, and their feathers littered all the
floor of his cave, and they were none the better for the poison that
dripped from his wounded foot.

When this horrible creature saw Ulysses and Diomede coming near, he
seized his bow and fitted a poisonous arrow to the string, for he hated
the Greeks, because they had left him in the desert isle. But the
princes held up their hands in sign of peace, and cried out that they
had come to do him kindness, so he laid down his bow, and they came in
and sat on the rocks, and promised that his wound should be healed, for
the Greeks were very much ashamed of having deserted him. It was
difficult to resist Ulysses when he wished to persuade any one, and at
last Philoctetes consented to sail with them to Troy. The oarsmen
carried him down to the ship on a litter, and there his dreadful wound
was washed with warm water, and oil was poured into it, and it was
bound up with soft linen, so that his pain grew less fierce, and they
gave him a good supper and wine enough, which he had not tasted for many
years.

Next morning they sailed, and had a fair west wind, so that they soon
landed among the Greeks and carried Philoctetes on shore. Here
Podaleirius, the brother of Machaon, being a physician, did all that
could be done to heal the wound, and the pain left Philoctetes. He was
taken to the hut of Agamemnon, who welcomed him, and said that the
Greeks repented of their cruelty. They gave him seven female slaves to
take care of him, and twenty swift horses, and twelve great vessels of
bronze, and told him that he was always to live with the greatest chiefs
and feed at their table. So he was bathed, and his hair was cut and
combed and anointed with oil, and soon he was eager and ready to fight,
and to use his great bow and poisoned arrows on the Trojans. The use of
poisoned arrow-tips was thought unfair, but Philoctetes had no scruples.

Now in the next battle Paris was shooting down the Greeks with his
arrows, when Philoctetes saw him, and cried: 'Dog, you are proud of your
archery and of the arrow that slew the great Achilles. But, behold, I am
a better bowman than you, by far, and the bow in my hands was borne by
the strong man Heracles!' So he cried and drew the bowstring to his
breast and the poisoned arrowhead to the bow, and the bowstring rang,
and the arrow flew, and did but graze the hand of Paris. Then the bitter
pain of the poison came upon him, and the Trojans carried him into their
ci