The Adventures of Ulysses

by Bernard Evslin

  So Morpheus mixed no colors for Ulysses’ sleep but let him dream his own dreams and read them as they came. He hovered above the sleeping king and could not leave.

  “What monsters he makes,” he said to himself. “Look at that giant with the single eye in the middle of his forehead. And that terrible spider-woman with all those legs … Ah, the things he dreams, this angry sleeper. What bloody mouths, what masts falling, sails ripping, what rocks and reefs, what shipwrecks … How many deaths?”

  Ulysses awoke, choking, out of a terrible nightmare. It seemed to him that in his sleep he had seen the whole voyage laid out before him, had seen his ships sinking, his men drowning. Monsters had crowded about him, clutching, writhing. He sat up and looked about. His men lay asleep among heaped flowers. As he watched, one opened his eyes, raised himself on an elbow, took a handful of flowers, stuffed them into his mouth, and immediately fell asleep again.

  Ulysses smelled the honey sweetness and felt an overpowering hunger. He took some of the flowers and raised them to his mouth. As their fragrance grew stronger, he felt his eyelids drooping, his arms growing heavy, and he thought: “It is these flowers that are making us sleep. Their scent alone brings sleep. I must not eat them.”

  But he could not put them down; his hand would not obey him. Exerting all the bleak force of his will, he grasped his right hand with his left—as if it belonged to someone else—and one by one forced open his fingers and let the flowers fall.

  Then he dragged himself to his feet and walked slowly into the sea. He went under and arose snorting. His head had cleared. But when he went up on the beach, the sweet fragrance rose like an ether and made him dizzy again.

  “I must work swiftly,” he said.

  One by one he carried the sleeping men to the ships and propped them on their benches. His strength was going. The honey smell was invading him, making him droop with sleep. He took his knife and, cutting sharp splinters of wood to prop open his eyelids, staggered back among the men. He worked furiously now, lifting them on his shoulders, carrying them two at a time, throwing them into the ships.

  Finally, the beach was cleared. The men lolled sleeping upon the benches. Then, all by himself, using his last strength, he pushed the ships into the water. When the ships were afloat in the shallow water, he lashed one to another with rawhide line, his own ship in front. Then he raised his sail and took the helm.

  The wind was blowing from the southwest. It filled his sail. The line grew taut; the file of ships moved away from Lotusland.

  The men began to awake from their dreams of home and found themselves upon the empty sea again. But the long sleep had rested them, and they took up their tasks with new strength.

  Ulysses kept the helm, grim and unsmiling. For he knew that what he had seen painted on the walls of his sleep was meant to come true and that he was sailing straight into a nightmare.

  The Cyclops’ Cave

  AFTER HE HAD RESCUED his crew from Lotusland, Ulysses found that he was running from one trouble into another. They were still at sea, and there was no food for the fleet. The men were hungry and getting dangerous. Ulysses heard them grumbling: “He should have left us there in Lotusland. At least when you’re asleep you don’t know you’re hungry. Why did he have to come and wake us up?” He knew that unless he found food for them very soon he would be facing a mutiny.

  That part of the Aegean Sea was dotted with islands. On every one of them was a different kind of enemy. The last thing Ulysses wanted to do was to go ashore, but there was no other way of getting food. He made a landfall on a small, mountainous island. He was very careful; he had the ships of the fleet moor offshore and selected twelve of his bravest men as a landing party.

  They beached their skirl and struck inland. It was a wild, hilly place, full of boulders, with very few trees. It seemed deserted. Then Ulysses glimpsed something moving across the valley, on the slope of a hill. He was too far off to see what they were, but he thought they must be goats since the hill was so steep. And if they were goats they had to be caught. So the men headed downhill, meaning to cross the valley and climb the slope.

