Seventeen days he sails placidly along, and on the eighteenth appear the shadowy hills of the land of the Phaeacians, whither he is bound. Then spies him his old enemy, Poseidon, and the earth shaker gathers the clouds and rouses the storms, and down speeds night from heaven. The great waves smite down upon Odysseus, and he loses the helm from his hand and the mast is broken. He is thrown from his raft; but, again clutching it, clambers upon it, avoiding grim death. Woman is again destined to be the means of salvation for the hero. Ino of the fair ankles, daughter of Cadmus, in time past a mortal maiden, but now a sea nymph, Leucothea, marks his dire straits and takes pity upon him, and gives him her veil to wind about him when he throws himself into the deep. When his raft is at last broken asunder, he wraps the veil about him; and for two days and nights it bears him up until at length he makes the rugged shore. Throwing the veil into the stream, to be wafted back to fair-ankled Ino, Odysseus, bruised and battered, clambers among the reeds on the bank. He finds a resting place underneath two olive trees, and Athena sheds sweet sleep upon his eyelids. That same night, the daughter of the king of the Phaeacians, Nausicaa, beautiful like the goddesses, was sleeping in a sumptuous chamber. For it was to the island domain of King Alcinous, Scheria, land of the Phaeacians, that Odysseus had come. To the palace of the king went Athena, devising a return for the great-hearted Odysseus. "She betook her to the rich-wrought bower, wherein was sleeping a maiden like to the gods in form and comeliness, Nausicaa, the daughter of Alcinous, high of heart. Beside her, on each hand of the pillars of the door, were two handmaids, dowered with beauty from the Graces, and the shining doors were shut. "But the goddess, fleet as the breath of the wind, swept toward the couch of the maiden, and stood above her head." In the semblance of Nausicaa's favorite girl friend and comrade, the goddess addresses her: