Half A Hundred Hero Tales Part 18

While this dispute was hotly raging, Laoc.o.o.n, in his priestly robes, rushed into the throng. "Fools," he cried, "will ye let yourselves be cheated? Are ye so slow of heart as not to detect Greek subtlety or the guile of Ulysses? The Greeks, I tell you, have not gone, and either this Horse is an engine of war to overtop our battlements, or Greek warriors are hidden in its womb." And as he spoke he hurled a mighty spear against the Horse, and the cavernous depths reverberated with the shock, and from within there came a rattle as of clas.h.i.+ng arms. But the mult.i.tude heeded not the warning, for fate had sealed their ears.

While this was going on outside the walls, there was scarcely less excitement in the city. Certain shepherds had surprised a young Greek, and were dragging their captive before King Priam, with a hooting and jeering crowd at their heels. "Woe is me!" cried the youth as he came into the king's presence; "have I escaped from the Greeks, my bitter foes who sought my life, only to fall among Trojans from whom I can expect no mercy?" But the king bade him fear nothing, and tell his tale.

It was an artful tale concocted for him by Ulysses, how to the Greeks, desirous of sailing home and detained by contrary winds, an oracle had come--

"To speed you here a virgin maid was slain, Blood must be spilt to speed you home again"--

how _he_ had been pointed out by Calchas as the destined victim, and had escaped even as he was being led in bonds to the altar.

His tattered dress and bleeding wrists bore out this plausible tale.

The king ordered his captors to free him from his manacles, and a.s.suring the prisoner that he need fear nothing, begged him to tell them what was the design of the Greeks in building and leaving behind them the Wooden Horse.

Sinon (for that was the name that the pretended deserter took) first invoked on his head the direst curses if he failed to reveal to his deliverers the whole truth, and then repeated the lesson in which his cunning master Ulysses had drilled him. "You must know," he said, "that all the hopes of Greece lay in the favor and protection of their patron G.o.ddess, Minerva. But the wrath of the G.o.ddess was kindled against the host, for the son of Tydeus, at the prompting of Ulysses--that G.o.dless knave who sticks at no crime--had invaded her shrine, slain her custodians, and s.n.a.t.c.hed therefrom the Palladium, the sacred image of the G.o.ddess, deeming it a charm that would bring them certain victory. And the G.o.ddess showed by visible signs her displeasure. In each encounter our forces were routed; around the carven image now set up in the camp lightnings played, and thrice amid the lightning and thunder the G.o.ddess herself was seen with spear at rest and flas.h.i.+ng targe. And Calchas, of whom we sought counsel in our terror, bade us sail back to Argos, and when in her great temple we had shriven us, with happier auspices renew the fray; but first in her honor we must erect a Wooden Horse, so huge that it could not pa.s.s your gates or be brought within your walls. Moreover, Calchas told us that if any man were rash enough to lay sacrilegious hands on the votive Horse, he would straightway be smitten by the vengeful G.o.ddess!"

And lo! even as he spoke a strange portent was seen to confirm his words. Laoc.o.o.n, the high priest of Neptune--he who had hurled his spear at the Wooden Horse--was sacrificing to the sea G.o.d a mighty bull at the altar, when far away in the offing two leviathans of the deep were seen approaching from Tenedos. They looked like battles.h.i.+ps as they plowed the waves, but as they drew nearer you could mark the blood-beclotted mane and ravenous jaws of the sea-serpent, while behind lay floating many a rood coil upon coil like some huge boa-constrictor's.

The crowd fled in terror, but the sea-serpents pa.s.sed through the midst and made straight for the altar of Neptune. First they coiled themselves round the two sons of Laoc.o.o.n, who were ministering to their father as he sacrificed, and squeezed the life out of the miserable boys. Then, as Laoc.o.o.n rushed to release his sons and sought to pierce the scaly monsters with his sacrificial knife, they wound their folds twice about his middle and twice about his neck, and high above his head they towered with blood-shot eyes and triple-forked tongues. And Laoc.o.o.n, like the bull he had immolated at the altar, bellowed aloud in his dying agony. But the sea-serpents slowly unwound themselves and glided out of sight beneath the pediment of Diana's statue.

