THE SIRENS, SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS, THE CATTLE OF THE SUN.
[A large fig tree in full leaf {101} grows upon it], and under it lies the sucking whirlpool of Charybdis. Three times in the day does she vomit forth her waters, and three times she sucks them down again; see that you be not there when she is sucking, for if you are, Neptune himself could not save you; you must hug the Scylla side and drive ship by as fast as you can, for you had better lose six men than your whole crew.'
"'Is there no way,' said I, 'of escaping Charybdis, and at the same time keeping Scylla off when she is trying to harm my men?'
"Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water.
"When we had passed the [Wandering] rocks, with Scylla and terrible Charybdis, we reached the noble island of the sun-god, where were the goodly cattle and sheep belonging to the sun Hyperion.
Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with "Scylla" on the one hand and "
Charybdis" on the other, along the east coast of Sicily, and in sight of Mount Etna, along the south coast of Italy, the west and south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up Athens Gulf, and into the Piraeus, Athens will be reached in two and a half or three days.
The reader can form an idea of the numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had caused him, and of all the temporal reefs among which his spiritual bark had been forced to tack, in order not to suffer shipwreck on either Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that
Charybdis which had devoured the Duc de Nemours and the Constable de Saint-Pol.
They were always fight--I mean, father had--that is, I mean, WE had more trouble keeping peace between them than we did between any of the rest of the Aiders," corrected Pollyanna, a little breathless from her efforts to steer between the Scylla of her father's past commands in regard to speaking of church quarrels, and the
Charybdis of her aunt's present commands in regard to speaking of her father.
"Talk of Scylla and
Charybdis!" soliloquized the discomfited Tom, as he wiped the perspiration from his face--"Where the d l does he think I am to find the $50,000 he wants, unless he first gives them to me?
He ceas'd; and SATAN staid not to reply, But glad that now his Sea should find a shore, With fresh alacritie and force renew'd Springs upward like a Pyramid of fire Into the wilde expanse, and through the shock Of fighting Elements, on all sides round Environ'd wins his way; harder beset And more endanger'd, then when ARGO pass'd Through BOSPORUS betwixt the justling Rocks: Or when ULYSSES on the Larbord shunnd
CHARYBDIS, and by th' other whirlpool steard.
The small matter which I have chronicled under the heading of "A Study in Scarlet," and that other later one connected with the loss of the Gloria Scott, may serve as examples of this Scylla and
Charybdis which are forever threatening the historian.
It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the
Charybdis of circumstantial evidence.