This was the effect of the letter, with some addition concerning us, that we should have entertainment: and far had I not gone from the sea but I found such a cave as Homer speaks of, and she herself working busily at her wool. When she had received the letter, and brought us in, she began to weep and take on grievously, but afterwards she called us to meat, and made us very good cheer, asking us many questions concerning Ulysses and Penelope, whether she was so beautiful and modest as Ulysses had often before bragged of her.
And we made her such answer as we thought would give her best content: and departing to our ship, reposed ourselves near unto the shore, and in the morning put to sea, where we were taken with a violent storm, which tossed us two days together, and on the third we fell among the Colocynthopiratans. These are a wild kind of men, that issue out of the islands adjoining, and prey upon passengers, and for their shipping have mighty great gourds six cubits in length, which they make hollow when they are ripe, and cleanse out all that is within them, and use the rinds for ships, making their masts of reeds, and their sails of the gourd leaves.
These set upon us with two ships furnished and fought with us, and wounded many, casting at us instead of stones the seeds of those gourds. The fight was continued with equal fortune until about noon, at which time, behind the Colocynthopiratans, we espied the Caryonautans coming on, who, as it appeared, were enemies to the other, for when they saw them approach, they forsook us and turned about to fight with them; and in the mean space we hoist sail and away, leaving them together by the ears, and no doubt but the Caryonautans had the better of the day, for they exceeded in number, having five ships well furnished, and their vessels of greater strength, for they are made of nutshells cloven in the midst and cleansed, of which every half is fifteen fathom in length.
When we were got out of sight we were careful for the curing of our hurt men, and from that time forwards went no more unarmed, fearing continually to be assaulted on the sudden: and good cause we had: for before sun-setting some twenty men or thereabouts, which also were pirates, made towards us, riding upon monstrous great dolphins, which carried them surely: and when their riders gat upon their backs, would neigh like horses. When they were come near us, they divided themselves, some on the one side, and some on the other, and flung at us with dried cuttle-fishes and the eyes of sea-crabs: but when we shot at them again and hurt them, they would not abide it, but fled to the island, the most of them wounded.
About midnight, the sea being calm, we fell before we were aware upon a mighty great halcyon's nest, in compass no less than threescore furlongs, in which the halcyon herself sailed, as she was hatching her eggs, in quantity almost equalling the nest, for when she took her wings, the blast of her feathers had like to have overturned our ship, making a lamentable noise as she flew along.
As soon as it was day, we got upon it, and found it to be a nest, fashioned like a great lighter, with trees plaited and wound one within another, in which were five hundred eggs, every one bigger than a tun of Chios measure, and so near their time of hatching that the young chickens might be seen and began to cry. Then with an axe we hewed one of the eggs in pieces, and cut out a young one that had no feathers, which yet was bigger than twenty of our vultures.