Thus, "gliding through the silent sphere . . . and girt with gold," the giant hunter seeks his lost Artemis still.
CHAPTER III
THE OUTWITTING OF POLYPHEMUS
Troy had fallen. After ten years' siege by a hundred thousand of Greece's mightiest warriors, the ramparts built by Poseidon had still proved impregnable to assault; the fell arrows of Heracles added to this host had failed to accomplish what Heracles himself had done single-handed. But finally, at the appointed time, stratagem had succeeded where force had proved of no avail: the monstrous wooden horse, within which crouched wily Odysseus and his chosen band, had wrought Ilium's downfall,—leaving the world even till this day a pregnant proverb: to beware the enemy bearing gifts.
Among the Greeks summoned by King Menelaus to recapture Helen the incomparable, there was none to equal Odysseus as a combined warrior, leader and counsellor. To him had been awarded the celestial arms of Achilles; it was he who secretly stole away the Palladium, the guardian image whose presence made Troy invulnerable; through his counsel and under his leadership, the fateful wooden horse had brought the final victory.
He had done his utmost to evade the call to Troy in the first place, for the oracle had foretold that if
he went, it would be twenty years before he should again see his beloved isle of Ithaca.
It had already taken half of this daunting term to complete the object of the expedition. But now the Trojan stronghold was a fiery memory. Helen was restored to her rightful husband. There remained merely the voyage of a few hundred miles back, through the island-studded Ægean and around the Peloponnesus, to bring him once more to his own kingdom, to that patient Penelope who awaited his return, and the baby son, (now a baby no longer but the "discreet" Telemachus), to whom his sire was but a name. Surely the soothsayer must have erred: it could not take years for his galleys to cover the distance over which his heart and thoughts sped so swiftly.
Yet it was with a solemn countenance that the hero made offerings to the Gods, and bade his followers loose the sails of his twelve stout ships before the southwest breeze. For none knew better than he how little might the utmost human skill and wisdom avail against the decrees of Olympus.