It was of no use that he went on shouting. No one came to him any more; and Ulysses laughed because he had tricked him so cunningly by calling himself Nobody. Polyphemus got up at last, moaning and groaning with the dreadful pain, and groped his way with his hands against the sides of the cave until he came to the door. Then he took down the great stone, and sat with his arms stretched out wide; and he said to himself, “Now I shall be sure to catch them, for no one can get out without passing me.” But Ulysses was too clever for him yet; for he went quietly, and fastened the great rams of Polyphemus together with long bands of willow. He tied them together by threes, and under the stomach of the middle one he tied one of his men, until he had fastened them all up safely. Then he went and caught hold of the largest ram of all, and clung on with his hands to the thick wool underneath his stomach; and so they waited in a great fright, lest after all the giant might catch and kill them. At last the pale light of the morning came into the eastern sky, and very soon the sheep and the goats began to go out of the cave. Polyphemus passed his hands over the backs of all the sheep as they went by, but he did not feel the willow bands, because their wool was long and thick, and he never thought that any one would be tied up underneath their stomachs. Last of all came the great ram to which Ulysses was clinging. When Polyphemus passed his hand over his back, he stroked him gently and said, “Is there something the matter with you too, as there is with your master? You were always the first to go out of the cave, and now to-day for the first time you are the last. I am sure that that horrible Nobody is at the bottom of all this. Ah, old ram, perhaps it is that you are sorry for your master, whose eye Nobody has put out. I wish you could speak like a man, and tell me where he is. If I could but catch him, I would take care that he never got away again, and then I should have some comfort for all the evil which Nobody has done me.” So he sent the ram on; and when he had gone a little way from the cave, Ulysses got up from under the ram, and went and untied all his friends, and very glad they were to be free once more, although they could not help grieving, when they thought of the men whom Polyphemus had killed. But Ulysses told them to make haste and drive as many of the sheep and goats as they could to the ships. So they drove them down to the shore and hurried them into the ships, and began to row away; and soon they would have been out of the reach of the Cyclops, if Ulysses could only have held his tongue. He was so angry himself, that he thought he would like to make Polyphemus still more angry; so he shouted to him, “Cruel Cyclops, did you think that you would not be punished for eating up my friends? Is this the way in which you receive strangers who have been tossed about by many storms upon the sea?”