as I was sailing for Delos we touched at the island of Dia and went ashore.  Next morning I sent the men for fresh water, and myself mounted the hill to observe the wind; when my men returned bringing with them a prize, as they thought, a boy of delicate appearance, whom they had found asleep.  They judged he was a noble youth, perhaps a king’s son, and they might get a liberal ransom for him.  I observed his dress, his walk, his face.  There was something in them which I felt sure was more than mortal.  I said to my men, ’What god there is concealed in that form I know not, but some one there certainly is.  Pardon us, gentle deity, for the violence we have done you, and give success to our undertakings.’  Dictys, one of my best hands for climbing the mast and coming down by the ropes, and Melanthus, my steersman, and Epopeus, the leader of the sailor’s cry, one and all exclaimed, ’Spare your prayers for us.’  So blind is the lust of gain!  When they proceeded to put him on board I resisted them.  ’This ship shall not be profaned by such impiety,’ said I.  ’I have a greater share in her than any of you.’  But Lycabas, a turbulent fellow, seized me by the throat and attempted to throw me overboard, and I scarcely saved myself by clinging to the ropes.  The rest approved the deed.

“Then Bacchus (for it was indeed he), as if shaking off his drowsiness, exclaimed, ’What are you doing with me?  What is this fighting about?  Who brought me here?  Where are you going to carry me?’ One of them replied, ’Fear nothing; tell us where you wish to go and we will take you there.’  ‘Naxos is my home,’ said Bacchus; ‘take me there and you shall be well rewarded.’  They promised so to do, and told me to pilot the ship to Naxos.  Naxos lay to the right, and I was trimming the sails to carry us there, when some by signs and others by whispers signified to me their will that I should sail in the opposite direction, and take the boy to Egypt to sell him for a slave.  I was confounded and said, ’Let some one else pilot the ship;’ withdrawing myself from any further agency in their wickedness.  They cursed me, and one of them, exclaiming, ‘Don’t flatter yourself that we depend on you for our safety;’ took any place as pilot, and bore away from Naxos.

“Then the god, pretending that he had just become aware of their treachery, looked out over the sea and said in a voice of weeping, ’Sailors, these are not the shores you promised to take me to; yonder island is not my home.  What have I done that you should treat me so?  It is small glory you will gain by cheating a poor boy.’  I wept to hear him, but the crew laughed at both of us, and sped the vessel fast over the sea.  All at once—­strange as it may seem, it is true,—­the vessel stopped, in the mid sea, as fast as if it was fixed on the ground.  The men, astonished, pulled at their oars, and spread more sail, trying to make progress by the aid of both, but all in vain.  Ivy twined round the oars and hindered their motion, and clung