On leaving Aeolus, Ulysses so carefully guarded the skin bottle containing the adverse gales that his men fancied it must contain jewels of great price.

For nine days and nights Ulysses guided the rudder, and only when the shores of Ithaca came in sight closed his eyes in sleep.

This moment was seized by his crew to open the bottle, whence the captive winds escaped with a roar, stirring up a hurricane which finally drove them back to Aeolus' isle.
"They said: and (oh cursed fate!) the thongs unbound! The gushing tempest sweeps the ocean round; Snatch'd in the whirl, the hurried navy flew, The ocean widen'd and the shores withdrew.
Roused from my fatal sleep, I long debate If still to live, or desperate plunge to fate; Thus doubting, prostrate on the deck I lay, Till all the coward thoughts of death gave way." On seeing them return with tattered sails, Aeolus averred they had incurred the wrath of some god and therefore drove them away from his realm.

Toiling at the oar, they reached, after seven days, the harbor of the Laestrigonians, cannibal giants, from whose clutches only a few ships escaped.

Sorrowing for their lost friends, the Greeks next landed in the island of Circe, where Ulysses remained with half his men by the ships, while the rest set out to renew their supplies.