Book 1
40
For a year and eight months we lived in this way, but on the fifth day of the ninth month, about the second mouth-opening—for the whale did it once an hour, so that we told time by the openings—about the second opening, as I said, much shouting and commotion suddenly made itself heard, and what seemed to be commands and oar-beats. Compare the description of the sea-fight between Corinth and Corcyra in Thucydides 1. 48. Excitedly we crept up to the very mouth of the animal, and standing inside the teeth we saw the most unparallelled of all the sights that ever I saw—huge men, fully half a furlong in stature, sailing on huge islands as on galleys. Though I know that what I am going to recount savours of the incredible, I shall say it nevertheless. There were islands, long but not very high, and fully a hundred. furlongs in circumference, on each of which about a hundred and twenty of those men were cruising, some of whom, sitting along each side of the island one behind the other, were rowing with huge cypress trees for oars— branches, leaves and all! Herodotus (2, 156) speaks of a floating island in Egypt. Aft at the stern, as I suppose you would call it, stood the master on a high hill, holding a bronze tiller five furlongs in length. At the bow, about forty of them under arms were fighting; they were like men in all but their hair, which was fire and blazed up, so that they had no need of plumes. Cf. Il. 5,4; ‘ And tireless flames did burn on crest and shield.” In lieu of sails, the wind struck the forest, which was dense on each of the islands, filled this and carried the island wherever the helmsman would. There were boatswains in command, to keep the oarsmen in time, and the islands moved swiftly under the rowing, like war-galleys.
