Then stretch’d in length o er half the cavern’d rock,
Lay senseless, and supine, amidst the flock.”
Having now made an end of his supper, he took a great draught of goat’s milk, and sank into a deep sleep. Ulysses at once drew his sword, and half resolved to thrust it into the sleeping monster; but desisted when he remembered that only Polyphemus could remove the massive stone which guarded the entrance. The night was passed in great fear.
When daylight appeared the Cyclop awoke, and kindling a fire, made his breakfast on another brace of Greeks; then pushing aside the huge rock, and rolling it to its place again, he stalked toward the mountains. Toward evening he returned, smacked his lips and enjoyed another Phrygian stew. Supper over, Ulysses offered him strong wine, which the brute took and drank. He liked it so well that he told Ulysses he would show him the kindness to eat him last of all his friends. Having thus expressed his thankfulness, he sank into a dead slumber, and then Ulysses gave proof how far manly wisdom excels brutish force.
He chose a stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which he sharpened and hardened in the fire, and then with the assistance of his men, thrust the sharp red hot end into the eye of the drunken cannibal. The scalded blood gushed out, the eyeball smoked, and the strings of the eye cracked as the burning rafter broke in it; the eye fairly hissed as hot iron hisses when plunged into water. The giant waking, roared with the pain so loudly that the sound seemed like heavy thunder-claps. He plucked the burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave. Blind and groaning with pain, he groped through the darkness to find the doorway, from which when found he removed the stone, and sat in the threshold to prevent Ulysses and the survivors of his band from going out. They managed, however, to elude his vigilance, and returned to their ships, where their companions, with tears in their eyes, received them as men escaped from death. Quickly they spread their sails, plied their oars, and moved away from that dreadful spot. The Cyclop hearing the noise pushed to the water’s brink, plucked a fragment of rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark in which Ulysses sat. Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop: “Cyclop, thou shouldst not have so much abused thy monstrous strength, as to devour thy guests. If any ask who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes, the King of Ithaca.” Then crowding sail, they glided rapidly before the wind, and soon came to Lamos, a port of the Læstrygonians.
“Six days and nights a doubtful course we steer,
The next proud Lamos’ stately towers appear,
And Læstrygonia’s gates arise distinct in air.
Within a long recess a bay there lies,
Edged round with cliffs high pointing to the skies;