till their bones have found a place of rest. A hundred years they wander hovering about these shores; then at last they embark, and see again the flood of their longing." Anchises' son stood and paused, musing deeply, and pitying at his heart a lot so unkind. Yes, there he sees, sadly 5 wandering without death's last tribute, Leucaspis and Orontes, the captain of Lycia's fleet: both had sailed with him from Troy over the stormy water, and the south wind whelmed them both, engulfing the vessel and its crew. 10
Lo! he sees his pilot, Palinurus, moving along—Palinurus, who but now, while voyaging from Libya, his eyes bent on the stars, had fallen' from the stern, flung out into the wide waste of waters. So when he had at last taken knowledge of his features, now saddened, in the 15 deep gloom, he thus accosts him first: "Who was it, Palinurus, of all the gods, that tore you from us, and whelmed you in the wide sea? Tell me who. Till now I never found him false; but in this one response Apollo has proved a cheat, foretelling that you would be unharmed 20 on the deep, and win your way to the Ausonian frontier, and thus it is that he keeps his word!" "Nay," returned he, "my chief, Anchises' son, Phœbus' tripod has told you no lie, nor did any god whelm me in the sea. No, I chanced to fall, tearing away by main force the 25 rudder, to which I was clinging like sentry to his post, as I guided your course, and dragging it with me in my headlong whirl. Witness those cruel waters, I felt no fear for my own life like that which seized me for your ship, lest, disarmed and disabled, shaken loose from her 30 ruler's hand, she should give way under the great sea that was rising then. Three long nights of storm the south wind swept me over the vast wilderness of convulsed ocean. Hardly at last, at the fourth dawn, I looked out aloft upon Italy from the crest of the wave. Stroke by 35 stroke I was swimming to shore; and now I was just laying hold on safety, had not the savage natives come on me, sword in hand, clogged as I was with my dripping
