tried to burn his own ships, and there he
thought that Hector would find work enough to do. This was the most that
Achilles would promise, and all the Greeks were silent when Ulysses
delivered his message. But Diomede arose and said that, with or without
Achilles, fight they must; and all men, heavy at heart, went to sleep in
their huts or in the open air at their doors.

Agamemnon was much too anxious to sleep. He saw the glow of the thousand
fires of the Trojans in the dark, and heard their merry flutes, and he
groaned and pulled out his long hair by handfuls. When he was tired of
crying and groaning and tearing his hair, he thought that he would go
for advice to old Nestor. He threw a lion skin, the coverlet of his bed,
over his shoulder, took his spear, went out and met Menelaus--for he,
too, could not sleep--and Menelaus proposed to send a spy among the
Trojans, if any man were brave enough to go, for the Trojan camp was all
alight with fires, and the adventure was dangerous. Therefore the two
wakened Nestor and the other chiefs, who came just as they were, wrapped
in the fur coverlets of their beds, without any armour. First they
visited the five hundred young men set to watch the wall, and then they
crossed the ditch and sat down outside and considered what might be
done. 'Will nobody go as a spy among the Trojans?' said Nestor; he meant
would none of the young men go. Diomede said that he would take the risk
if any other man would share it with him, and, if he might choose a
companion, he would take Ulysses.

'Come, then, let us be going,' said Ulysses, 'for the night is late, and
the dawn is near.' As these two chiefs had no armour on, they borrowed
shields and leather caps from the young men of the guard, for leather
would not shine as bronze helmets shine in the firelight. The cap lent
to Ulysses was strengthened outside with rows of boars' tusks. Many of
these tusks, shaped for this purpose, have been found, with swords and
armour, in a tomb in Mycenae, the town of Agamemnon. This cap which was
lent to Ulysses had once been stolen by his grandfather, Autolycus, who
was a Master Thief, and he gave it as a present to a friend, and so,
through several hands, it had come to young Meriones of Crete, one of
the five hundred guards, who now lent it to Ulysses. So the two princes
set forth in the dark, so dark it was that though they heard a heron
cry, they could not see it as it flew away.

While Ulysses and Dio