And when his old age was upon him, and his son had taken his place, and darkness had veiled his wife’s eyes, Odysseus took the oxhide bag that Aeolus had given him and stretched it open to gather what winds he could, and carrying it he went down to the sea. There he boarded a small boat and set course for the straits where twice he had, long ago, narrowly escaped death.
When the waters boiled and began to rush toward the maelstrom’s mouth, that leader of men did not resist, but careening downward he clung to the mast until he had passed through the gaping lips and dropped into the vast expanse below. There he kicked free of the wreckage of his boat and, drawing breaths from the bag through a hollow reed, swam forward into the depths.
By the dim light of glowing fish and trapped sun rays Odysseus could see darting silver minnows, wild bouquets of coral, and orange jellyfish clenching and unclenching. He swam past looming turtles and greedy-tentacled squid, through rock tunnels and into caves inhabited by crimson-coiled sea serpents and the pale shades of lost mariners. A pair of coral-crowned sea nymphs, laughing to see an old man kicking like a fish, danced around him and let their long hair brush against his legs. A third swam behind them and called out: “Is that you, Odysseus, much-traveled man? What could entice an old greybeard so far from his hearth, and on the wrong side of the surface to boot?”
The old king smiled and whispered through the waters, “A journey of little concern to immortals, daughter of Nereus.”
The nymphs, missing his meaning, laughed and traipsed off to fairer waters, where they told their sisters about this amusing spectacle. When word reached Poseidon, he set out at once to discover whether his old adversary had really ventured to visit his kingdom. But by then Messinian fishermen had already found the body of an old man washed ashore, grey-haired and heavy with years, its face shrouded by a tattered leather bag.