Read the excerpt from Part 4 of The Odyssey. There, as the whirlpool drank the tide, a billow tossed me, and I sprang for the great fig tree, catching on like a bat under a bough. Nowhere had I to stand, no way of climbing, the root and bole being far below, and far above my head the branches and their leaves, massed, overshadowing Charybdis pool. In this excerpt, Odysseus is compared to a whirlpool. bat. root. pool.