given in charge Our gallant vessel’s rudder—steer thou hence From mist and tumbling waves, and well observe The rock, lest where it juts into the sea Thou heed it not, and bring us all to wreck.’
“I spake, and quickly all obeyed my words. Yet said I naught of Scylla—whom we now Could not avoid—lest all the crew in fear Should cease to row, and crowd into the hold. And then did I forget the stern command Which Circè gave me, not to arm myself For combat. In my shining arms I cased My limbs, and took in hand two ponderous spears, And went on deck, and stood upon the prow— For there it seemed to me that Scylla first Would show herself—that monster of the rocks— To seize my comrades. Yet I saw her not, Though weary grew my eyes with looking long And eagerly upon those dusky cliffs.
“Sadly we sailed into the strait, where stood On one hand Scylla, and the dreaded rock Charybdis on the other, drawing down Into her horrid gulf the briny flood; And as she threw it forth again, it tossed And murmured as upon a glowing fire The water in a cauldron, while the spray, Thrown upward, fell on both the summit-rocks; And when once more she swallowed the salt sea, It whirled within the abyss, while far below The bottom of blue sand was seen. My men Grew pale with fear; we looked into the gulf And thought our end was nigh. Then Scylla snatched Six of my comrades from our hollow barque, The best in valor and in strength of arm. I looked to my good ship; I looked to them, And saw their hands and feet still swung in air Above me, while for the last time on earth They called my name in agony of heart. As when an angler on a jutting rock Sits with his taper rod, and casts his bait To snare the smaller fish, he sends the horn Of a wild bull that guards his line afar Into the water, and jerks out a fish, And throws it gasping shoreward; so were they Uplifted gasping to the rocks, and there Scylla devoured them at her cavern’s mouth, Stretching their hands to me with piercing cries Of anguish. ’Twas in truth the saddest sight,