Once installed on an island, the tribes sent forth fragments of their own life, going to colonize other nearby lands across the waves.
Ulysses and his mate thought much about the great catastrophes ignored by history--the tempest surprising the sailing exodus, entire fleets of rough rafts swallowed up by the abyss in a few moments, families dying clinging to their domestic animals,--whenever they attempted a new advance of their rudimentary civilization.
In order to form some idea of what these little embarkations were, Ferragut would recall the fleets of Homeric form, created many centuries afterwards.

The winds used to impose a religious terror on those warriors of the sea, reunited in order to fall upon Troy.

Their ships remained chained an entire year in the harbor of Aulis and, through fear of the hostility of the wind and in order to placate the divinity of the Mediterranean, they sacrificed the life of a virgin.
All was danger and mystery in the kingdom of the waves.

The abysses roared, the rocks moaned; on the ledges were singing sirens who, with their music, attracted ships in order to dash them to pieces.

There was not an island without its particular god, without its monster and cyclops, or its magician contriving artifices.
Before domesticating the elements, mankind had attributed to them their most superstitious fears.
A material factor had powerfully influenced the dangers of Mediterranean life.