  Ulysses had no way of knowing it, but in the entire sea this was the very worst island on which the small party could have landed. For here lived the Cyclopes, huge savage creatures, tall as trees, each with one eye in the middle of his forehead. Once, long ago, they had lived in the bowels of Olympus, forging thunderbolts for Zeus. But he had punished them for some fault, exiling them to this island where they had forgotten all their smithcraft and did nothing but fight with each other for the herds of wild goats, trying to find enough food to fill their huge bellies. Best of all, they liked storms; storms meant shipwrecks. Shipwrecks meant sailors struggling in the sea, who could be plucked out and eaten raw; and the thing they loved best in the world was human flesh. The largest and the fiercest and the hungriest of all the Cyclopes on the island was one named Polyphemus. He kept constant vigil on his mountain, in fair weather or foul. If he spotted a ship, and there was no storm to help, he would dive into the sea and swim underwater, coming up underneath the ship and overturning it. Then he would swim off with his pockets full of sailors.

  On this day he could not believe his luck when he saw a boat actually landing on the beach and thirteen meaty-looking sailors disembark and begin to march toward his cave. But there they were, climbing out of the valley now, up the slope of the hill, right toward the cave. He realized they must be hunting his goats.

  The door of the cave was an enormous slab of stone. He shoved this aside so that the cave stood invitingly open, casting a faint glow of firelight upon the dusk. Over the fire, on a great spit, eight goats were turning and roasting. The delicious savors of the cooking drifted from the cave. Polyphemus lay down behind a huge boulder and waited.

  The men were halfway up the slope of the hill when they smelled the meat roasting. They broke into a run. Ulysses tried to restrain them, but they paid no heed—they were too hungry. They raced to the mouth of the cave and dashed in. Ulysses drew his sword and hurried after them. When he saw the huge fireplace and the eight goats spitted like sparrows, his heart sank because he knew that they had come into reach of something much larger than themselves. However, the men were giving no thought to anything but food; they flung themselves on the spit and tore into the goat meat, smearing their hands and faces with sizzling fat, too hungry to feel pain as they crammed the hot meat into their mouths.

  There was a loud rumbling sound; the cave darkened. Ulysses whirled around. He saw that the door had been closed. The far end of the cavern was too dark to see anything, but then—amazed, aghast—he saw what looked like a huge red lantern far above, coming closer. Then he saw the great shadow of a nose under it and the gleam of teeth. He realized that the lantern was a great flaming eye. Then he saw the whole giant, tall as a tree, with huge fingers reaching out of the shadows, fingers bigger than baling hooks. They closed around two sailors and hauled them screaming into the air.

  As Ulysses and his horrified men watched, the great hand bore the struggling little men to the giant’s mouth. He ate them, still wriggling, the way a cat eats a grasshopper; he ate them clothes and all, growling over their raw bones.

  The men had fallen to their knees and were whimpering like terrified children, but Ulysses stood there, sword in hand, his agile brain working more swiftly than it ever had before.

  “Greetings,” he called. “May I know to whom we are indebted for such hospitality?”

  The giant belched and spat out buttons. “I am Polyphemus,” he growled. “This is my cave, my mountain, and everything that comes here is mine. I do hope you can all stay to dinner. There are just enough of you to make a meal. Ho, ho …” And he laughed a great, choking, phlegmy laugh, swiftly lunged, and caught another sailor, whom he lifted into the air and held before his face.

  “Wait!” cried Ulysses.

  “What for?”

  “You won’t enjoy him that way. He is from Attica, where the olive
s grow. He was raised on olives and has a very delicate, oily flavor. But to appreciate it, you must taste the wine of the country.”

  “Wine? What is wine?”

  “It is a drink. Made from pressed grapes. Have you never drunk it?”

  “We drink nothing but ox blood and buttermilk here.”

  “Ah, you do not know what you have missed, gentle Polyphemus. Meat-eaters, in particular, love wine. Here, try it for yourself.”

  Ulysses unslung from his belt a full flask of unwatered wine. He gave it to the giant, who put it to his lips and gulped. He coughed violently and stuck the sailor in a little niche high up in the cave wall, then leaned his great slab of a face toward Ulysses and said:

  “What did you say this drink was?”

  “Wine. A gift of the gods to man, to make women look better and food taste better. And now it is my gift to you.”

  “It’s good, very good.” He put the flask to his lips and swallowed again. “You are very polite. What’s your name?”

  “My name? Why I am—nobody.”

