he had for making such horrid clamours in the night-time to break their
sleeps? if his fright proceeded from any mortal? if strength or craft had
given him his death's blow? He made answer from within that Noman had hurt
him, Noman had killed him, Noman was with him in the cave. They replied,
"If no man has hurt thee, and no man is with thee, then thou art alone,
and the evil that afflicts thee is from the hand of Heaven, which none can
resist or help." So they left him and went their way, thinking that some
disease troubled him. He, blind and ready to split with the anguish of the
pain, went groaning up and down in the dark, to find the doorway, which
when he found, he removed the stone, and sat in the threshold, feeling if
he could lay hold on any man going out with the sheep, which (the day now
breaking) were beginning to issue forth to their accustomed pastures. But
Ulysses, whose first artifice in giving himself that ambiguous name had
succeeded so well with the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be caught
by that palpable device. But casting about in his mind all the ways which
he could contrive for escape (no less than all their lives depending on
the success), at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots of the
osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly slept; with which he tied the
fattest and fleeciest of the rams together, three in a rank, and under the
belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last, wrapping himself
fast with both his hands in the rich wool of one, the fairest of the
flock.

And now the sheep began to issue forth very fast; the males went first,
the females, unmilked, stood by, bleating and requiring the hand of their
shepherd in vain to milk them, their full bags sore with being unemptied,
but he much sorer with the loss of sight. Still, as the males passed, he
felt the backs of those fleecy fools, never dreaming that they carried his
enemies under their bellies; so they passed on till the last ram came
loaded with his wool and Ulysses together. He stopped that ram and felt