reins over their flying steeds, and hang floating over the lash. Then plaudits, and shouts of manly voices, and the clamorous fervour of the backers, make the whole woodland ring; the pent-up shores keep the sound rolling; the hills send back the blows of the noise. See! flying 30 ahead of the rest, gliding over the first water in the midst of crowd and hubbub, is Gyas; next him comes Cloanthus, with better oars, but the slow pinewood’s weight keeps him back. After them at equal distance the Shark and the Centaur strive to win precedence. And now the Shark 35 has it. Now she is beaten and passed by the Centaur. Now the two ride abreast stem to stem, cutting with their long keels the salt waves. And now they were nearing the rock, and the goal was just in their grasp, when Gyas, the leader, the victor of the halfway-passage, calls aloud to his ship’s pilot Menœtes:—“Whither away so far to my right? Steer us hither; hug the shore; let the oar-blade graze the cliffs on the left; leave the deep to others.” Thus he; 5 but Menœtes, afraid of hidden rocks, keeps turning the prow well towards the sea. “Whither away from the right course? Make for the rocks, Menœtes!” shouted Gyas again; and see! looking back, he perceives Cloanthus gaining on him close behind. Between Gyas’ ship and 10 the sounding rocks he threads his way to the left, steering inward, and in an instant passes the winner, leaves the goal behind, and gains the smooth open sea. Grief turned the youth’s very marrow to flame, nor were his cheeks free from tears; he seizes the slow Menœtes, forgetting 15 at once his own decency and his crew’s safety, and flings him headlong from the lofty stern into the sea. Himself becomes their guide at the helm, himself their pilot, cheering on the rowers, and turning the rudder to the shore. But Menœtes, when at last disgorged from the bottom of 20 the sea, heavy with age, and with his dripping clothes all hanging about him, climbs the cliff-top, and seats himself on a dry rock. The Teucrians laughed as he was falling, laughed as he was swimming, and now they laugh as he discharges from his chest the draught of brine. Then 25 sprung up an ecstatic hope in the two last, Sergestus and Mnestheus, of passing the lagging Gyas. Sergestus gets the choice of water and comes nearer the rock—not first, however, he by a whole vessel’s length—half his ship is ahead, half is overlapped by the beak of his rival, the 30 Shark. Mnestheus walks through the ship among the crew and cheers them on. “Now, now, rise to your oars, old Hector’s men, whom I chose to follow me at Troy’s last gasp; now put out the strength, the spirit I saw you exert in the Gætulian Syrtes, the Ionian Sea, the entangling 35 waves of Malea.