st to leap
ashore. The Greeks could not come from the wall to welcome him, for they
were fighting hard and hand-to-hand with Eurypylus and his men. But they
glanced back over their shoulders and it seemed to them that they saw
Achilles himself, spear and sword in hand, rushing to help them. They
raised a great battle-cry, and, when Neoptolemus reached the battlements,
he and Ulysses, and Diomede leaped down to the plain, the Greeks
following them, and they all charged at once on the men of Eurypylus,
with levelled spears, and drove them from the wall.

Then the Trojans trembled, for they knew the shields of Diomede and
Ulysses, and they thought that the tall chief in the armour of Achilles
was Achilles himself, come back from the land of the dead to take
vengeance for Antilochus. The Trojans fled, and gathered round
Eurypylus, as in a thunderstorm little children, afraid of the lightning
and the noise, run and cluster round their father, and hide their faces
on his knees.

But Neoptolemus was spearing the Trojans, as a man who carries at night a
beacon of fire in his boat on the sea spears the fishes that flock
around, drawn by the blaze of the flame. Cruelly he avenged his father's
death on many a Trojan, and the men whom Achilles had led followed
Achilles' son, slaying to right and left, and smiting the Trojans, as
they ran, between the shoulders with the spear. Thus they fought and
followed while daylight lasted, but when night fell, they led Neoptolemus
to his father's hut, where the women washed him in the bath, and then he
was taken to feast with Agamemnon and Menelaus and the princes. They all
welcomed him, and gave him glorious gifts, swords with silver hilts, and
cups of gold and silver, and they were glad, for they had driven the
Trojans from their wall, and hoped that to-morrow they would slay
Eurypylus, and take Troy town.

But their hope was not to be fulfilled, for though next day Eurypylus met
Neoptolemus in the battle, and was slain by him, when the Greeks chased
the Trojans into their city so great a storm of lightning and thunder and
rain fell upon them that they retreated again to their camp. They
believed that Zeus, the chief of the Gods, was angry with them, and the
days went by, and Troy still stood unconquered.

THE SLAYING OF PARIS

When the Greeks were disheartened, as they often were, they consulted
Calchas the prophet. He usually found that they must do something, or
sen