the words, you'll find no more difficulty as to vision, but will see everything quite plain.
Cha. Say them, then.
Merc.
How now? Can you see belter?
Cha. Wonderful! Lynceus himself would be blind in comparison! Now explain things to me, and answer my questions. But first, would you like me to ask you a question out of Homer, that you may see I'm not quite ignorant of the great poet?
Merc. How come you to know anything about him,—a sailor like you, always at the oar?
Cha. Look here now,—that's very disrespectful to my craft. Why, when I carried him across after he was dead, I heard him rhapsodising all the way, and I remember some of it. A terrible storm we had that voyage, too. He began some chant of not very happy omen for seafaring folk,—how Neptune gathered the clouds, and troubled the sea—stirring it up with his trident, like a ladle—rousing all the winds and everything else. He so disturbed the water with his poetry, that all on a sudden we had a perfect tempest about us, and the boat was wellnigh overset. Well, then, he fell sick himself, and vomited up great part of his poem,—Scylla and Charybdis, and the Cyclops, and all. I had no great trouble in picking up a few scraps of the contents. So, as the poet has it,—
- ↑ Hom., Il. v. 127.
