4 Introduction. 



wishes to know, how, struggling hard to escape, he 

 will change himself into other forms, animate or inani- 

 mate, beast or plant or earth or air or fire or water, 

 anything or everything, visible or invisible, how he 

 does not return to his human form unless he succeed 

 in getting away or else is obliged to stay and speak, 

 how with the help of a chosen band of three men, 

 Menelaus may and must get the mastery, and how 

 in order to this, he and they, in the disguise of seals, 

 must lie in wait at the proper place until the right 

 moment, and there and then do their utmost She is in 

 haste to begone, and, before his tongue is loosened, 

 she is far away. 



The story re-opens as the next day begins to dawn. 

 Menelaus, now in very altered mood, is again where 

 he was on the previous evening. Hitherto he has stood 

 aloof from men and gods alike : now the three men who 

 are to help him are at his side, and he himself is offering 

 the morning sacrifice due to Neptune, and hoping that 

 Eidothea may come again to help him in the work he 

 is set upon doing without delay. And not hoping in 

 vain, for, almost before his devotions are over, she, 

 having with her, dripping with the nectar in which they 

 had just been washed, the scarcely dead skins of four 

 unlucky stragglers from her father's herd, is again 

 at his side, and, a minute or two later, he and his 

 companions are at the place where Proteus is wont 

 to take his noon-day siesta, crouching in hollows 

 scooped out in the sands, covered with the skins, and 

 -there left to wait and watch in the hope that the 

 seer when he comes may mistake them for four seals 

 which have got ashore before him, and may pass 

 them as seals in the customary mustering. And as 

 ir should >be so it happens. In due time Proteus 



