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Scylla and Charybdis 2
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Episode #8: Scylla & Charybdis, Part 2
Circe’s Advice to Odysseus
‘But once your crew has rowed you past the Sirens
On the other side loom two enormous crags . . . One thrusts into the vaulting sky its jagged peak, hooded round with a dark cloud that never leaves— no clear bright air can ever bathe its crown, not even in summer's heat or harvest-time. No man on earth could scale it, mount its crest, not even with twenty hands and twenty feet for climbing, the rock's so smooth, like dressed and burnished stone. And halfway up that cliff side stands a fog-bound cavern gaping west toward Erebus, realm of death and darkness— past it, great Odysseus, you should steer your ship. No rugged young archer could hit that yawning cave with a winged arrow shot from off the decks. Scylla lurks inside it—the yelping horror, yelping, no louder than any suckling pup but she's a grisly monster, I assure you. No one could look on her with any joy, not even a god who meets her face-to-face ... She has twelve legs, all writhing, dangling down and six long swaying necks, a hideous head on each, each head barbed with a triple row of fangs, thickset, packed tight—and armed to the hilt with black death! Holed up in the cavern's bowels from her waist down she shoots out her heads, out of that terrifying pit, angling right from her nest, wildly sweeping the reefs for dolphins, dogfish or any bigger quarry she can drag from the thousands Amphitrite spawns in groaning seas. No mariners yet can boast they've raced their ship past Scylla's lair without some mortal blow— with each of her six heads she snatches up a man from the dark-prowed craft and whisks him off.
The other crag is lower—you will see, Odysseus—
'Yes, yes, but tell me the truth now, goddess,' I protested. 'Deadly Charybdis—can't I possibly cut and run from her and still fight Scylla off when Scylla strikes my men?'
'So stubborn!' the lovely goddess countered.
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Encounter with Scylla & Charybdis, Part 2
Yet, six more days, my eager companions feasted
on the cattle of the Sun,
But once we'd left that island in our wake— a murderous blast shearing the two forestays off so the mast toppled backward, its running tackle spilling into the bilge. The mast itself went crashing into the stern, it struck the helmsman's head and crushed his skull to pulp and down from his deck the man flipped like a diver— his hardy life spirit left his bones behind. Then, then in the same breath Zeus hit the craft with a lightning-bolt and thunder. Round she spun, reeling under the impact, filled with reeking brimstone, shipmates pitching out of her, bobbing round like seahawks swept along by the whitecaps past the trim black hull— and the god cut short their journey home forever.
But I went lurching along our battered hulk till the sea-surge ripped the plankings from the keel and the waves swirled it away, stripped bare, and snapped the mast from the decks— but a backstay made of bull's-hide still held fast, and with this I lashed the mast and keel together, made them one, riding my makeshift raft as the wretched galewinds bore me on and on.
At last the West Wind quit its wild rage but the South came on at once to hound me even more, making me double back my route toward cruel Charybdis. All night long I was rushed back and then at break of day I reached the crag of Scylla and dire Charybdis' vortex right when the dreadful whirlpool gulped the salt sea down. But heaving myself aloft to clutch at the fig-tree's height, like a bat I clung to its trunk for dear life—not a chance for a good firm foothold there, no clambering up it either, the roots too far to reach, the boughs too high overhead, huge swaying branches that overshadowed Charybdis. But I held on, dead set ... waiting for her to vomit my mast and keel back up again— Oh how I ached for both! and back they came, late but at last, at just the hour a judge at court, who's settled the countless suits of brash young claimants, rises, the day's work done, and turns home for supper— that's when the limbers reared back up from Charybdis. I let go—I plunged with my hands and feet flailing, crashing into the waves beside those great beams and scrambling aboard them fast I rowed hard with my hands right through the straits . . . And the father of men and gods did not let Scylla see me, else I'd have died on the spot—no escape from death. |