sang of war. So he thought no more
of sleeping, but cunningly and swiftly unknotted all the cords and
the bonds which bound him to a bar of iron in the hold. He might have
escaped now, perhaps, if he had stolen on deck without waking the
guards, dived thence and swam under water towards the island, where he
might have hidden himself in the bush. But he desired revenge no less
than freedom, and had set his heart on coming in a ship of his own, and
with all the great treasure of the Sidonians, before the Egyptian King.

With this in his mind, he did not throw off the cords, but let them
lie on his arms and legs and about his body, as if they were still tied
fast. But he fought against sleep, lest in moving when he woke he might
reveal the trick, and be bound again. So he lay and waited, and in the
morning the sailors came on board, and mocked at him again. In his mirth
one of the men took a dish of meat and of lentils, and set it a little
out of the Wanderer's reach as he lay bound, and said in the Phoenician
tongue:

"Mighty lord, art thou some god of Javan" (for so the Sidonians called
the Achaeans), "and wilt thou deign to taste our sacrifice? Is not the
savour sweet in the nostrils of my lord? Why will he not put forth his
hand to touch our offering?"

Then the heart of Odysseus muttered sullenly within him, in wrath at the
insolence of the man. But he constrained himself and smiled, and said:

"Wilt thou not bring the mess a very little nearer, my friend, that I
may smell the sweet incense of the sacrifice?"

They were amazed when they heard him speak in their own tongue; but he
who held the dish brought it nearer, like a man that angers a dog, now
offering the meat, and now taking it away.

So soon as the man was within reach, the Wanderer sprang out, the
loosened bonds falling at his feet, and smote the sailor beneath the ear
with his clenched fist. The blow was so fierce, for all his anger went
into it, that it crushed the bone, and drove the man against the mast of
the ship so that the strong mast shook. Where he fell, there he lay, his
feet kicking the floor of the hold in his death-pain.

Then the Wanderer snatched from the mast his bow and his short sword,
slung the quiver about his shoulders, and ran on to the raised decking
of the prow.

The bulwarks of the deck were high, and the vessel was narrow, and
before the sailors could stir for amazement the Wanderer had taken his
stand behind the little al