II

At early dawn, when the eastern wave was just silvered by the dim light, Calypso roused Odysseus, and equipped him for the task of the day.  First she gave him a weighty two-edged axe, well balanced on its haft of olive-wood, and an adze, freshly ground; then she showed him where the tall trees grew, and bade him fall to work with the axe.  Twenty great trees fell beneath his sturdy strokes, and he trimmed the trunks with the axe, and stripped off the bark.  Meanwhile Calypso had brought him an augur, and he bored the timbers, and fitted them together, and fastened them with bolts and cross-pieces.  So the raft grew under his hands, broad as the floor of a stout merchantship.  And he fenced her with bulwarks, piling up blocks of wood to steady them.  Last of all he made mast and sail and rigging; and when all was ready he thrust the frail vessel with rollers and levers down to the sea.

Four times the sun had risen and set before his labour was ended; and on the fifth day Calypso brought him provisions for the voyage, a great goatskin bottle full of water, and a smaller one of wine, and a sack of corn, with other choice viands as a relish to his bread.

A joyful man was Odysseus when he spread his sail, and took his place at the helm, and waved a last farewell to his gentle friend.  A fair breeze wafted him swiftly from the shore, and ere long that lovely island, at once his home and his prison for seven long years, became a mere shadow in the distance.  All night he sat sleepless, tiller in hand, watching the pilot stars, the Pleiades, and Booetes, and the Bear, named also the Wain, which turns on one spot, and watches Orion, and never dips into the ocean stream.  For the goddess Calypso had bidden him keep that star on the left hand as he sailed the seas.  Thus he voyaged for seventeen days, and on the eighteenth he saw afar off, dimly outlined, a range of hills, rising, like the back of a shield, above the horizon’s verge.

Now Poseidon, his great enemy, had been absent for many days on a far journey, and thus had taken no part in the council at Olympus when Zeus had issued his order for the release of Odysseus.  Just at this time he was on his way back to Olympus, and caught sight of the bold voyager steering towards the nearest land.  “Ha! art thou there?” said the implacable god, shaking his head; “and have the other powers plotted against me in my absence, to frustrate my just anger?  Thy wanderings are well-nigh over, poor wretch!  But thou shalt taste once more of my vengeance, before thou reachest yonder shore.”