the heart of Ulysses, which sank within him, as with wet eyes he beheld his friends, and gave them for lost, as men devoted to divine vengeance.  Which soon overtook them:  for they had not gone many leagues before a dreadful tempest arose, which burst their cables; down came their mast, crushing the scull of the pilot in its fall; off he fell from the stern into the water, and the bark wanting his management drove along at the wind’s mercy:  thunders roared, and terrible lightnings of Jove came down; first a bolt struck Eurylochus, then another, and then another, till all the crew were killed, and their bodies swam about like sea-mews; and the ship was split in pieces:  only Ulysses survived; and he had no hope of safety but in tying himself to the mast, where he sat riding upon the waves, like one that in no extremity would yield to fortune.  Nine days was he floating about with all the motions of the sea, with no other support than the slender mast under him, till the tenth night cast him, all spent and weary with toil, upon the friendly shores of the island Ogygia.

CHAPTER IV

The Island of Calypso.—­Immortality refused.