Suddenly the end came. A loud barking and howling startled them all so that each man paused on his oar. A pack of hounds were unkenneled, so it seemed, somewhere on the cliff face in the mist.
Then a sickly musky smell enveloped them, so foul and stale that they coughed and spat even as their blood ran cold with fear.
Through the curtain of mist, which had suddenly grown very thick, six objects loomed right over the boat.
Six long tentacles swayed and quivered over the sailors, and at the end of each was a grinning head set with cruel fangs and a little red eager tongue that flickered in and out.
For a moment the heads hung poised, and then each sought and found its victim.
Six sailors were slowly drawn out of the boat, shrieking the name of Ulysses for the last time in their death agony. And all the time the barking of the hounds in the obscene womb of the monster went on unceasingly.
Then the fury of flight came upon them. With bursting brains and red fire before their eyes they laboured at the great oars until the wood bent and shook and the ship leaped forward like a driven horse.
And they left the strait of death and came out of the mist into a wide sunlit sea. But still a sound of distant barking came down the wind.
So Scylla took her horrid toll of heroes.
But Ulysses called them to prayer and lamentation for the dead.