So saying the lord of ocean took his trident and stirred up the deep; and the clouds came trooping at his call, covering the sky with a black curtain.  Soon a great tempest broke loose, blowing in violent and fitful blasts from all the four quarters of heaven.  Then pale fear got hold of Odysseus, as he saw the great curling billows heaving round his frail craft.  “Woe is me!” he cried, “when shall my troubles have an end?  Surely the goddess spoke truth, when she foretold me that I should perish amid the waves, and never see my home again.  Here I lie helpless, given over to destruction, the sport of all the winds of heaven.  Happy, thrice happy, were my comrades who fell fighting bravely and found honourable burial in the soil of Troy!  Would that I had died on that great day when the battle raged fiercest over the body of Pelides; then should I have found death with honour, but now I am doomed to a miserable and dishonoured end.”

The words were hardly uttered when a huge toppling wave struck the raft with tremendous force, carrying away mast and sail, and hurling Odysseus into the sea.  Deep down he sank, and the waters darkened over his head, for he was encumbered by the weight of his clothes.  At last he rose to the surface, gasping, and spitting out the brine, and though sore spent, he swam towards the raft, and hauled himself on board.  There he sat clinging to the dismasted and rudderless vessel, which was tossed to and fro from wave to wave, as the winds of autumn sport with the light thistledown and drive it hither and thither.

But help was at hand.  There was a certain ocean nymph, named Ino, daughter of Cadmus, who had once been a mortal woman, but now was numbered among the immortal powers.  She saw and pitied Odysseus, and boarding the raft addressed him in this wise:  “Poor man, why is Poseidon so wroth with thee that he maltreats thee thus?  Yet shall he not destroy thee, for all his malice.  Only do as I bid thee, and thou shalt get safely to land:  take this veil, and when thou hast stripped off thy garments, bind it across thy breast.  Then leave the raft to its fate, and swim manfully to land; and when thou art safe fling the veil back into the sea, and go thy way.”

So saying the goddess sank beneath the waves, leaving Odysseus with her veil in his hand.  But that cautious veteran did not at once act on her advice, for he feared that some treachery was intended against him.  He resolved therefore to remain on the raft as long as her timbers held together, and only to have recourse to the veil in the last extremity.

He had just taken this prudent resolution, when another wave, more huge than the last, thundered down on the raft, scattering her timbers, as the wind scatters a heap of chaff.  Odysseus clung fast to one beam and, mounting it, sat astride as on a horse, until he had stripped off his clothes.  Then he bound the veil round him, flung himself head foremost into the billows, and swam lustily towards land.