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"Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the
one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept
sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the
water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire,
and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When
she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside
whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it
broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the
whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their
wits ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were
expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down
suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking
at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their
hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as
Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name
in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in
hand, upon some jutting rock {104} throws bait into the water to
deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox's
horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to
the land as he catches them one by one--even so did Scylla land
these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the
mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their
hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening
sight that I saw throughout all my voyages.
"When we had passed the [Wandering] rocks, with Scylla and
terrible Charybdis, we reached the noble island of the sun-god,
where were the goodly cattle and sheep belonging to the sun
Hyperion. While still at sea in my ship I could bear the cattle
lowing as they came home to the yards, and the sheep bleating.
Then I remembered what the blind Theban prophet Teiresias had
told me, and how carefully Aeaean Circe had warned me to shun
the island of the blessed sun-god. So being much troubled I said
to the men, 'My men, I know you are hard pressed, but listen
while I tell you the prophecy that Teiresias made me, and how
carefully Aeaean Circe warned me to shun the island of the
blessed sun-god, for it was here, she said, that our worst
danger would lie. Head the ship, therefore, away from the
island.'
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