"The opposite point seems more a tongue of land you'd touch with a good bowshot, at the narrows. A great wild fig, a shaggy mass of leaves, grows on it, and Charybdis lurks below to swallow down the dark sea tide. Three times from dawn to dusk she spews it up and sucks it down again three times, a whiling maelstrom; if you come upon her then the god who makes earth tremble could not save you. No, hug the cliff of Scylla, take your ship through on a racing stroke, better to mourn six men than lose them all, and the ship too. . . ."
|