ing land or any ship of men. He kept his eye at night on the Great
Bear, holding it always on his left hand, as Calypso taught him.
Seventeen days he sailed, and on the eighteenth day he saw the shadowy
mountain peaks of an island called Phaeacia. But now the Sea god saw
him, and remembered how Ulysses had blinded his son the Cyclops. In
anger he raised a terrible storm: great clouds covered the sky, and all
the winds met. Ulysses wished that he had died when the Trojans gathered
round him as he defended the dead body of Achilles. For, had he died
then, he would have been burned and buried by his friends, but if he
were now drowned his ghost would always wander alone on the fringes of
the Land of the Dead, like the ghost of Elpenor.

As he thought thus, the winds broke the mast of his raft, and the sail
and yardarm fell into the sea, and the waves dragged him deep down. At
last he rose to the surface and swam after his raft, and climbed on to
it, and sat there, while the winds tossed the raft about like a feather.
The Sea goddess, Ino, saw him and pitied him, and rose from the water
as a seagull rises after it has dived. She spoke to him, and threw her
bright veil to him, saying, 'Wind this round your breast, and throw off
your clothes. Leap from the raft and swim, and, when you reach land,
cast the veil back into the sea, and turn away your head.'

Ulysses caught the veil, and wound it about his breast, but he
determined not to leave the raft while the timbers held together. Even
as he thought thus, the timbers were driven asunder by the waves, and he
seized a plank, and sat astride it as a man rides a horse. Then the
winds fell, all but the north wind, which drifted Ulysses on for two
days and nights. On the third day all was calm, and the land was very
near, and Ulysses began to swim towards it, through a terrible surf,
which crashed and foamed on sheer rocks, where all his bones would be
broken. Thrice he clasped a rock, and thrice the back wash of the wave
dragged him out to sea. Then he swam outside of the breakers, along the
line of land, looking for a safe place, and at last he came to the mouth
of the river. Here all was smooth, with a shelving beach, and his feet
touched bottom. He staggered out of the water and swooned away as soon
as he was on dry land. When he came to himself he unbound the veil of
Ino, and cast it into the sea, and fell back, quite spent, among the
reeds of the river, naked and starving. H