“Ithaca.”
“Oh, listen to those wailings in the abyss!”
“Thy father Laertes weeps yet for the wanderer.”
“The dead! The dead are waiting there!”
“Men call thee Ulysses!” said the goddess, and at that word something moved within him and his limbs began to stiffen, and once more the hero felt the spear-shank hard and cold within his grasp.
He raised his face, and there was once more the old proud light upon it. Athene had gone, and big with his new resolve he stepped towards the blackness.
A voice came to him, thin, and far down.
“Ulysses! Ulysses! son of Laertes, I wait to guide thee. Hermes, son of Zeus, is with thee. Take courage in both hands and come.”
The king moved forward, and the dark swallowed him up. He stumbled along a descending rock-strewn pathway. In the increasing gloom it seemed to him that he was on the side of a steep hill. A moaning wind encircled him. Now and again a slight gleam was visible from the golden helmet of the god.
Far far down he saw the leaden livid river of death, and on the sullen tide floated the stately funeral barge of Charon, the ferryman of the dead.