This seemed to all a sign from heaven to confirm what Sinon had told them. No more doubt was possible, and a universal clamor arose: "To the Horse! to the Horse!" Out rushed the crowd; ropes were fastened to its neck and legs, and soon half the city was tugging at them might and main, while the sappers made a breach in the walls to let it in, and by help of levers and pulleys it mounted the steep escarpment, and as it pa.s.sed down the street a joyous troop of boys and girls followed, struggling to take hold of the taut ropes and chanting s.n.a.t.c.hes of paeans and songs of victory.

Thus did the G.o.ds send on the Trojans a strong delusion that they should believe a lying tale; and what ten long campaigns and a thousand bra.s.s-beaked s.h.i.+ps, what all the might of Agamemnon, king of men, and the prowess of Achilles, G.o.ddess-born, had failed to accomplish, was brought to pa.s.s by the guile and craft of one man.

THE SACK OF TROY

BY F. STORR

The Wooden Horse was set up in the citadel, and after a night of feasting and carousal, the Trojan warriors had all retired to rest from their labors, and deep slumber sealed their weary eyes, for now they feared no nightly alarms, no reveille before break of day.

But with night-fall the Greek fleet at Tenedos had loosed their moorings, and were making full sail for the Trojan sh.o.r.e.

When all slept the traitor Sinon slipped out from the turret of the palace where the king had a.s.signed him a lodging, and crouching in the shadow climbed the hill of the citadel. There stood the Wooden Horse, weird and ghostly in the moonlight, not a sentinel to guard it.

Leaning on the parapet he watched the white sails of the fleet as it sped landward, and soon he saw the preconcerted signal--a flaming torch at the masthead of the admiral s.h.i.+p. Then by the ropes still left hanging from the Horse's neck, he swarmed up and opened a secret panel in the side. One by one the mailed warriors let themselves down: first Ulysses, the arch-plotter, then Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, Menelaus, Epeos, the architect of the Horse, and other chieftains too many to name. They made straight for the city gates, and despatching the sentinels before any had time to give the alarm, let in the serried battalions who were waiting outside.

Like the rest of the Trojan warriors aeneas slept, but his sleep was disturbed by a vision of the night. At his bedside stood a ghostly form. His visage was marred, his locks and beard were clotted with gouts of blood, his breast was slashed and scarred, and his feet were pierced and livid with the marks of cords. Yet, though thus defaced and maimed, aeneas knew at once the G.o.dlike Hector, and cried to him, "Light of Troy, our country's hope and stay, thou com'st much looked for. Where hast thou tarried this long, long while? Why is thy visage thus marred? What mean those hideous scars?"

The ghost answered nothing but gazed down on aeneas with sad, lack-l.u.s.ter eyes. Only as it vanished it spoke. "Fly, G.o.ddess-born; save thyself from the flames. The foe is within the gates. Troy topples to its fall. Could faith and courage have availed, this right hand had saved it. To thee Troy now commends her household G.o.ds. Take them with thee in thy flight, and with them to guide and guard thee found beyond the seas a new and mightier Troy."

The ghost had vanished; but when aeneas woke he found at his bedside the household G.o.ds and the fillets of Vesta and her fire that is never quenched.

From without there came a confused sound of hurrying feet, the tramp of armed men, the clash of arms, and mingled shouts and groans. He climbed to the roof to see what it all meant. Volumes of smoke like a mountain torrent were rolling over the city, and from the murk there leapt tongues of flame. In desperate haste he donned his arms and went forth, bewildered and not knowing which way to turn. At his threshold he met Panthus, high priest of Apollo and custodian of the citadel, and asked him what was happening.

"All is over," cried the priest; "the G.o.ds have deserted us; Greece has triumphed; Troy is no more--a name, a city of the past."

Horror-stricken but undeterred, aeneas hurried on to where the fray seemed the hottest, and gathering round him some score of trusty comrades, he thus addressed them: "Friends and brothers in arms, all is not lost; let us take courage from despair, and at worst die like men with our b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the foe."

