and smacked
his great lips over its sweetness.

"Give me more," he cried, "and tell me thy name straightway, that I
may give thee a gift. Mighty clusters of grapes do the vines of our
land bear for us, but this is a rill of very nectar and ambrosia."

Again Odysseus gave him the bowl full of wine, and yet again, until
the strong wine went to the giant's head and made him stupid.

Then said Odysseus: "Thou didst ask me my name, and didst say that
thou wouldst give me a gift. Noman is my name, and Noman they call me,
my father and mother and all my fellows."

Then answered the giant out of his pitiless heart: "I will eat thy
fellows first, Noman, and thee the last of all. That shall be thy
gift."

Soon the wine made him so sleepy that he sank backwards with his great
face upturned and fell fast asleep.

As soon as the giant slept, Odysseus thrust into the fire the stake he
had prepared, and made it red hot, all the while speaking cheerfully
and comfortingly to his men. When it was so hot that the wood, green
though it was, began to blaze, they drew it out and thrust it into
the giant's eye. Round and round they whirled the fiery pike, as a
man bores a hole in a plank, until the blood gushed out, and the eye
frizzled and hissed, and the flames singed and burned the eyelids, and
the eye was burned out. With a great and terrible cry the giant sprang
to his feet, and Odysseus and the others fled from before him. From
his eye he dragged the blazing pike, all dripping with his blood, and
dashed it to the ground. Then, maddened with pain, he called with a
great and terrible cry on the other Cyclopes, who dwelt in their caves
on the hill-tops round which the wind swept. The giants, hearing his
horrid yells, rushed to help him.

"What ails thee, Polyphemus?" they asked. "Why dost thou cry aloud
in the night and awake us from our sleep? Surely no one stealeth thy
flocks? None slayeth thee by force or by craft."

From the other side of the great stone moaned Polyphemus: "Noman is
slaying me by craft."

Then the Cyclopes said: "If no man is hurting thee, then indeed it
must be a sickness that makes thee cry so loud, and this thou must
bear, for we cannot help."

With that they strode away from the cave and left the blind giant
groaning and raging with pain. Groping with his hands, he found the
great stone that blocked the door, lifted it away, and sat himself
down in the mouth of the cave, with his arms stretched out, ho