“My friends,” said the king’s officer, “we have done a fine day’s work, and Athene’s horse rests near the place where it shall remain. Now, indeed, the happiness of Troy is insured. Let every person depart to his own home; for tonight, the first time in ten years, we shall sleep in security, fearing no foe.”
With joyful shouts and friendly good nights the crowd separated, and every man went quietly to his own house. Soon the city was wrapped in darkness, and the streets were silent and empty. And Athene’s horse stood grim and gaunt and motionless beside the temple wall.
About midnight a man crept stealthily out of the temple and made his way to the breach in the wall. In one hand he carried a basket of pitch, in the other a small torch which he had lighted at the temple fire. With much caution he climbed to the top of the wall. He hid his torch in a cranny, and swung the basket of pitch by a chain on the outer edge of the stone coping. Then he sat still and waited. Soon the sky began to grow lighter and the shadows in the city less dark. Presently the moon rose, bright and round. The roofs of the houses, the broad top of the city wall, the dull, deserted plain, the silent sea—all were silvered over with her soft, mellow beams.
The man on the wall looked eagerly toward the sea. What were those dark objects which he saw moving swiftly over the water and drawing rapidly toward the shore? A thousand ships, black-hulled and low, driven by twenty thousand oars. The cunning Greeks had not started for home, as the Trojans foolishly believed. They had gone only to the island of Tenedos and had lain there all day, hidden in the coves and inlets of the reedy shore. Soon their vessels would again be drawn up in their old places by the deserted camp.
The man on the wall seemed to understand it all. He lifted the torch from its cranny and dropped it carefull