" He pulled his sword and pistols free of his sash and clanked them on the table, struck a flame with his tinderbox and lit a candle, then carefully lifted out of a pocket the handkerchief that was wrapped around Byron’s toe. Byron was now, in a sense, physically on Mount Parnassus, in the mountain, but Trelawny had no idea how he might use the toe to facilitate contact with the species with whom he and Odysseus hoped to make an alliance: the creatures referred to in the Old Testament as the Nephelim, the giants that were “in the earth in those days. "

― Tim Powers , The Bible Repairman and Other Stories