Page 165 - the-odyssey

work much the same by night as they do by day. {84}
‘When we reached the harbour we found it land-locked
under steep cliffs, with a narrow entrance between two
headlands. My captains took all their ships inside, and
made them fast close to one another, for there was never
so much as a breath of wind inside, but it was always dead
calm. I kept my own ship outside, and moored it to a rock
at the very end of the point; then I climbed a high rock to
reconnoitre, but could see no sign neither of man nor cattle,
only some smoke rising from the ground. So I sent two of
my company with an attendant to find out what sort of peo-
ple the inhabitants were.
‘The men when they got on shore followed a level road by
which the people draw their firewood from the mountains
into the town, till presently they met a young woman who
had come outside to fetch water, and who was daughter to
a Laestrygonian named Antiphates. She was going to the
fountain Artacia from which the people bring in their wa-
ter, and when my men had come close up to her, they asked
her who the king of that country might be, and over what
kind of people he ruled; so she directed them to her father’s
house, but when they got there they found his wife to be a
giantess as huge as a mountain, and they were horrified at
the sight of her.
‘She at once called her husband Antiphates from the
place of assembly, and forthwith he set about killing my
men. He snatched up one of them, and began to make his
dinner off him then and there, whereon the other two ran
back to the ships as fast as ever they could. But Antiphates

1 The Odyssey