from his mouth. While Hector lay there, and all men thought
that he would die, Aias and Idomeneus were driving back the Trojans, and
it seemed that, even without Achilles and his men, the Greeks were able
to hold their own against the Trojans. But the battle was never lost
while Hector lived. People in those days believed in "omens:" they
thought that the appearance of birds on the right or left hand meant good
or bad luck. Once during the battle a Trojan showed Hector an unlucky
bird, and wanted him to retreat into the town. But Hector said, "One
omen is the best: to fight for our own country." While Hector lay
between death and life the Greeks were winning, for the Trojans had no
other great chief to lead them. But Hector awoke from his faint, and
leaped to his feet and ran here and there, encouraging the men of Troy.
Then the most of the Greeks fled when they saw him; but Aias and
Idomeneus, and the rest of the bravest, formed in a square between the
Trojans and the ships, and down on them came Hector and Aeneas and Paris,
throwing their spears, and slaying on every hand. The Greeks turned and
ran, and the Trojans would have stopped to strip the armour from the
slain men, but Hector cried: "Haste to the ships and leave the spoils of
war. I will slay any man who lags behind!"

On this, all the Trojans drove their chariots down into the ditch that
guarded the ships of the Greeks, as when a great wave sweeps at sea over
the side of a vessel; and the Greeks were on the ship decks, thrusting
with very long spears, used in sea fights, and the Trojans were boarding
the ships, and striking with swords and axes. Hector had a lighted torch
and tried to set fire to the ship of Aias; but Aias kept him back with
the long spear, and slew a Trojan, whose lighted torch fell from his
hand. And Aias kept shouting: "Come on, and drive away Hector; it 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