  “Nobody … Well, Nobody, I like you. You’re a good fellow. And do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to save you till last. Yes, I’ll eat all your friends first, and give you extra time, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Ulysses looked up into the great eye and saw that it was redder than ever. It was all a swimming redness. He had given the monster, who had never drunk spirits before, undiluted wine. Surely it must make him sleepy. But was a gallon enough for that great gullet? Enough to put him to sleep—or would he want to eat again first? “Eat ’em all up, Nobody—save you till later. Sleep a little first. Shall I? Won’t try to ran away, will you? No—you can’t, can’t open the door—too heavy, ha, ha.… You take a nap, too, Nobody. I’ll wake you for breakfast. Breakfast …”

  The great body crashed full-length on the cave floor, making the very walls of the mountain shake. Polyphemus lay on his back, snoring like a powersaw. The sailors were still on the floor, almost dead from fear.

  “Up!” cried Ulysses. “Stand up like men! Do what must be done! Or you will be devoured like chickens.”

  He got them to their feet and drew them about him as he explained his plan.

  “Listen now, and listen well, for we have no time. I made him drunk, but we cannot tell how long it will last.”

  Ulysses thrust his sword into the fire; they saw it glow white-hot.

  “There are ten of us,” he said. “Two of us have been eaten, and one of our friends is still unconscious up there on his shelf of rock. You four get on one side of his head, and the rest on the other side. When I give the word, lay hold of the ear on your side, each of you. And hang on, no matter how he thrashes, for I am going to put out his eye. And if I am to be sure of my stroke, you must hold his head still. One stroke is all I will be allowed.”

  Then Ulysses rolled a boulder next to the giant’s head and climbed on it, so that he was looking down into the eye. It was lidless and misted with sleep—big as a furnace door and glowing softly like a banked fire. Ulysses looked at his men. They had done what he said, broken into two parties, one group at each ear. He lifted his white-hot sword.

  “Now!” he cried.

  Driving down with both hands and all the strength of his back and shoulders and all his rage and all his fear, Ulysses stabbed the glowing spike into the giant’s eye.

  His sword jerked out of his hand as the head flailed upward; men pelted to the ground as they lost their hold. A huge screeching, curdling bellow split the air.

  “This way!” shouted Ulysses.

  He motioned to his men, and they crawled on their bellies toward the far end of the cave where the herd of goats was tethered. They slipped into the herd and lay among the goats as the giant stomped about the cave, slapping the walls with great blows of his hands, picking up boulders and cracking them together in agony, splitting them to cinders, clutching his eye, a scorched hole now, from which the brown blood jelled. He moaned and gibbered and bellowed in frightful pain; his groping hand found the sailor in the wall, and he tore him to pieces between his fingers. Ulysses could not even hear the man scream because the giant was bellowing so.

  Now Ulysses saw that the Cyclops’ wild stampeding was giving place to a plan. For now he was stamping on the floor in a regular pattern, trying to find and crush them beneath his feet. He stopped moaning and listened. The sudden silence dazed the men with fear. They held their breath and tried to muffle the sound of their beating hearts; all the giant heard was the breathing of the goats. Then Ulysses saw him go to the mouth of the cave and swing the great slab aside and stand there. He realized just in time that the goats would rush outside, which is what the giant wanted, for then he could search the whole cave.

  Ulysses whispered: “Quickly, swing under the bellies of the rams. Hurry, hurry!”

  Luckily, they were giant goats and thus able to carry the men who had swung themselves under their bellies and were clinging to the wiry wool. Ulysses himself chose the largest ram. They moved toward the mouth of the cave and crowded through. The Cyclops’ hands came down and brushed across the goats’ backs feeling for the men, but the animals were huddled too closely together for him to reach between and search under their bellies. So he let them pass through.

  Now the Cyclops rushed to the corner where the goats had been tethered and stamped, searched, and roared through the whole cave again, bellowing with fury when he did not find them. The herd grazed on the slope of the hill beneath the cave. There was a full moon; it was almost bright as day.

  “Stay where you are,” Ulysses whispered.

  He heard a crashing, peered out, and saw great shadowy figures converging on the cave. He knew that the other Cyclopes of the island must have heard the noise and had come to see. He heard the giant bellow.

  The others called to him: “Who has done it? Who has blinded you?”

  “Nobody. Nobody did it. Nobody blinded me.”

  “Ah, you have done it yourself. What a tragic accident.”

