A narrow passage of sea between Ithaca and the neighboring island of Samos. Boats sailing home to Ithaca have to pass through it. The suitors, with the careless boastfulness of men too sure of themselves, send a ship there to lie in wait for Telemachus when he returns from Sparta. Twelve men in a black-hulled ship, hidden in the narrows where there is nowhere to run. Eumaeus learns about it from the suitors themselves, casual at their wine, certain that the old swineherd will never reach a man they want dead. He tells the news to the disguised Odysseus, and Odysseus has to sit very still and not let his face change while he hears that his only son is sailing toward an ambush. Athena warns Telemachus in a dream, and he changes course, landing at a hidden cove instead. The strait is the trap that almost works. The geography of the planned murder. It does not catch the boy because a goddess and an old man both move first.
The Strait between Ithaca and Samos
The narrow water between two islands. Where the suitors' ship lies in ambush for Telemachus on his way home.