No such forebodings clouded the minds of his islanders. The thought of home, after these years of toil and peril, ran through their veins like an elixir. With shouts of joy, as dawn broke fresh and clear, each crew raced its long-keeled, high-prowed galley down the sloping beach. Dripping, they scrambled aboard, every man to his thwart. In unison the oars hit the water with powerful strokes, to the measure of an exultant chant. The yards were hoisted, sails unclewed, lowered and made fast. Under the following
wind and the rowers' vigor, the vermillion-cheeked galleys leaped like live things across the quiet waters that curled about their prows.
It was not so quiet as they passed out of the protected harbor, for the stiff breeze was beginning to make the leaping waves blossom into white; but with yards braced and oars bending, they stood away stoutly into the northwest. Between Lemnos and Imbros they passed, forced ever more to northward by the growing wind, till they could see the wooded heights of Samothrace to leeward; and while most of the unthinking rejoiced to feel the plunging vessels speed so fast through the waves, Odysseus was far from satisfied, realizing that they were now headed almost directly away from their proper course.
He was glad enough as darkness began to fall, to see ahead the mountainous shore of Thrace, and to beach his vessels beneath the stars on the sandy strip, near the mouth of a cove, which his careful eye had noted.
Morning showed them hard by the chief town of the Ciconians, who inhabited those shores. They were barbarians, these Thracians, and proper spoil for warlike Greeks. Launching his galleys and leaving guards aboard, Odysseus led his Ithacans against this city of Ismaurus, sure of an easy victory as had been theirs so often before.
In one swift assault they overwhelmed the place, sacked it, and divided the booty. Then the prudent leader ordered an instant retreat to the waiting vessels.
But his inflamed soldiers, who had drunk deep of
Thracian wine, could no longer be controlled. They began to slaughter the crook-horned oxen and the sheep, preparing by the shore for a triumphant carouse. All night the wild feast lasted.
Then, when discipline was relaxed, what had been foreseen by their leader came to pass. The Ciconians who had escaped had called upon their neighbors for aid. At dawn these began to gather, on horseback, in war chariots, on foot, thick as leaves and flowers in spring.
The Greeks now listened to their leader. It was too late to take to the swift ships, but they set themselves in battle array as the enemy burst upon them. Stoutly they fought, while the brass-tipped spears carried death to both sides. For nearly the whole day they managed to hold their ground against the pressing multitude; but towards sunset the numbers of the foe began to tell. The Grecian line was turned; man after man went down; and when they finally fled aboard the galleys in rout, seventy-two of their company were missing.