Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v2.djvu/43

vessel its former motion, but pitches to and fro, with the Triton on its bows now projecting from the waters’ depths, now borne aloft in air. Nor aught avails the might of the heroes half-divine, but the demented mast makes the vessel rock and sway,^[1] and falling forward with overbalancing weight smites upon the arching waves, and the oars drop fruitlessly on the rowers’ chests. We, too, from rocks and every walled rampart, while they thus toil and rage against the seas and the southern blasts, with weak arms shower down wavering missiles—what deed did we not dare?—on Telamon and Peleus, and even on the Tirynthian we bend our bow. But they, hard pressed both by storm and foe, fortify, some of them, the ship with shields,^[2] others bale water from the hold; others fight, but the motion makes their bodies helpless, and there is no force behind their reeling blows. We hurl our darts more fiercely, and the iron rain vies with the tempest, and enormous stakes and fragments of millstones and javelins and missiles trailing tresses of flame fall now into the sea, now on the vessel: the decking of the bark resounds and the beams groan as the gaping holes are torn. Even so does Jupiter lash the green fields with Hyperborean snow; beasts of all kinds perish on the plains, and birds are overtaken and fall dead, and the harvest is blasted with untimely frost; then is there thundering on the heights, and fury in the rivers. But when from on high Jove flung his brand with shock of cloud on cloud, and the flash revealed the mariners’ mighty forms, our hearts were frozen fast, our arms dropped shuddering and let fall the unnatural weapons, and our true sex once more held sway. We behold the