________________________________________________
_
BATTLE AT THE SHIPS
With dawn Agamemnon awoke, and fear had gone out of his heart. He put on
his armour, and arrayed the chiefs on foot in front of their chariots,
and behind them came the spearmen, with the bowmen and slingers on the
wings of the army. Then a great black cloud spread over the sky, and red
was the rain that fell from it. The Trojans gathered on a height in the
plain, and Hector, shining in armour, went here and there, in front and
rear, like a star that now gleams forth and now is hidden in a cloud.
The armies rushed on each other and hewed each other down, as reapers cut
their way through a field of tall corn. Neither side gave ground, though
the helmets of the bravest Trojans might be seen deep in the ranks of the
Greeks; and the swords of the bravest Greeks rose and fell in the ranks
of the Trojans, and all the while the arrows showered like rain. But at
noon-day, when the weary woodman rests from cutting trees, and takes his
dinner in the quiet hills, the Greeks of the first line made a charge,
Agamemnon running in front of them, and he speared two Trojans, and took
their breastplates, which he laid in his chariot, and then he speared one
brother of Hector and struck another down with his sword, and killed two
more who vainly asked to be made prisoners of war. Footmen slew footmen,
and chariot men slew chariot men, and they broke into the Trojan line as
fire falls on a forest in a windy day, leaping and roaring and racing
through the trees. Many an empty chariot did the horses hurry madly
through the field, for the charioteers were lying dead, with the greedy
vultures hovering above them, flapping their wide wings. Still Agamemnon
followed and slew the hindmost Trojans, but the rest fled till they came
to the gates, and the oak tree that grew outside the gates, and there
they stopped.
But Hector held his hands from fighting, for in the meantime he was
making his men face the enemy and form up in line and take breath, and
was encouraging them, for they had retreated from the wall of the Greeks
across the whole plain, past the hill that was the tomb of Ilus, a king
of old, and past the place of the wild fig-tree. Much ado had Hector to
rally the Trojans, but he knew that when men do turn again they are hard
to beat. So it proved, for when the Trojans had rallied and formed in
line, Agamemnon slew a Thracian chief who had come to fight for Troy
before King Rhesus came. But the eldest brother of the slain man smote
Agamemnon through the arm with his spear, and, though Agamemnon slew him
in turn, his wound bled much and he was in great pain, so he leaped into
his chariot and was driven back to the ships.
Then Hector gave the word to charge, as a huntsman cries on his hounds
against a lion, and he rushed forward at the head of the Trojan line,
slaying as he went. Nine chiefs of the Greeks he slew, and fell upon the
spearmen and scattered them, as the spray of the waves is scattered by
the wandering wind.
Now the ranks of the Greeks were broken, and they would have been driven
among their ships and killed without mercy, had not Ulysses and Diomede
stood firm in the centre, and slain four Trojan leaders. The Greeks
began to come back and face their enemies in line of battle again, though
Hector, who had been fighting on the Trojan right, rushed against them.
But Diomede took good aim with his spear at the helmet of Hector, and
struck it fairly. The spear-point did not go through the helmet, but
Hector was stunned and fell; and, when he came to himself, he leaped into
his chariot, and his squire drove him against the Pylians and Cretans,
under Nestor and Idomeneus, who were on the left wing of the Greek army.
Then Diomede fought on till Paris, who stood beside the pillar on the
hillock that was the tomb of old King Ilus, sent an arrow clean through
his foot. Ulysses went and stood in front of Diomede, who sat down, and
Ulysses drew the arrow from his foot, and Diomede stepped into his
chariot and was driven back to the ships.
Ulysses was now the only Greek chief that still fought in the centre. The
Greeks all fled, and he was alone in the crowd of Trojans, who rushed on
him as hounds and hunters press round a wild boar that stands at bay in a
wood. "They are cowards that flee from the fight," said Ulysses to
himself; "but I will stand here, one man against a multitude." He
covered the front of his body with his great shield, that hung by a belt
round his neck, and he smote four Trojans and wounded a fifth. But the
brother of the wounded man drove a spear through the shield and
breastplate of Ulysses, and tore clean through his side. Then Ulysses
turned on this Trojan, and he fled, and Ulysses sent a spear through his
shoulder and out at his breast, and he died. Ulysses dragged from his
own side the spear that had wounded him, and called thrice with a great
voice to the other Greeks, and Menelaus and Aias rushed to rescue him,
for many Trojans were round him, like jackals round a wounded stag that a
man has struck with an arrow. But Aias ran and covered the wounded
Ulysses with his huge shield till he could climb into the chariot of
Menelaus, who drove him back to the ships.
Meanwhile, Hector was slaying the Greeks on the left of their battle, and
Paris struck the Greek surgeon, Machaon, with an arrow; and Idomeneus
bade Nestor put Machaon in his chariot and drive him to Nestor's hut,
where his wound might be tended. Meanwhile, Hector sped to the centre of
the line, where Aias was slaying the Trojans; but Eurypylus, a Greek
chief, was wounded by an arrow from the bow of Paris, and his friends
guarded him with their shields and spears.
