To Telemachus they said again:
"We will go on wasting thy goods until Penelope weds one of us."
Only one other beside the old man was brave enough to speak for Telemachus. Fearlessly and nobly did his friend Mentor blame the wooers for their shamelessness. But they jeered at him, and laughed aloud when Telemachus told them he was going to take a ship and go to look for his father.
"He will never come back," said one, "and even were Odysseus himself to return, we should slay him when he came."
Then the council meeting broke up, and the wooers went again to revel in the palace of Odysseus.
Down to the seashore went Telemachus and knelt where the gray water broke in little white wavelets on the sand.
"Hear me," he cried, "thou who didst speak with me yesterday. I know now that thou art a god. Tell me, I pray thee? how shall I find a ship to sail across the misty sea and find my father? For there is none to help me."
Swiftly, in answer to his cry, came Athene.
"Be brave. Be thy father's son," she said. "Go back to thy house and get ready corn and wine for the voyage. I will choose the best of all the ships in Ithaca for thee, and have her launched, and manned by a crew, all of them willing men."