So, careless of danger, they sat them down in that perilous place and made merry on the giant’s cheer. They had brought skins of wine with them, and they drank in mockery to their absent host.
In the middle of the feast one of the men suddenly laid down his cup. “Hearken,” he said uneasily, “do you hear anything, friends?”
“I hear nothing,” said Ulysses. “What sound did you hear?”
“A distant sound, I thought,” answered the man, “as if the earth shook.”
“There is nothing,” said a third at length; but a certain constraint fell upon them all, and anxiety clouded their faces.
“Let us begone,” said Ulysses at length. “There is what I do not like in the air. I fear evil.”
He had but hardly made an end of speaking when all of them there were struck rigid with apprehension. A distant but rapidly-nearing sound assailed their ears, a heavy crunching sound like the blows of a great hammer upon the earth, save that each succeeding blow was louder than the last. They stood irresolute for one fatal moment, and then started to run towards the mouth of the cave.
The noise filled all the air, which hummed and trembled with it. They reached the entrance, but too late. Even as the first man came out into the afternoon sunlight, a great herd of cattle came pouring into the courtyard. Behind them, towering over the wall, as tall as the tallest pine on the slopes of Hymettus, strode Polyphemus, the giant king of the Cyclopes, son of the God Poseidon.
The giant was naked to the waist, where he wore a girdle of skins. One great eye burned in the centre of his forehead, and a row of sharp, white teeth were framed by thick dribbling lips, like the lips of a cow.
Under his arm Polyphemus carried a bundle of young sapling trees, which he had brought for faggots for his fire. He threw them on the floor of the courtyard by the mouth of the cave with a great crash. The adventurers crouched away at the back of the cave in the darkness as the giant entered.