He drove all the ewes of his flock before him, leaving the rams outside in the court. Then he took a great hole of rock, which scarce twenty teams of horses could have moved, and closed the mouth of the cave.
With a great sigh of weariness, which echoed like a hissing wind and blew the silent bats which hung to the roof this way and that in a frightened eddy of wings, he sank down upon his couch of skins. The giant had brought some of the firewood into the cave with him and he threw it into the embers.
A resinous piece of wood suddenly caught the flame and flared up, filling the cavern with red light. One of the sailors dropped his spear with a loud clatter as the flames made plain the figure of the monster.
Polyphemus turned his head and saw them.
He stared steadily at them with his single eye for full a minute. A cruel smile played on his face.
“Who are you, strangers?” he said at length, in a thick, low voice like the swell of a great organ. “Merchants, are you? Pirates? And whence come you along the paths of the sea?”
Then Ulysses spoke in a smooth voice of conciliation. “We are Greeks, oh lord, soldiers of Agamemnon’s army, bound for home over the seas from Troy. Bad weather has driven us out of our course, and so we have come to you and beg you to be our honoured host. Oh, great lord, have reverence for the gods, for Zeus himself is the god of hospitality.”
Then the giant smiled cunningly. “You are a man of little wit, stranger,” he said, “or else you have indeed come from the very end of the world. I pay no heed to Zeus, for I am stronger than he. But now, tell me, where is your ship?”
But Ulysses, the wary one, saw the snare and answered humbly, “The great Poseidon, god of the deep, wrecked our ship upon the rocks, and we alone survive of all our company.”
The giant looked fixedly at the trembling band for a moment. Then, with a sudden movement, he snatched among the mariners and grasped two of them in his mighty hand.