"Yet it was not so sweet as the song of the Sirens, those bird-like damsels who wanted to tempt us on the rocks, so that our vessel might be wrecked, and our bones left whitening along the shore.""But just listen to the pleasant voices of those maidens, and that buzz of the loom, as the shuttle passes to and fro," said another comrade."What a domestic, household, home-like sound it is! Ah, before that weary siege of Troy, I used to hear the buzzing loom and the women's voices under my own roof.Shall Inever hear them again? nor taste those nice little savory dishes which my dearest wife knew how to serve up?""Tush! we shall fare better here," said another."But how innocently those women are babbling together, without guessing that we overhear them! And mark that richest voice of all, so pleasant and so familiar, but which yet seems to have the authority of a mistress among them.Let us show ourselves at once.What harm can the lady of the palace and her maidens do to mariners and warriors like us?""Remember," said Eurylochus, "that it was a young maiden who beguiled three of our friends into the palace of the king of the Laestrygons, who ate up one of them in the twinkling of an eye."No warning or persuasion, however, had any effect on his companions.They went up to a pair of folding doors at the farther end of the hall, and throwing them wide open, passed into the next room.Eurylochus, meanwhile, had stepped behind a pillar.In the short moment while the folding doors opened and closed again, he caught a glimpse of a very beautiful woman rising from the loom, and coming to meet the poor weather-beaten wanderers, with a hospitable smile, and her hand stretched out in welcome.There were four other young women, who joined their hands and danced merrily forward, making gestures of obeisance to the strangers.They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress.Yet Eurylochus fancied that one of them had sea-green hair, and that the close-fitting bodice of a second looked like the bark of a tree, and that both the others had something odd in their aspect, although he could not quite determine what it was, in the little while that he had to examine them.
The folding doors swung quickly back, and left him standing behind the pillar, in the solitude of the outer hall.There Eurylochus waited until he was quite weary, and listened eagerly to every sound, but without hearing anything that could help him to guess what had become of his friends.Footsteps, it is true, seemed to be passing and repassing, in other parts of the palace.Then there was a clatter of silver dishes, or golden ones, which made him imagine a rich feast in a splendid banqueting hall.But by and by he heard a tremendous grunting and squealing, and then a sudden scampering, like that of small, hard hoofs over a marble floor, while the voices of the mistress and her four handmaidens were screaming all together, in tones of anger and derision.Eurylochus could not conceive what had happened, unless a drove of swine had broken into the palace, attracted by the smell of the feast.Chancing to cast his eyes at the fountain, he saw that it did not shift its shape, as formerly, nor looked either like a long-robed man, or a lion, a tiger, a wolf, or an ass.It looked like nothing but a hog, which lay wallowing in the marble basin, and filled it from brim to brim.
But we must leave the prudent Eurylochus waiting in the outer hall, and follow his friends into the inner secrecy of the palace.As soon as the beautiful woman saw them, she arose from the loom, as I have told you, and came forward, smiling, and stretching out her hand.She took the hand of the foremost among them, and bade him and the whole party welcome.
"You have been long expected, my good friends," said she."Iand my maidens are well acquainted with you, although you do not appear to recognize us.Look at this piece of tapestry, and judge if your faces must not have been familiar to us."So the voyagers examined the web of cloth which the beautiful woman had been weaving in her loom; and, to their vast astonishment, they saw their own figures perfectly represented in different colored threads.It was a life-like picture of their recent adventures, showing them in the cave of Polyphemus, and how they had put out his one great moony eye;while in another part of the tapestry they were untying the leathern bags, puffed out with contrary winds; and farther on, they beheld themselves scampering away from the gigantic king of the Laestrygons, who had caught one of them by the leg.
Lastly, there they were, sitting on the desolate shore of this very island, hungry and downcast, and looking ruefully at the bare bones of the stag which they devoured yesterday.This was as far as the work had yet proceeded; but when the beautiful woman should again sit down at her loom, she would probably make a picture of what had since happened to the strangers, and of what was now going to happen.
