, but as soon as he
spoke of Odysseus and how it was the will of Zeus that he should be
permitted to leave the Island, her song ceased and the golden shuttle
fell from her hand.

'Woe to me,' she said, 'and woe to any immortal who loves a mortal, for
the gods are always jealous of their love. I do not hold him here
because I hate Odysseus, but because I love him greatly, and would have
him dwell with me here,--more than this, Hermes, I would make him an
immortal so that he would know neither old age nor death.'

'He does not desire to be freed from old age and death,' said Hermes,
'he desires to return to his own land and to live with his dear wife,
Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. And Zeus, the greatest of the gods,
commands that you let him go upon his way.'

'I have no ship to give him,' said Calypso, 'and I have no company of
men to help him to cross the sea,'

'He must leave the Island and cross the sea--Zeus commands it,' Hermes
said.

'I must help him to make his way across the sea if it must be so,'
Calypso said. Then she bowed her head and Hermes went from her.

Straightway Calypso left her cave and went down to the sea. By the shore
Odysseus stayed, looking across the wide sea with tears in his eyes.

She came to him and she said, 'Be not sorrowful any more, Odysseus. The
time has come when thou mayst depart from my Island. Come now. I will
show how I can help thee on thy way.'

She brought him to the side of the Island where great trees grew and she
put in his hands a double-edged axe and an adze. Then Odysseus started
to hew down the timber. Twenty trees he felled with his axe of bronze,
and he smoothed them and made straight the line. Calypso came to him at
the dawn of the next day; she brought augers for boring and he made the
beams fast. He built a raft, making it very broad, and set a mast upon
it and fixed a rudder to guide it. To make it more secure, he wove out
of osier rods a fence that went from stem to stern as a bulwark against
the waves, and he strengthened the bulwark with wood placed behind.
Calypso wove him a web of cloth for sails, and these he made very
skilfully. Then he fastened the braces and the halyards and sheets, and
he pushed the raft, with levers down to the sea.

That was on the fourth day. On the fifth Calypso gave him garments for
the journey and brought provision down to the raft--two skins of wine
and a great skin of water; corn and many dainties. She showed Odysseu