Again the cup was filled, and yet a third time; and Polyphemus drank out every drop.  Before long his great head began to droop, and his eye blinked mistily, like the red sun looming through a fog.  Seeing that the good wine was doing its work, Odysseus lost no time in telling his name.  “Thou askest how I am called,” he said in cozening tones, “and thou shalt hear, that I may receive the gift which thou hast promised me.  My name is Noman; so call me my father and my mother, and all my friends.”  When he heard that, Polyphemus “grinned horribly a ghastly smile,” and answered:  “This shall be thy gift:  I will eat thee last of all, for the sake of thy good wine.”

With that he sank down backward on the floor, and lay like a leviathan, with his head lolling sideways, and his mouth gaping, buried in drunken sleep.

“Now is our time!” whispered Odysseus, and taking the sharpened stake from its hiding place he thrust the point into the glowing embers of the fire.  As soon as he saw that the weapon was red hot and about to burst into flame, he took it up, and gave it to his men.  Then, breathing a prayer to Heaven for strength and courage, they stole softly to the place where the Cyclops lay.  Odysseus clambered up to the forehead of the Cyclops, holding on by his hair, and while the others pressed the glowing point of the ponderous stake into the monster’s eye he whirled it round by means of a thong, as men turn an auger to bore a ship’s timber.  The point hissed and sputtered as it sank deep into the pulpy substance of the eye, and there was an acrid smell of burning flesh, while the great shaggy eyebrow took fire, and cracked like a burning bush.  “It is a fine tempering bath for this good spear of ours,” muttered Odysseus, as he worked away at the strap.  “Temper it well—­Polyphemus shall have it as a parting gift”

At first the Cyclops writhed and groaned in his sleep; then with a roar as of a hundred lions he awoke, and started up to a sitting posture, scattering his puny tormentors, who fled in wild haste, and hid themselves in the angle of a projecting rock.  Polyphemus rose slowly to his feet, tore the stake from the empty eye-socket, and flung it from him, still uttering his fearful cries.  His brethren heard him, and quitting their caverns, came flocking round his gate, to see what had befallen.  “What ails thee, Polyphemus,” they asked, “that thou makest this dreadful din, murdering our sleep?  Is anyone stealing thy sheep or thy goats?  Or seeks anyone to slay thee by force or by guile?”

“Friends,” answered the afflicted giant, “Noman is slaying me by guile, neither by force.”

“Go to,” replied his brethren, “if no man is using thee despitefully, why callest thou to us?  Thou art stricken, it seems, with some sore disease:  pray, then, to thy father Poseidon, and cumber us no more.”  So away they went, growling at their broken sleep, and left their blinded brother to roar alone.