They all rushed into the mellay, and at first fortune favored the brave. Androgeus, the captain of a picked corps of Greeks, hailed them; and mistaking them in the darkness for fellow-countrymen, twitted them on their tardiness, and bade them hurry on to share in the loot. Too late he perceived his mistake. Before they had time to unsheath a sword or unbuckle a s.h.i.+eld, aeneas and his comrades were on them and not one escaped.

Flushed with their first success, Coroebus, one of the forlorn hope, cried: "Hark ye, comrades, I have bethought me of a glorious stratagem; let us exchange arms and scutcheons with our dead foemen.

All is fair in war." No sooner said than done; and great was the havoc they wrought at the first by this disguise, but in the end it cost them dear.

As they pa.s.sed by the temple of Minerva they were arrested by a piteous spectacle. Ca.s.sandra, the prophetic maid, was being dragged from the altar by the rude soldiery, her hair disheveled, her arms pinioned, and her eyes upturned to heaven. Coroebus' high spirit could not brook the sight, and he hurled himself on the ruffians, the rest following his lead. Though outnumbered they held, and more than held, their own, till from the pinnacles of the temple a whole battery of rocks and missiles rained down on their devoted heads. Their disguise had too well deceived the defenders of the temple, and soon the a.s.sailants were reinforced by the main body of the Greeks, with Ajax and the two Atridae at their head, who soon penetrated their disguise.

Coroebus was the first to fall; then Ripeus, the justest ruler in all Troy; nor did his gray hairs and the fillet of Apollo that he wore save Panthus from the common fate.

aeneas, with two wounded comrades, all that was left of that devoted band, made his way to the palace of Priam, where it looked as if the whole Greek force had gathered. Part were working battering-rams against the solid masonry, others planting scaling ladders against the walls, up which the boldest, with s.h.i.+elds held high above their heads, were already swarming, while the garrison hurled down on them stones, tiles, whatever came to hand; even the gilded beams of the royal chambers.

At the rear of the palace was a postern gate leading to a covered pa.s.sage that connected the house of Hector and Andromache with the palace. By this aeneas entered and climbed to a watch-tower that commanded the whole city, the plain with the Greek encampments, and beyond, the sea, now studded with s.h.i.+ps. At his bidding the guards set to work, and soon, with axes and crow-bars, they had loosened the foundations of the turret. It tottered, it toppled, and fell with a mighty crash, burying hundreds of the besiegers beneath its ruins. But what were they among so many?

At the main entrance of the palace stood Neoptolemus in his glittering armor, like a snake who has lost its winter weeds, and s.n.a.t.c.hing a double-headed ax from a common soldier, he battered in the panels and wrenched the ma.s.sive door from its bra.s.s hinges. Through the long corridors and gilded ante-chambers, like a river that has burst its dam, the flood of armed Greeks swept on, and from the inner chambers there came a long-drawn wail of women's voices that s.h.i.+vered to the golden stars. On came Neoptolemus, sweeping before him the feeble palace guards. The cedarn doors gave way like match-wood, and there, huddled on the floor or clinging to the pillars of the tapestried chamber, he beheld, like sheep led to the slaughter, the queen and the princesses, the fifty daughters and fifty daughters-in-law of King Priam. But where was Priam the while?

In the center of the palace was a court open to the sky, and in the center of the court was a great altar over-shadowed by an immemorial bay-tree. Hither Hecuba and her kinswomen had fled for refuge when the rabble of soldiers burst in on them, and in the court she espied her aged husband girt in armor that ill-fitted his shrunken limbs, and she called to him, "What madness hath seized thee thus to rush to certain death? Hector himself could not save us now; what can thy feeble arms avail? Take sanctuary with us. Either this altar shall protect us or here we shall all perish together!"

The feeble old king yielded to his wife's entreaties, but hardly had he reached the altar when he beheld Polites, the child of his old age, whom he loved most now Hector was dead, limping towards them like a wounded hare, and close behind him in hot pursuit Neoptolemus with outstretched lance; and a moment after the son fell transfixed at his father's feet. "Wretch," he cried, beside himself with righteous wrath, "more fell than dire Achilles! _He_ gave me back my son's corpse, but thou hast stained my gray hairs and G.o.d's altar with a son's blood." He spake, and hurled at Neoptolemus with nerveless arm a spear that scarce had force to pierce the outmost fold of the targe.

