In a fury the giant sprang up, broke off the peak of a great hill and cast it into the sea, where it fell just in front of the ship of Odysseus.
So huge a splash did the vast rock give, that the sea heaved up and the backwash of the water drove the ship right to the shore.
Odysseus snatched up a long pole and pushed the ship off once more. Silently he motioned to the men to row hard, and save themselves and their ship from the angry giant. When they were once more out at sea, Odysseus wished again to mock Polyphemus.
In vain his men begged him not to provoke a monster so mighty that he could crush their heads and the timbers of their ship with one cast of a stone. Once more Odysseus shouted across the water:
"Polyphemus, if any one shall ask thee who blinded thee, tell them it was Odysseus of Ithaca."
Then moaned the giant:
"Once, long ago, a soothsayer told me that Odysseus should make me blind. But ever I looked for the coming of a great and gallant hero, and now there hath come a poor feeble, little dwarf, who made me weak with wine before he dared to touch me."
Then he begged Odysseus to come back, and said he would treat him kindly, and told him that he knew that his own father, the god of the sea, would give him his sight again.
"Never more wilt thou have thy sight," mocked Odysseus; "thy father will never heal thee."
Then Polyphemus, stretching out his hands, and looking up with his sightless eye to the starry sky, called aloud to Poseidon, god of the sea, to punish Odysseus.