They beach on Circe's island, where dawn looks like anywhere else, and send men for Elpenor's body. They cut firewood on the headland, burn him in his armour, raise a cairn and a stone, and fix his oar on top. Circe comes down with a servant carrying bread, meat, and wine. She walks them to the ship and names the road. Pass the Sirens. Stop the men's ears with wax. Bind Odysseus to the mast if he wants the song, and bind him faster if he begs. Hug Scylla's rock and lose six rather than the whole ship in Charybdis, which vomits and sucks three times a day. Do not put on armour or dawdle for a second cast. Leave the Sun's seven herds on Thrinacia, watched by Phaethusa and Lampetie.
The wind dies dead calm at the Sirens. The men furl the sails and take to the oars. Odysseus kneads a wheel of wax in the sun, plugs every ear, and stands bound hands and feet to the cross-piece. The Sirens call him the great glory of the Achaeans and promise knowledge. He frowns for release. Eurylochus and Perimedes bind him tighter and row out of hearing. Then the strait. He tells the crew nothing about Scylla, knowing they would huddle in the hold. He puts on armour against Circe's order, takes two spears, and cannot even see the monster on the gloomy rock. Six heads take six of his best men, lifted writhing like fish, while he watches.
They sight Thrinacia. Odysseus wants to pass it. Eurylochus, speaking for exhausted men, calls him iron and forces a night landing. They swear not to kill a single head. A month of south wind eats the stores Circe packed. While Odysseus goes inland to pray, covering his head, Eurylochus argues that famine is worse than salt water once for all, and that they can build the Sun a temple if they ever see Ithaca. The men drive in the best cows and use oak-shoots for barley-meal. The hides crawl. The joints on the spits low like living cattle. Lampetie tells Hyperion. They eat anyway.
At sea Zeus splits the ship with lightning. The men fall looking like sea-gulls. Every one drowns except Odysseus, who straddles the keel and mast. The west gale spends itself. The south wind carries him back to Charybdis. He hangs from the fig tree like a bat until the wreckage works free. Nine days later the gods strand him on Ogygia, Calypso's island. The wanderings-tale is done. The cattle rule is no longer a warning. It is the reason he is alone.
Coming Up in Chapter 13
The Phaeacian ship runs half her length onto Ithaca's sand and lays Odysseus down still asleep beside the gifts, away from the road. He wakes in fog, on his own shore, and does not know it.
