The Adventures of Ulysses the Wanderer

by Guy Thorne; Homer

“Help! help! brothers. Noman is murdering me. I die!”

A chorus of thunderous laughter came rolling back. “If Noman harms thee, then how should we aid thee, brother? ’Tis the gods who have sent thee a sickness which thou must endure.”

And now, through an aperture high up in the cave, the light began to whiten, and showed day was at hand. The footsteps of the Cyclopes grew faint and ceased, but Polyphemus lay moaning by the great stone which closed the entrance.

The morning light grew stronger, and a breeze stole in, fresh and clean, and played upon the faces of the prisoners.

The ewes began to bleat, for their milking time was at hand, and the rams cried out for freedom and the green pastures of the hill.

The giant moved aside the stone to let them go and in the morning sunlight the sailors could see that he felt over them with his hands so that no men should mingle with them and so escape.

First the ewes went out and then the young rams, and last of all the great old rams, patriarchs of the flock, began to move slowly towards the door.

Then courage came back to Ulysses, and with it all his cunning. Stooping low under the belly of a great beast, he motioned to his friends to do likewise, and, slowly, in this way, holding to the fleece of the rams, they moved out of the cave. They could feel the rams tremble when the giant’s hands ranged over the wool of their backs, but nevertheless they came safely out into the light, and stole down to where their ship yet lay at anchor.

The air of the morning was like wine to them, and the face of the water as dear as the face of a well-beloved wife as they ran over the bright yellow sand.

Then from the stern of the boat Ulysses cried out in a great voice of triumph. At that sound the monster came stumbling from his cave, reeling like a drunken man, and calling on his father Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, to avenge him on his enemies. He took up the stone that had barred the cave and threw it far out into the water, but it overshot the boat and did not harm the heroes, though the wave of its descent flung the ship from side to side as if it were a piece of driftwood. The mariners bent to the oars, and the vessels moved away from that accursed shore, slowly at first but more swiftly as their tired arms grew strong with the chance of safety, and the wine of hope flowed in their veins once more.