This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
On this she led the way, while
Telemakhos followed in her steps. When they got to the ship they
found the crew waiting by the water side, and Telemakhos said, "Now
my men, help me to get the stores on board; they are all put together
in the room, and my mother does not know anything about it, nor any
of the maid servants except one."
With these words he led the way
and the others followed after. When they had brought the things as he
told them, Telemakhos went on board, Athena going before him and
taking her seat in the stern of the vessel, while Telemakhos sat
beside her. Then the men loosed the hawsers and took their places on
the benches. Athena sent them a fair wind from the West, that
whistled over the seething deep waves whereon Telemakhos told them to
catch hold of the ropes and hoist sail, and they did as he told them.
They set the mast in its socket in the cross plank, raised it, and
made it fast with the forestays; then they hoisted their white sails
aloft with ropes of twisted ox hide. As the sail bellied out with the
wind, the ship flew through the seething deep water, and the foam
hissed against her bows as she sped onward. Then they made all fast
throughout the ship, filled the mixing-bowls to the brim, and made
drink offerings to the immortal gods that are from everlasting, but
more particularly to the gray-eyed daughter of Zeus.
Thus, then, the ship sped on her
way through the watches of the night from dark till dawn.
Homer. The Odyssey. Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Samuel Butler. Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy. A. C. Fifield, London. 1900 (?).
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.