quick elemental change of scene, but the change had its influence with the spectators.

The sad fire—if the glow of regret is indeed a fire—died out of heavy eyes half veiled by weary lids. The sea-light dawned once more upon the faces of the mariners, the bright warm blood moved swiftly in their veins.

One man ran to the steering oar to give an aid to the helmsman as the ship went about on the starboard tack, three more stood by the sheet, a hum of talk rose from the waist of the boat. Ulysses stood in the bows looking forward into the night. His tall, lean figure was bent forward, and his arm was thrown round the gilded boss of the prow. His eyes were deep set in his head, and his brow was furrowed with the innumerable wrinkles which come to the man who lives a life of hardship and striving.

Yet the long years of battle and wandering, a life of shocks! had only intensified the alertness of his pose. He seemed, as he looked out into the night, a personification of “readiness.” A crisp dark beard grew round his throat, and the veins on his bare brown arms were like blue enamel round a column of bronze.

When the ship went about again he came down into the body of the ship and helped to pull upon the brace. Though he was no taller than many of his men, and leaner than most, in physical strength as well as in intellect he was first and chief. The mighty muscles leapt up on his arms as he strained on the taut rope.

The ship slanted away down the wind into the night. The men gathered round their captain. “Comrades,” he said to them in a singularly sweet and musical voice, “once more we adventure the deep, and no man knows what shall befall us. To our island home in the west, to dear Ithaca! if the gods so will it. Our wives weep for us on our deserted hearthstone. Our little ones are noble youths ere now, and may Zeus bring us safe home at last. Yet much it misdoubts me that there are other perils in store for us ere we hear the long breakers beat upon the shores of Ithaca and see the morning sun run down the wooded sides of Neriton. Be that as the Fates will it, let us keep always courage, gaiety, and the quiet mind.”

“We are well away from there,” said one of the men, nodding vaguely towards the stern.

“That are we,” said another; “that cursed fruit is honeysweet in my mouth still. It stole away our brains and made us as women, we! the men who fought in Troyland.”

“Of what profit is it to look to the past, Phocion?” said Ulysses. “We did eat and sleep and forget, but it is over. The sea wind is salt once more upon our faces. Let us eat the night meal, and then I will choose a watch and the rest may sleep. Hand me the cup—To to-morrow’s dawn!”

Then one of the sailors took dried goat’s flesh and fruit from a locker in the stern, and by the light of a torch of sawn sandal wood they fell to eating. Great bunches of purple grapes lay before each sailor, but they had brought none of the magic lotus fruit with them to steal away their vigour and thicken their blood.

Then they lay down to sleep under coverings of skins. Two men went to the great steering oar, three men watched amidship by the braces, and Ulysses himself wrapped a woollen cloak round him and went once more into the bows.

Alone there with the wind his thoughts once more went back to his far distant home. He thought with longing of his old father Laertes, of the child Telemachus playing in the marble courtyard of the sunny palace on the hill. A deep sigh shuddered out from his lips as his thoughts fell upon the lonely Queen Penelope. “Wife of mine,” he thought, “shall I ever lie beside you more? Is there silver in your bright hair now? Are your thoughts to mewards as mine to you? Perchance another rules in my palace and sits at my seat. Are your lips another’s now? The great tears are blinding me. Courage!”

Bending his head upon his breast, Ulysses prayed long and earnestly to his awful patroness, the Goddess Athene, that she would still keep ward over his fortunes and guide him safely home.

The night wore on and became very silent. The ship seemed to be moving swiftly and surely, though the wind had dropped and the voice of the waves was hushed. It seemed to the watcher in the bows that the ship was moving in the path of some strong current.

A curious white mist suddenly rolled over the still surface of the sea, thick and ghostly. The mast and sail, which was now drooping and lifeless, swayed through it like giant spectres. Ulysses could see none of his companions, but when he hailed the watch the voice of Phocion came back to him through the ghostly curtain, curiously thick and muffled.

“The mist thickens, my captain,” said the sailor. “Can you see aught ahead?”

“I can see nothing, Phocion,” shouted Ulysses; “the mist is like wool. But I think it is a land mist come out to meet us. There should be land ahead.”

“I hear no surf or the rolling of waves,” said Phocion. “May Zeus guide the boat, for mortal men are of no avail to-night.”

The ship moved on swiftly as if guided by invisible hands towards some goal, and still the expectant mariners heard no sound.

Quite suddenly, and without the slightest warning, a vivid copper-coloured flash of lightning illuminated the ship. For an instant in the hard lurid light Ulysses saw the whole of the vessel in a distinct picture.

Every detail was manifest—the mast, the cordage, the sleeping sailors below, the watching group by the shrouds, and, right away astern, the startled helmsmen motionless as statues of bronze.

Then with a long grinding noise the ship seemed suddenly lifted up in the water, jerked forward, and then dropped again. She began to heel over a little out of the perpendicular, and then remained still, stranded upon an unknown and mysterious shore, where the waves were all asleep. Still the white mist circled round them.

“Comrades,” said Ulysses, “we are brought here by no chance of wind and waves. Some god has done this thing, but whether for weal or woe I cannot tell. Let us land upon the beach and lie down with our weapons within sound of the sea till dawn. At sunrise we shall know where the god has brought us.”

They landed at the order, and with the supreme indifference of the adventurer lay upon the shore and slept out the remainder of the night. But Ulysses had a prescience of harm, and was full of sinister forebodings. He did not sleep, but paced through the mist all night in a little beaten track among the boulders. He prayed long and earnestly to Athene.

When the first faint hintings of dawn brightened through the mist a little breeze arose, and before the sky was more than faintly flushed with day the night fog was blown away like thistledown.

As the sun climbed up the sky the companions found that they had been carried to a scene of singular beauty. They were on an island, a small, rich place at the mouth of a great bay. Rich level grass meadows, green as bright enamel and brilliant with flowers, sloped gently down to the violet sea. Behind was a thickly-wooded hill, at the foot of which was a sparkling spring surrounded by a tall grove of poplar trees.

In the leafy wood the wild goats leapt under the wild vine trees like Pan at play, as fearless of the intruders as if they had never seen men before. All the bright morning the sailors made the wood ring with happy laughter as they speared the goats for a feast. All trouble passed from their minds, and as the spears flashed swiftly through the green wood the shrill, jocund voices of the hunters made all the island musical. Ulysses plunged into a translucent pool at the foot of the spring, and the cool