Every now and again the wind freshened rapidly. The mournful whistling became a sudden snarling of trumpets. The ship and crew seemed to have passed over the limits of a tableau. Not only was it a quick elemental change of scene, but the change had its influence with the spectators.
The sad fire—if the glow of regret is indeed a fire—died out of heavy eyes half veiled by weary lids. The sea-light dawned once more upon the faces of the mariners, the bright warm blood moved swiftly in their veins.
One man ran to the steering oar to give an aid to the helmsman as the ship went about on the starboard tack, three more stood by the sheet, a hum of talk rose from the waist of the boat. Ulysses stood in the bows looking forward into the night. His tall, lean figure was bent forward, and his arm was thrown round the gilded boss of the prow. His eyes were deep set in his head, and his brow was furrowed with the innumerable wrinkles which come to the man who lives a life of hardship and striving.
Yet the long years of battle and wandering, a life of shocks! had only intensified the alertness of his pose. He seemed, as he looked out into the night, a personification of “readiness.” A crisp dark beard grew round his throat, and the veins on his bare brown arms were like blue enamel round a column of bronze.
When the ship went about again he came down into the body of the ship and helped to pull upon the brace. Though he was no taller than many of his men, and leaner than most, in physical strength as well as in intellect he was first and chief. The mighty muscles leapt up on his arms as he strained on the taut rope.
The ship slanted away down the wind into the night. The men gathered round their captain. “Comrades,” he said to them in a singularly sweet and musical voice, “once more we adventure the deep, and no man knows what shall befall us. To our island home in the west, to dear Ithaca! if the gods so will it. Our wives weep for us on our deserted hearthstone. Our little ones are noble youths ere now, and may Zeus bring us safe home at last. Yet much it misdoubts me that there are other perils in store for us ere we hear the long breakers beat upon the shores of Ithaca and see the morning sun run down the wooded sides of Neriton. Be that as the Fates will it, let us keep always courage, gaiety, and the quiet mind.”
“We are well away from there,” said one of the men, nodding vaguely towards the stern.
“That are we,” said another; “that cursed fruit is honeysweet in my mouth still. It stole away our brains and made us as women, we! the men who fought in Troyland.”
“Of what profit is it to look to the past, Phocion?” said Ulysses. “We did eat and sleep and forget, but it is over. The sea wind is salt once more upon our faces. Let us eat the night meal, and then I will choose a watch and the rest may sleep. Hand me the cup—To to-morrow’s dawn!”
Then one of the sailors took dried goat’s flesh and fruit from a locker in the stern, and by the light of a torch of sawn sandal wood they fell to eating. Great bunches of purple grapes lay before each sailor, but they had brought none of the magic lotus fruit with them to steal away their vigour and thicken their blood.