Lo! he sees his pilot, Palinurus, moving along—Palinurus, who but now, while voyaging from Libya, his eyes bent on the stars, had fallen’ from the stern, flung out into the wide waste of waters. So when he had at last taken knowledge of his features, now saddened, in the 15 deep gloom, he thus accosts him first: “Who was it, Palinurus, of all the gods, that tore you from us, and whelmed you in the wide sea? Tell me who. Till now I never found him false; but in this one response Apollo has proved a cheat, foretelling that you would be unharmed 20 on the deep, and win your way to the Ausonian frontier, and thus it is that he keeps his word!” “Nay,” returned he, “my chief, Anchises’ son, Phœbus’ tripod has told you no lie, nor did any god whelm me in the sea. No, I chanced to fall, tearing away by main force the 25 rudder, to which I was clinging like sentry to his post, as I guided your course, and dragging it with me in my headlong whirl. Witness those cruel waters, I felt no fear for my own life like that which seized me for your ship, lest, disarmed and disabled, shaken loose from her 30 ruler’s hand, she should give way under the great sea that was rising then. Three long nights of storm the south wind swept me over the vast wilderness of convulsed ocean. Hardly at last, at the fourth dawn, I looked out aloft upon Italy from the crest of the wave. Stroke by 35 stroke I was swimming to shore; and now I was just laying hold on safety, had not the savage natives come on me, sword in hand, clogged as I was with my dripping clothes, and clutching with talon fingers the steep mountain-top, and deemed blindly they had found a prize. Now the wave is my home, and the winds keep tossing me on the beach. Oh, by heaven’s pleasant sunshine and bright sky; by your father, I adjure you; by the 5 promise growing up with your Iulus, rescue me with that unconquered arm from this cruel fate: be yourself, and either spread earth upon me, for that you can surely do, and put back to Velia’s haven; or, if any way there be, any that your goddess mother can reveal—for well I 10 ween it is not without Heaven’s leave that you purpose to stem these fearful tides and the reluctant pool of Styx—stretch your hand to your poor friend, and take me with you over the water, that at least I may find in death a place of rest and peace.” So had he spoken, when thus 15 the priestess begins: “What demon, Palinurus, has set on you so monstrous a desire? You, unburied, look on the Stygian water, and the dread river of the furies? You set foot on the bank unbidden? Cease to dream that Heaven’s destiny can be swayed by prayer. Yet 20 hear and retain a word which may console your hard lot. For know that the dwellers in that fatal border, goaded