About the Book
From the Introduction.
IN the story of Proteus, as told by Menelaus to Telemachus in the Odyssey, there is much to rouse the attention of anyone who desires to raise the veil under which the face of nature is hidden.
Menelaus and his companions have given up all hope of ever again reaching home when the story opens. They have been driven to a desert island in the Egyptian waters of the Mediterranean Sea. They have been detained there until they are in actual want of food. The night is fast closing in. No longer able to bear the sight of his foodless ships and hunger-bitten companions, Menelaus has escaped in the evening twilight to a distant and lonely part of the shore, whither Eidothea, the daughter of Proteus, has gone to meet him. He, dazzled and startled by the bright and sudden apparition, can only listen. She, without a pause, hastens to tell how, every day at noon, on the beach close by, her father (who is a seer to whom Neptune has entrusted the care of a herd of seals or sea-calves), may be seen counting his wards, or else sleeping for a short time, sleep always following the counting unless the numbers are found to be wrong, -how while asleep he may be mastered and made to tell all his master wishes to know, -how, struggling hard to escape, he will change himself into other forms, animate or inanimate, 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 it should be so it happens. In due time Proteus comes, counts without detecting the trick put upon him, sleeps, and, while sleeping, is made prisoner, for the men who have been waiting and watching since daybreak for this moment do not fail to bestir themselves to good purpose when it comes....
