METAMORPHOSES BOOK III
out upon me and kept up their wrathful mutterings And one of them, Aethalion, broke out: 'I'd have you know, the safety of us all does not depend on you alone!' So saying, he came and took my place at the helm and, leaving the course for Naxos steered off in another direction. Then the god, in mockery of them, as if he had just discovered their faithlessness, looked out upon the sea from the curved stern, and in seeming tears cried out: 'These are not the shores you promised me, you sailor-men; and this is not the land I sought. What have I done to be so treated? And what glory will you gain if you, grown men, deceive a little boy? if you, so many, overcome just one?' I was long since in tears; but the godless crew mocked my tears and swept the seas with speeding oars. Now by the god himself I swear (for there is no god more surely near than he) that what I speak is truth, though far beyond belief. The ship stands still upon the waves, as if a dry-dock held her. The sailors in amaze redouble their striving at the oars and make all sail, hoping thus to speed their way by twofold power. But ivy twines and clings about the oars, creeps upward with many a back-flung, catching fold, and decks the sails with heavy, hanging clusters. The god himself, with his brow garlanded with clustering berries, waves a wand wreathed with ivy-leaves. Around him lie tigers, the forms (though empty all of lynxes and of fierce spotted panthers. The men leap overboard, driven on by madness or by fear And first Medon's body begins to grow dark and his back to be bent in a well-marked curve. Lycabas starts to say to him: 'Into what strange creature are you turning?' But as he speaks his own jaws
spread wide, his nose becomes hooked, and his skin