With a scornful laugh Neoptolemus turned on him, and dragged him by his long white beard from the altar. "Die, old dotard," he cried, "and in the shades be sure thou tell my sire Achilles what a degenerate son is his." So saying, he drove his sword to the old king's heart.

"Such was the end of Priam, such his fate, To see in death his house all desolate, And Troy, whom erst a hundred states obeyed, A heap of blackened stones in ruin laid.

A headless corpse washed by the salt sea tide, Not e'en a stone to show where Priam died."

THE DEATH OF AJAX

BY F. STORR

Of all the Greek knights who fought against Troy the boldest and most chivalrous was Ajax, son of Telamon. But his fiery temper oft proved his bane, and in the end it led him to ruin and death.

When Achilles died he left his arms to be awarded by the captains of the host to him whom they should p.r.o.nounce the bravest of the Greeks, and the prize fell to Ulysses.

Ajax took this award in high dudgeon, and, knowing himself the better man, affirmed that this judgment could have been procured only by fraud and corruption, and swore that he would be avenged of his crafty rival. He challenged his enemy to single combat, but Ulysses was too wary to risk his life against such a swordsman, and the chiefs who heard of the quarrel interfered, saying that Greek must not take the blood of Greek. Thus balked, Ajax raged more furiously, and swore that if Ulysses would not fight he would slay him in his tent.

So Ulysses went about in fear of his life, and he appealed to his patron G.o.ddess to defend him. Minerva heard his prayer, and promised her favorite warrior that he should suffer no harm. She kept her word by sending on Ajax a strong delusion, whereby in his frenzy he mistook beasts for men.

The Greeks found the herds and flocks that had been taken in raids, and were kept in pound as a common stock to feed the army, hacked and hewn in the night, as though a mountain lion had been ravaging them; and they suspected Ajax, whose strange behavior none could fail to notice, as the offender, but they had no certain proof, and Ulysses, the man of many wiles, was by common consent deputed to search into the matter.

So the next night he stole forth from the camp alone, and in the early light of dawn he espied a solitary figure hurrying over the plain, and he followed the trail like a bloodhound till it led him to the tent of Ajax.

He paused uncertain, for he dared not venture farther, and was about to return and report to the commanders what he had seen, when he heard a voice saying, "Ulysses, what dost thou here?" and he knew it could be none other than the voice of his own G.o.ddess Minerva.

He told her the case and craved her aid in his perplexity, and the G.o.ddess gently upbraided him. "Thou wert no coward soul, Ulysses, when I chose thee as my favored knight, and now dost thou fear a single unarmed man, and one by me bereft of his wits?" And Ulysses answered, "G.o.ddess, I am no coward, but the bravest may quail before a raving madman." But Minerva replied, "Be of good heart, and trust as ever to me. Lo, I will show thee a sight whereon thou mayst glut thine eyes."

Thereupon she opened the flap of the tent, and within stood Ajax, wild and haggard, his hands dripping with gore, and all around him were sheep and oxen, some beheaded, some ripped up, and some horribly mutilated--a very shambles. At the moment Ajax was belaboring a huge ram that he had strapped up to a pillar of the tent, and, as each blow of the double thong descended he shouted, "Take that, Ulysses; that's for thy knavery, that for thy villainy, that for thy lies, thou white-livered rogue." Ulysses could not but smile as he saw himself scourged and cursed in effigy, but he was touched by a thought of human infirmity and the ruin of a n.o.ble soul, and he prayed the G.o.ddess to avert from him such a calamity.

In the women's tent hard by sat Tecmessa, the captive wife of Ajax, weeping and wringing her hands. His tender love had made her forget her desolate home and slaughtered brethren, and she had borne him a son, the pride and joy of both parents. But ever since he had lost the prize for bravery she had noted a growing estrangement. He avoided her, meeting her advances with cold looks, and the night before, when she asked him why he was girding on his armor at that hour, he had answered her, "Silence, woman; women should be seen, not heard." And then he had gone forth and returned with these beeves and sheep that he was now hacking to pieces like a madman. Their boy she had sent away with his nurse to be out of harm's way, and she sat cowering in her tent.