"Bethink ye what they would have done in their cowardice if haply some
god had brought Heracles hither. Assuredly, if he had been here, no
trial would there have been of fists, I ween, but when the king drew
near to proclaim his rules, the club would have made him forget his
pride and the rules to boot. Yea, we left him uncared for on the strand
and we sailed oversea; and full well each one of us shall know our
baneful folly, now that he is far away."

Thus he spake, but all these things had been wrought by the counsels of
Zeus. Then they remained there through the night and tended the hurts of
the wounded men, and offered sacrifice to the immortals, and made ready
a mighty meal; and sleep fell upon no man beside the bowl and the
blazing sacrifice. They wreathed their fair brows with the bay that grew
by the shore, whereto their hawsers were bound, and chanted a song to
the lyre of Orpheus in sweet harmony; and the windless shore was charmed
by their song; and they celebrated the Therapnaean son of Zeus.[1]

[Footnote 1: i.e. Polydeuces.]

But when the sun rising from far lands lighted up the dewy hills and
wakened the shepherds, then they loosed their hawsers from the stem of
the bay-tree and put on board all the spoil they had need to take; and
with a favouring wind they steered through the eddying Bosporus.
Hereupon a wave like a steep mountain rose aloft in front as though
rushing upon them, ever upheaved above the clouds; nor would you say
that they could escape grim death, for in its fury it hangs over the
middle of the ship, like a cloud, yet it sinks away into calm if it
meets with a skilful helmsman. So they by the steering-craft of Tiphys
escaped, unhurt but sore dismayed. And on the next day they fastened the
hawsers to the coast opposite the Bithynian land.