Meanwhile, Odysseus withdrew apart within the isle to supplicate the gods, hoping one of them might reveal the way of his return. As he strayed into the land apart from all the rest, he found a sheltered nook where no wind came, and prayed with washed hands to all the gods who dwelt in heaven. At last he fell into a soft slumber. But Eurylochus, in the meantime, was beguiling the men with fatal counsels. “Hear, my companions, sufferers as you are, the words that I shall speak. All modes of death are hateful to the wretched race of men; but this of hunger, thus to meet our fate, is the most fearful. Let us drive apart the best of all the oxen of the Sun, and sacrifice them to the immortal ones, who dwell in the broad heaven. And if we come to Ithaca, our country, we will there build to the Sun, whose path is o’er our heads, a sumptuous temple, and endow its shrine with many gifts and rare. But if it be his will, approved by all the other gods, to sink our bark in anger, for the sake of these high-horned oxen, I should choose sooner to gasp my life away amid the billows of the deep, than pine to death by famine in this melancholy isle.” The crew approved of this, and now from the neighboring herd they drove the best of all the beeves; for near the dark-prowed ship the fair broad-fronted herd with crooked horns was feeding. The crew stood round the victims and, offering their petitions to the gods, held tender oak leaves in their hands, just plucked from a tall tree, for in the good ship’s hold there was left no more white barley. When they had prayed, and slain and dressed the beeves, they hewed away the thighs and covered them with double folds of skin, and laid raw slices over these. They had no wine to pour in sacrifice upon the burning flesh, so they poured water instead, and roasted all the entrails thus. When the thighs were thoroughly consumed, the entrails tasted, all the rest was carved into small portions, and transfixed with spits. Just at this moment Odysseus awoke, and hurrying to the shore and his good ship, he perceived the savory steam from the burnt offering, and sorrowfully, then, he called upon the ever-living gods:—“O Father Jove, and all ye blessed gods, who live forever, ’twas a cruel sleep in which ye lulled me to my grievous harm. My comrades here have done a fearful wrong.” Then Lampetia, of the trailing robes, flew in haste to the Sun, who journeys round the earth, to tell him that the men had slain his beeves. In anger then he thus addressed the gods: “O Father Jove, and all ye blessed gods who never die, avenge the wrong I bear upon the comrades of Laertes’ son, Odysseus, who have foully slain my beeves, in which I took delight whene’er I rose into the starry heaven, and when again I sank from heaven to earth. If they make not large amends for this great wrong, I shall go down to Hades, there to shine among the dead.”