287Meanwhile Aeneas lands his comrades from the high sterns by gangways. 288Many watch for the ebb of the failing sea and trust themselves with a leap to the shallows, others go down by the oars. 290Tarchon, scanning the shore where he expects no shoals and no broken wave murmurs back, but the sea glides in unhindered with swelling tide, suddenly turns his prow and prays to his comrades: 'Now, O chosen band, bend to your strong oars; 295lift, carry the ships; 295split this hostile land with your beaks, and let the keel itself press a furrow for itself. 297Nor do I refuse to break my ship in such a berth, once the land is seized.' 298After Tarchon had said such things, his comrades rose to their oars and drove the foaming ships onto the Latin fields, until the beaks held dry land and all the keels came to rest unharmed; but not your ship, Tarchon.
303For, dashed on the shoals, while it hangs on a treacherous ridge, long balanced uncertainly and wearying the waves, it breaks up and lands the men in the midst of the waters, hampered by fragments of oars and floating thwarts, while the backflowing wave drags back their feet.