m by main force at last, and hauled him,
step by step, till he stumbled on a rock and fell. Then they rushed at
him, and threw themselves all upon his body, and bound him with ropes in
cunning sailor knots. But the booty was dearly won, and they did not all
return alive; for he crushed one man with his knees till the breath left
him, and the thigh of another he broke with a blow of his foot.

But at last his strength was spent, and they had him like a bird in a
snare; so, by might and main, they bore him to their ship, and threw him
down on the fore-deck of the vessel. There they mocked him, though they
were half afraid; for even now he was terrible. Then they hauled up the
sail again and sat down to the oars. The wind blew fair for the mouth
of the Nile and the slave-market of Egypt. The wind was fair, and their
hearts were light, for they had been among the first of their people to
deal with the wild tribes of the island Albion, and had brought tin and
gold for African sea shells and rude glass beads from Egypt. And now,
near the very end of their adventure, they had caught a man whose armour
and whose body were worth a king's ransom. It was a lucky voyage, they
said, and the wind was fair!

The rest of the journey was long, but in well-known waters. They passed
by Cephalonia and the rock of AEgilips, and wooded Zacynthus, and Same,
and of all those isles he was the lord, whom they were now selling
into captivity. But he lay still, breathing heavily, and he stirred but
once--that was when they neared Zacynthus. Then he strained his head
round with a mighty strain, and he saw the sun go down upon the heights
of rocky Ithaca, for that last time of all.

So the swift ship ran along the coast, slipping by forgotten towns. Past
the Echinean isles, and the Elian shore, and pleasant Eirene they sped,
and it was dusk ere they reached Dorion. Deep night had fallen when they
ran by Pylos; and the light of the fires in the hall of Pisistratus, the
son of Nestor the Old, shone out across the sandy sea-coast and the
sea. But when they were come near Malea, the southernmost point of land,
where two seas meet, there the storm snatched them, and drove them ever
southwards, beyond Crete, towards the mouth of the Nile. They scudded
long before the storm-wind, losing their reckoning, and rushing by
island temples that showed like ghosts through the mist, and past havens
which they could not win. On they fled, and the men would gladly h