Still over the great deep were swept the rest Of those Achaeans, crouching terror-dazed Down in the ships, save those that mid the waves Had fallen. Misery encompassed all; For some with heavily-plunging prows drave on, With keels upturned some drifted. Here were masts Snapped from the hull by rushing gusts, and there Were tempest-rifted wrecks of scattered beams; And some had sunk, whelmed in the mighty deep, Swamped by the torrent downpour from the clouds: For these endured not madness of wind-tossed sea Leagued with heaven's waterspout; for streamed the sky Ceaselessly like a river, while the deep Raved round them. And one cried: "Such floods on men Fell only when Deucalion's deluge came, When earth was drowned, and all was fathomless sea!" So cried a Danaan, seeing soul-appalled That wild storm. Thousands perished; corpses thronged The great sea-highways: all the beaches were Too strait for them: the surf belched multitudes Forth on the land. The heavy-booming sea With weltering beams of ships was wholly paved, And here and there the grey waves gleamed between. So found they each his several evil fate, Some whelmed beneath broad-rushing billows, some Wretchedly perishing with their shattered ships By Nauplius' devising on the rocks. Wroth for that son whom they had done to death, He; when the storm rose and the Argives died, Rejoiced amid his sorrow, seeing a God Gave to his hands revenge, which now he wreaked Upon the host he hated, as o'er the deep They tossed sore-harassed. To his sea-god sire He prayed that all might perish, ships and men Whelmed in the deep. Poseidon heard his prayer, And on the dark surge swept them nigh his land. He, like a harbour-warder, lifted high A blazing torch, and so by guile he trapped The Achaean men, who deemed that they had won A sheltering haven: but sharp reefs and crags Gave awful welcome unto ships and men, Who, dashed to pieces on the cruel rocks In the black night, crowned ills with direr ills. Some few escaped, by a God or Power unseen Plucked from death's hand. Athena now rejoiced Her heart within, and now was racked with fears For prudent-souled Odysseus; for his weird Was through Poseidon's wrath to suffer woes Full many.