ld 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 Diomede stole through the night silently, like two
wolves among the bodies of dead men, the Trojan leaders met and
considered what they ought to do. They did not know whether the Greeks
had set sentinels and outposts, as usual, to give warning if the enemy
were approaching; or whether they were too weary to keep a good watch; or
whether perhaps they were getting ready their ships to sail homewards in
the dawn. So Hector offered a reward to any man who would creep through
the night and spy on the Greeks; he said he would give the spy the two
best horses in the Greek camp.

Now among the Trojans there was a young man named Dolon, the son of