d for somebody, and in doing so they diverted their minds from their
many misfortunes. Now, as the Trojans were fighting more bravely than
before, under Deiphobus, a brother of Hector, the Greeks went to Calchas
for advice, and he told them that they must send Ulysses and Diomede to
bring Philoctetes the bowman from the isle of Lemnos. This was an
unhappy deserted island, in which the married women, some years before,
had murdered all their husbands, out of jealousy, in a single night. The
Greeks had landed in Lemnos, on their way to Troy, and there Philoctetes
had shot an arrow at a great water dragon which lived in a well within a
cave in the lonely hills. But when he entered the cave the dragon bit
him, and, though he killed it at last, its poisonous teeth wounded his
foot. The wound never healed, but dripped with venom, and Philoctetes,
in terrible pain, kept all the camp awake at night by his cries.

The Greeks were sorry for him, but he was not a pleasant companion,
shrieking as he did, and exuding poison wherever he came. So they left
him on the lonely island, and did not know whether he was alive or dead.
Calchas ought to have told the Greeks not to desert Philoctetes at the
time, if he was so important that Troy, as the prophet now said, could
not be taken without him. But now, as he must give some advice, Calchas
said that Philoctetes must be brought back, so Ulysses and Diomede went
to bring him. They sailed to Lemnos, a melancholy place they found it,
with no smoke rising from the ruinous houses along the shore. As they
were landing they learned that Philoctetes was not dead, for his dismal
old cries of pain, _ototototoi, ai, ai; pheu, pheu; ototototoi_, came
echoing from a cave on the beach. To this cave the princes went, and
found a terrible-looking man, with long, dirty, dry hair and beard; he
was worn to a skeleton, with hollow eyes, and lay moaning in a mass of
the feathers of sea birds. His great bow and his arrows lay ready to his
hand: with these he used to shoot the sea birds, which were all that he
had to eat, 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 p