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.

VII

THE SLAYING AND AVENGING OF PATROCLUS

At this moment, when torches were blazing round the ships, and all
seemed lost, Patroclus came out of the hut of Eurypylus, whose wound he
had been tending, and he saw that the Greeks were in great danger, and
ran weeping to Achilles. 'Why do you weep,' said Achilles, 'like a
little girl that runs by her mother's side, and plucks at her gown and
looks at her with tears in her eyes, till her mother takes her up in her
arms? Is there bad news from home that your father is dead, or mine; or
are you sorry that the Greeks are getting what they deserve for their
folly?' Then Patroclus told Achilles how Ulysses and many other princes
were wounded and could not fight, and begged to be allowed to put on
Achilles' armour and lead his men, who were all fresh and unwearied,
into the battle, for a charge of two thousand fresh warriors might turn
the fortune of the day.

Then Achilles was sorry that he had sworn not to fight himself till
Hector brought fire to his own ships. He would lend Patroclus his
armour, and his horses, and his men; but Patroclus must only drive the
Trojans from the ships, and not pursue them. At this moment Aias was
weary, so many spears smote his armour, and he could hardly hold up his
great shield, and Hector cut off his spearhead with the sword; the
bronze head fell ringing on the ground, and Aias brandished only the
pointless shaft. So he shrank back and fire blazed all over his ship;
and Achilles saw it, and smote his thigh, and bade Patroclus