Thus the best of the Greeks were wounded and out of the battle, save
Aias, and the spearmen were in flight. Meanwhile Achilles was standing
by the stern of his ship watching the defeat of the Greeks, but when he
saw Machaon being carried past, sorely wounded, in the chariot of Nestor,
he bade his friend Patroclus, whom he loved better than all the rest, to
go and ask how Machaon did. He was sitting drinking wine with Nestor
when Patroclus came, and Nestor told Patroclus how many of the chiefs
were wounded, and though Patroclus was in a hurry Nestor began a very
long story about his own great deeds of war, done when he was a young
man. At last he bade Patroclus tell Achilles that, if he would not fight
himself, he should at least send out his men under Patroclus, who should
wear the splendid armour of Achilles. Then the Trojans would think that
Achilles himself had returned to the battle, and they would be afraid,
for none of them dared to meet Achilles hand to hand.
So Patroclus ran off to Achilles; but, on his way, he met the wounded
Eurypylus, and he took him to his hut and cut the arrow out of his thigh
with a knife, and washed the wound with warm water, and rubbed over it a
bitter root to take the pain away. Thus he waited for some time with
Eurypylus, but the advice of Nestor was in the end to cause the death of
Patroclus. The battle now raged more fiercely, while Agamemnon and
Diomede and Ulysses could only limp about leaning on their spears; and
again Agamemnon wished to moor the ships near shore, and embark in the
night and run away. But Ulysses was very angry with him, and said: "You
should lead some other inglorious army, not us, who will fight on till
every soul of us perish, rather than flee like cowards! Be silent, lest
the soldiers hear you speaking of flight, such words as no man should
utter. I wholly scorn your counsel, for the Greeks will lose heart if,
in the midst of battle, you bid them launch the ships."
Agamemnon was ashamed, and, by Diomede's advice, the wounded kings went
down to the verge of the war to encourage the others, though they were
themselves unable to fight. They rallied the Greeks, and Aias led them
and struck Hector full in the breast with a great rock, so that his
friends carried him out of the battle to the river side, where they
poured water over him, but he lay fainting on the ground, the black blood
gushing up from his mouth. While Hector lay there, and all men thought
that he would die, Aias and Idomeneus were driving back the Trojans, and
it seemed that, even without Achilles and his men, the Greeks were able
to hold their own against the Trojans. But the battle was never lost
while Hector lived. People in those days believed in "omens:" they
thought that the appearance of birds on the right or left hand meant good
or bad luck. Once during the battle a Trojan showed Hector an unlucky
bird, and wanted him to retreat into the town. But Hector said, "One
omen is the best: to fight for our own country." While Hector lay
between death and life the Greeks were winning, for the Trojans had no
other great chief to lead them. But Hector awoke from his faint, and
leaped to his feet and ran here and there, encouraging the men of Troy.
Then the most of the Greeks fled when they saw him; but Aias and
Idomeneus, and the rest of the bravest, formed in a square between the
Trojans and the ships, and down on them came Hector and Aeneas and Paris,
throwing their spears, and slaying on every hand. The Greeks turned and
ran, and the Trojans would have stopped to strip the armour from the
slain men, but Hector cried: "Haste to the ships and leave the spoils of
war. I will slay any man who lags behind!"
On this, all the Trojans drove their chariots down into the ditch that
guarded the ships of the Greeks, as when a great wave sweeps at sea over
the side of a vessel; and the Greeks were on the ship decks, thrusting
with very long spears, used in sea fights, and the Trojans were boarding
the ships, and striking with swords and axes. Hector had a lighted torch
and tried to set fire to the ship of Aias; but Aias kept him back with
the long spear, and slew a Trojan, whose lighted torch fell from his
hand. And Aias kept shouting: "Come on, and drive away Hector; it is not
to a dance that he is calling his men, but to battle."
The dead fell in heaps, and the living ran over them to mount the heaps
of slain and climb the ships. Hector rushed forward like a sea wave
against a great steep rock, but like the rock stood the Greeks; still the
Trojans charged past the beaks of the foremost ships, while Aias,
thrusting with a spear more than twenty feet long, leaped from deck to
deck like a man that drives four horses abreast, and leaps from the back
of one to the back of another. Hector seized with his hand the stern of
the ship of Protesilaus, the prince whom Paris shot when he leaped ashore
on the day when the Greeks first landed; and Hector kept calling: "Bring
fire!" and even Aias, in this strange sea fight on land, left the decks
and went below, thrusting with his spear through the portholes. Twelve
men lay dead who had brought fire against the ship which Aias guarded. _
Read next: THE SLAYING AND AVENGING OF PATROCLUS
Read previous: TROJAN VICTORIES
Table of content of Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
