He chose a stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which he sharpened and hardened in the fire, and then with the assistance of his men, thrust the sharp red hot end into the eye of the drunken cannibal. The scalded blood gushed out, the eyeball smoked, and the strings of the eye cracked as the burning rafter broke in it; the eye fairly hissed as hot iron hisses when plunged into water. The giant waking, roared with the pain so loudly that the sound seemed like heavy thunder-claps. He plucked the burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave. Blind and groaning with pain, he groped through the darkness to find the doorway, from which when found he removed the stone, and sat in the threshold to prevent Ulysses and the survivors of his band from going out. They managed, however, to elude his vigilance, and returned to their ships, where their companions, with tears in their eyes, received them as men escaped from death. Quickly they spread their sails, plied their oars, and moved away from that dreadful spot. The Cyclop hearing the noise pushed to the water’s brink, plucked a fragment of rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark in which Ulysses sat. Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop: “Cyclop, thou shouldst not have so much abused thy monstrous strength, as to devour thy guests. If any ask who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes, the King of Ithaca.” Then crowding sail, they glided rapidly before the wind, and soon came to Lamos, a port of the _Læstrygonians_.