, and were carried and stored on board the ship
which had been made ready, and then Ulysses spoke good-bye to the Queen,
saying: 'Be happy, oh Queen, till old age and death come to you, as they
come to all. Be joyful in your house with your children and your people,
and Alcinous the King.' Then he departed, and lay down on sheets and
cloaks in the raised deck of the ship, and soundly he slept while the
fifty oars divided the waters of the sea, and drove the ship to Ithaca.

VII

HOW ULYSSES CAME TO HIS OWN COUNTRY, AND FOR SAFETY DISGUISED HIMSELF AS
AN OLD BEGGAR MAN

When Ulysses awoke, he found himself alone, wrapped in the linen sheet
and the bright coverlet, and he knew not where he was. The Phaeacians
had carried him from the ship as he slept, and put him on shore, and
placed all the rich gifts that had been given him under a tree, and then
had sailed away. There was a morning mist that hid the land, and Ulysses
did not know the haven of his own island, Ithaca, and the rock whence
sprang a fountain of the water fairies that men call Naiads. He thought
that the Phaeacians had set him in a strange country, so he counted all
his goods, and then walked up and down sadly by the seashore. Here he
met a young man, delicately clad, like a king's son, with a double
mantle, such as kings wear, folded round his shoulders, and a spear in
his hand. 'Tell me pray,' said Ulysses, 'what land is this, and what men
dwell here?'

The young man said: 'Truly, stranger, you know little, or you come from
far away. This isle is Ithaca, and the name of it is known even in
Troyland.'

Ulysses was glad, indeed, to learn that he was at home at last; but how
the young men who had grown up since he went away would treat him, all
alone as he was, he could not tell. So he did not let out that he was
Ulysses the King, but said that he was a Cretan. The stranger would
wonder why a Cretan had come alone to Ithaca, with great riches, and yet
did not know that he was there. So he pretended that, in Crete, a son of
Idomeneus had tried to rob him of all the spoil he took at Troy, and
that he had killed this prince, and packed his wealth and fled on board
a ship of the Phoenicians, who promised to land him at Pylos. But the
wind had borne them out of their way, and they had all landed and slept
on shore, here; but the Phoenicians had left him asleep and gone off in
the dawn.

On this the young man laughed, and suddenly appeared as the gre