I said that Captain Nemo wept as he regarded the waves. His grief was immense. This was the second companion he had lost since we had arrived on board, and what an end! This friend had been crushed, suffocated, and broken by the formidable arms of the squid, then ground in its iron jaws, and so could not rest with his companions in the peaceful waters of the coral cemetery! As for me, it was the cry of despair the wretch uttered in the heart of the battle which had torn at my heart.
I saw their feet and hands up high, as they
were carried off. In agony they cried
to me and called my name—their final words.
As when a fisherman out on a cliff
casts his long rod and line set round with oxhorn
to trick the little fishes with his bait;
when one is caught, he flings it gasping back
onto the shore—so those men gasped as Scylla
lifted them up high to her rocky cave
and at the entrance ate them up—still screaming,
still reaching out to me in their death throes.
That was the most heartrending sight I saw
in all the time I suffered on the sea
- Homer's "Odyssey", Book 12 (Emily Wilson translation)
