is friends
guarded him with their shields and spears.

Thus the best of the Greeks were wounded and out of the battle, save
Aias, and the spearmen were in flight. Meanwhile Achilles was standing
by the stern of his ship watching the defeat of the Greeks, but when he
saw Machaon being carried past, sorely wounded, in the chariot of Nestor,
he bade his friend Patroclus, whom he loved better than all the rest, to
go and ask how Machaon did. He was sitting drinking wine with Nestor
when Patroclus came, and Nestor told Patroclus how many of the chiefs
were wounded, and though Patroclus was in a hurry Nestor began a very
long story about his own great deeds of war, done when he was a young
man. At last he bade Patroclus tell Achilles that, if he would not fight
himself, he should at least send out his men under Patroclus, who should
wear the splendid armour of Achilles. Then the Trojans would think that
Achilles himself had returned to the battle, and they would be afraid,
for none of them dared to meet Achilles hand to hand.

So Patroclus ran off to Achilles; but, on his way, he met the wounded
Eurypylus, and he took him to his hut and cut the arrow out of his thigh
with a knife, and washed the wound with warm water, and rubbed over it a
bitter root to take the pain away. Thus he waited for some time with
Eurypylus, but the advice of Nestor was in the end to cause the death of
Patroclus. The battle now raged more fiercely, while Agamemnon and
Diomede and Ulysses could only limp about leaning on their spears; and
again Agamemnon wished to moor the ships near shore, and embark in the
night and run away. But Ulysses was very angry with him, and said: "You
should lead some other inglorious army, not us, who will fight on till
every soul of us perish, rather than flee like cowards! Be silent, lest
the soldiers hear you speaking of flight, such words as no man should
utter. I wholly scorn your counsel, for the Greeks will lose heart if,
in the midst of battle, you bid them launch the ships."

Agamemnon was ashamed, and, by Diomede's advice, the wounded kings went
down to the verge of the war to encourage the others, though they were
themselves unable to fight. They rallied the Greeks, and Aias led them
and struck Hector full in the breast with a great rock, so that his
friends carried him out of the battle to the river side, where they
poured water over him, but he lay fainting on the ground, the black blood
gushing up