Eight Years on Calypso's Island — And the Storm That Almost Killed Odysseus Anyway

She told him he could go. His first reaction was suspicion — this felt like a trap, he said. He was being asked to cross open ocean on a raft, and he wasn't going to step onto any raft until she gave him her word that she wasn't secretly arranging his destruction. Calypso smiled, put her hand on his shoulder, and gave the oath. She said, simply, that her heart was not made of iron — she felt what he felt and she was not going to ruin the thing she was releasing him to do. She gave him a great bronze axe and a polished adze and led him to the edge of the island where the tallest trees grew — alders and poplars and pines. Then she went back to the cave and left him to work. Odysseus went at it fast and gladly. He felled twenty large trees, trimmed them, planed them. Calypso brought him additional tools, bolts, cloth for sails. In four days the raft was built. On the fifth she provisioned it — corn, wine, water, food she knew he liked — gave him warm new clothes, and sent him off with a gentle breeze behind him. She told him which stars to steer by, and he followed her instructions exactly. For seventeen days and nights he sailed and kept the stars at the right angle to his course. On the eighteenth day, land appeared ahead — the island of the Phaeacians, a people famous across the sea for their skill at sailing, rising from the water like a shield lying in the mist.

Odysseus built his raft from twenty felled trees in four days, provisioned it with food and water Calypso provided, and navigated for eighteen days by the stars she had pointed out to him — only to have Poseidon spot him within sight of land and send everything at him one more time.

Poseidon Comes Back — And Sees Odysseus Nearly Home

Poseidon returned from his travels and looked out across the sea. He saw Odysseus on his raft, moving peacefully toward the Phaeacian shore, close enough that landing was just a matter of time. He understood immediately that while he had been away, the other gods had changed things. His satisfaction at what followed is visible in the way the story tells it: Odysseus thought his sorrows were finished, did he. There was still time to drive him a little further along the road of suffering. The sea god gathered clouds, stirred the deep water, and released every storm and fierce wind he commanded at once. Black mist covered both sea and sky. The winds fought each other and piled the water into mountains that rolled toward the shore. The raft that had sailed steadily for eighteen days became a scrap of thistledown, tossed north when the south wind caught it, thrown west when the east wind hit. A wave tore the helm from Odysseus's hands. The mast snapped in two. The sail and yard flew away somewhere in the dark. The wave took Odysseus over the side and into the water. His clothes pulled him down with their weight. He came up spitting salt water, and — this is the detail that says everything about him — he didn't let go of the raft. He swam after it, caught it, and pulled himself back on.

The Sea-Nymph's Veil — Help He Almost Refused

A sea-nymph rising from the waves saw Odysseus on the battered raft and felt pity for him. She flew up to the raft like a white-winged gull and spoke to him plainly: Poseidon would not kill him if he did what she said. Strip off the heavy wet clothes. Leave the raft. Wrap her veil around his body. Swim for the land with everything he had. When he reached shore and touched solid ground with his hands, send the veil back to the sea without looking at it. She gave him the veil and dived back under the water. Odysseus didn't trust it. He had been deceived by enough gods and beautiful promises that his first instinct when something appeared to help him was to be suspicious. He decided he would stay on the raft as long as any of it held together. Only if the storm finally reduced it to pieces would he swim. Poseidon obliged. He sent one more wave — bigger than anything that had come before — and the raft came apart under it like chaff in a windstorm, beams and planks scattering in every direction. Odysseus grabbed a single plank and rode it like a man sitting a horse. He pulled off the wet clothes and wound the sea-nymph's veil around his body. Then he dropped from the plank and started swimming. Poseidon watched him and shook his head with contempt. Let him wander, he said. Then he drove his white-maned sea-horses back to his hall below the ocean and left Odysseus to the water. Athene was watching too. She told every wind to be still except the north wind, which she sent to push Odysseus toward the Phaeacian coast.

The Shore — Rocks, a River, and Dry Land at Last

For two more days and two more nights Odysseus swam on the swell of the sea. When the third dawn came, the water calmed and land was close. He could see the trees on the shore. He started swimming harder. Then he heard the sound — the deep, rhythmic crash of breakers against rock. The coast ahead had no harbour, no beach, no shelter. Only jutting headlands, reefs, and jagged crags with waves smashing against them and boiling back in foam. He could see that landing there meant being dashed against rock and killed. He could also see that staying in the water meant the storm winds or a sea monster would get him eventually. While he was still thinking through it a wave made the decision for him and drove him at the reef. He grabbed the rock with both hands as the wave broke over him and clung there until the water receded — and then the backwash came, tore his fingers loose, and threw him back into the sea with bleeding hands. Athene put an idea into his head before he went under: he rose and swam outside the breaker line, following the coast, looking for an inlet. He found a river mouth where the current met the sea smoothly. He called out to the river — the story has him addressing it directly, asking it to have pity and let him land — and the river calmed its water and carried him in. He lay on the bank with salt water streaming from his nose, his body bruised and swollen, barely breathing. When he came back to himself he remembered the sea-nymph's veil and let it drop into the current. It swept downstream and the nymph rose and caught it and took it away. Odysseus knelt in the reeds and kissed the earth. He was cold, and the river air was sharp, and the night would be dangerous without shelter. He climbed the hillside to a wood and found two olive trees growing so close together that their canopy blocked wind and sun and rain completely. He gathered dry leaves and heaped them around himself into a deep bed, pulled more leaves over the top like a blanket, and lay down. Athene sent him sleep. Under the fragrant leaves, covered and hidden and finally still, Odysseus slept.

After two days and nights swimming on open ocean, bleeding hands from the rocks, salt water still streaming from his nose — Odysseus reached dry land on the Phaeacian coast and knelt in the river reeds and kissed the ground, before climbing into the shelter of two olive trees and sleeping under a pile of dry leaves while Athene watched over him.