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Poseidon wrecks Odysseus' raft:
...a great wave drove down from above him
with a horrible rush, and spun the raft in a circle,
and he was thrown clear far from the raft and let the steering oar
slip from his hands. A terrible gust of stormwinds whirling
together and blowing snapped the mast tree off in the middle,
and the sail and the upper deck were thrown far and fell in the water.
He himself was ducked for a long time, nor was he able
to come up quickly from under the great rush of the water,
for the clothing which divine Kalypso had given weighted him
down. At last he got to the surface, and spat the bitter
salt sea water that drained from his head, which was filled with it.
But he did not forget about his raft, for all his trouble,
but turned and swam back through the waves, and laid hold of it,
and huddled down in the middle of it, avoiding death's end.
Then the waves tossed her about the current now here, now there;
as the North Wind in autumn tumbles and tosses thistledown
along the plain, and the bunches hold fast one on another,
so the winds tossed her on the great sea, now here, now there,
and now it would be the South Wind and North that pushed her between them,
and then again East Wind and West would burst in and follow.
The daughter of Kadmos, sweet-stepping Ino called Leukothea,
saw him. She had once been one who spoke as a mortal,
but now in the gulfs of the sea she holds degree as a goddess.
She took pity on Odysseus as he drifted and suffered hardship,
and likening herself to a winged gannet she came up
out of the water and perched on the raft and spoke a word to him:
"Poor man, why is Poseidon the shaker of the earth so bitterly
cankered against you, to give you such a harvest of evils?
And yet he will not do away with you, for all his anger.
But do as I say, since you seem to me not lacking in good sense.
Take off these clothes, and leave the raft to drift at the winds' will,
and then strike out and swim with your hands and make for a landfall
on the Phaikian country, where your escape is destined.
And here, take this veil, it is immortal, and fasten it under
your chest; and there is no need for you to die, nor to suffer.
But when with both your hands you have taken hold of the mainland,
untie the veil and throw it out in the wine-blue water
far from the land; and turn your face away as you do so." |