  And they went back to their own caves.

  “Now!” said Ulysses. “Follow me!”

  He swung himself out from under the belly of the ram and raced down the hill. The others raced after him. They were halfway across the valley when they heard great footsteps rushing after them, and Polyphemus bellowing nearer and nearer.

  “He’s coming!” cried Ulysses. “Run for your lives!”

  They ran as they had never run before, but the giant could cover fifty yards at a stride. It was only because he could not see and kept bumping into trees and rocks that they were able to reach the skiff and push out on the silver water before Polyphemus burst out of the grove of trees and rushed onto the beach. They bent to the oars, and the boat scudded toward the fleet.

  Polyphemus heard the dip of the oars and the groaning of the oarlocks and, aiming at the sound, hurled huge boulders after them. They fell all around the ship but did not hit. The skiff reached Ulysses’ ship, and the sailors climbed aboard.

  “Haul anchor, and away!” cried Ulysses. And then called to the Cyclops: “Poor fool! Poor blinded, drunken, gluttonous fool—if anyone else asks you, it is not Nobody, but Ulysses who has done this to you.”

  But he was to regret this final taunt. The gods honor courage but punish pride.

  Polyphemus, wild with rage, waded out chest-deep and hurled a last boulder, which hit mid-deck, almost sunk the ship, and killed most of the crew—among them seven of the nine men who had just escaped.

  And Polyphemus prayed to Poseidon: “God of the Sea, I beg you, punish Ulysses for this. Visit him with storm and shipwreck and sorceries. Let him wander many years before he reaches home, and when he gets there let him find himself forgotten, unwanted, a stranger.”

  Poseidon heard this prayer and made it all happen just that way.

  Keeper of the Winds

  NOW THE BLACK SHIPS beat their way northward from the land of the Cyclopes. And Ulysses, ignorant of the mighty curse t
hat the blind giant had fastened upon him, was beginning to hope that they might have fair sailing the rest of the way home. So impatient was he that he took the helm himself and kept it night and day although his sailors pleaded with him to take some rest. But he was wild with eagerness to get home to his wife Penelope, to his young son Telemachus, and to the dear land of Ithaca that he had not seen for more than ten years now.

  At the end of the third night, just as the first light was staining the sky, he saw something very strange—a wall of bronze, tall and wide, floating on the sea and blocking their way. At first he thought it was a trick of the light, and he rubbed his eyes and looked again. But there it was, a towering, bright wall of beaten bronze.

  “Well,” he thought to himself, “it cannot stretch across the sea. There must be a way to get around it.”

  He began to sail along the wall as though it were the shore of an island, trying to find his way around. Finally, he came to a huge gate, and even as he gazed upon it in amazement, the gate swung open and the wind changed abruptly. The shrouds snapped, the sails bulged, the masts groaned, and all three ships of the fleet were blown through the gate, which immediately clanged shut behind them. Once within the wall, the wind fell off and Ulysses found his ship drifting toward a beautiful, hilly island. Suddenly there was a great howling of wind. The sun was blown out like a candle. Darkness fell upon the waters. Ulysses felt the deck leap beneath him as the ship was lifted halfway out of the water by the ferocious gust and hurled through the blackness. He tried to shout, but the breath was torn from his mouth, and he lost consciousness.

  Ulysses had no way of knowing this, but the mischievous Poseidon had guided his ships to the island fortress of Aeolus, Keeper of the Winds. Ages before, when the world was very new, the gods had become fearful of the terrible strength of the winds and had decided to tame them. So Zeus and Poseidon, working together, had floated an island upon the sea and girdled it about with a mighty bronze wall. Then they set a mountain upon the island and hollowed out that mountain until it was a huge stone dungeon. Into this hollow mountain they stuffed the struggling winds and appointed Aeolus as their jailer. And there the winds were held captive. Whenever the gods wanted to stir up a storm and needed a particular wind, they sent a message to Aeolus, who would draw his sword and stab the side of the mountain, making a hole big enough for the wind to fly through. If the north wind were wanted, he stabbed the north side of the mountain, its east slope for the east wind, and so on. When the storm was done, he would whistle the wind home, and the huge brawling gale, broken by its imprisonment, would crawl back whimpering to its hole.