The Odyssey 9.483–497

and the backward flow, like a flood from the deep, bore the ship swiftly landwards and drove it upon the shore. But I seized a long pole in my hands and shoved the ship off and along the shore, and with a nod of my head I roused my comrades, and bade them fall to their oars that we might escape out of our evil plight. And they bent to their oars and rowed. But when, as we fared over the sea, we were twice as far distant, then was I fain to call to the Cyclops, though round about me my comrades, one after another, sought to check me with gentle words: “‘Reckless one, why wilt thou provoke to wrath a savage man, who but now hurled his missile into the deep and drove our ship back to the land, and verily we thought that we had perished there? And had he heard one of us uttering a sound or speaking, he would have hurled a jagged rock and crushed our heads and the timbers of our ship, so mightily does he throw.’