ULYSSES AND THE CYCLOPS
When all else was still, Ulysses whispered the word to his wakeful crew. From the litter they silently dragged out that huge stake he had made ready: and blowing up the fire, heated its point till the green wood had almost burst into flame. It was all they could do to bear it along to the side of the sleeping giant. When their leader gave the signal, they plunged that red-hot spit into his eye, and, turning it like an awl, they bored a hole so deep and so wide that a torrent of blood gushed out to quench the fiery brand.
The drunken giant started to his feet with a roar which sent them quailing backwards. But when he had torn the tormenting brand from his forehead, all he could do was to grope blindly around him, stamping and howling for pain and for rage against those puny enemies that in the dim firelight could take heed to keep out of his reach. So furious was the alarm he raised, that it woke his neighbor giants, who presently came hurrying along to the cave's mouth, and shouted to him:
"What ails thee, Polyphemus, that thus our rest is disturbed? Who breaks upon thy sleep? Has any man found means to hurt thee? Or has some one been robbing thee by force or fraud?"
"Noman has hurt me!" yelled back the blind giant. "Noman is robbing my flock! Noman, I say, has played a cruel trick upon me!"
"Then if no man does thee harm, why these complaints?" grumbled his neighbors, while Ulysses chuckled over his sly device, all the more as he heard the giants tramping away to their own lairs with a parting word of mockery for the victim of a nightmare, as they took it to be. "If the gods send thee pain, take to prayer, and rouse us no more to give help against no man in mortal flesh!"
Thus left to himself, the blinded monster, pouring out his rage in tears of blood, found it hopeless to lay hands on the silently exulting foes, who all night long remained shut up with him in the cave; yet more fiercely his dark mind was bent on revenge against that insolent Noman and the rest of his crew. Fumbling about till he touched the rock that barred the entrance, he heaved it away; then there sat down with his hands stretched out before him, to make sure that none of the men should slip through among the flock when the rosy dawn called them forth to their pasture.
But again Ulysses was too wily for the thick-headed giant. Through the night he had been busy lashing the biggest rams together, three and three; and each midmost beast bore a man bound to it by osier twigs. The largest of all he kept for himself, creeping beneath it, and clinging to the thick fleece below its belly. On this strange steed he would come forth last of all.