But Athene, daughter of Zeus, turned to new thoughts.  Behold, she bound up the courses of the other winds, and charged them all to cease and be still; but she roused the swift North and brake the waves before him, that so Odysseus, of the seed of Zeus, might mingle with the Phaeacians, lovers of the oar, avoiding death and the fates.

So for two nights and two days he was wandering in the swell of the sea, and much his heart boded of death.  But when at last the fair-tressed Dawn brought the full light of the third day, thereafter the breeze fell, and lo, there was a breathless calm, and with a quick glance ahead, (he being upborne on a great wave,) he saw the land very near.  And even as when most welcome to his children is the sight of a father’s life, who lies in sickness and strong pains long wasting away, some angry god assailing him; and to their delight the gods have loosed him from his trouble; so welcome to Odysseus showed land and wood; and he swam onward being eager to set foot on the strand.  But when he was within earshot of the shore, and heard now the thunder of the sea against the reefs—­for the great wave crashed against the dry land belching in terrible wise, and all was covered with foam of the sea,—­for there were no harbours for ships nor shelters, but jutting headlands and reefs and cliffs; then at last the knees of Odysseus were loosened and his heart melted, and in heaviness he spake to his own brave spirit: 

’Ah me! now that beyond all hope Zeus hath given me sight of land, and withal I have cloven my way through this gulf of the sea, here there is no place to land on from out of the grey water.  For without are sharp crags, and round them the wave roars surging, and sheer the smooth rock rises, and the sea is deep thereby, so that in no wise may I find firm foothold and escape my bane, for as I fain would go ashore, the great wave may haply snatch and dash me on the jagged rock—­and a wretched endeavour that would be.  But if I swim yet further along the coast to find, if I may, spits that take the waves aslant and havens of the sea, I fear lest the storm-winds catch me again and bear me over the teeming deep, making heavy moan; or else some god may even send forth against me a monster from out of the shore water; and many such pastureth the renowned Amphitrite.  For I know how wroth against me hath been the great Shaker of the Earth.’

Whilst yet he pondered these things in his heart and mind, a great wave bore him to the rugged shore.  There would he have been stript of his skin and all his bones been broken, but that the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, put a thought into his heart.  He rushed in, and with both his hands clutched the rock, whereto he clung till the great wave went by.  So he escaped that peril, but again with backward wash it leapt on him and smote him and cast him forth into the deep.  And as when the cuttlefish is dragged forth from his chamber, the many pebbles clinging to his suckers,