BY F. STORR
The Wooden Horse was set up in the citadel, and after a night of feasting and carousal, the Trojan warriors had all retired to rest from their labors, and deep slumber sealed their weary eyes, for now they feared no nightly alarms, no réveillé before break of day.
But with night-fall the Greek fleet at Tenedos had loosed their moorings, and were making full sail for the Trojan shore.
When all slept the traitor Sinon slipped out from the turret of the palace where the king had assigned him a lodging, and crouching in the shadow climbed the hill of the citadel. There stood the Wooden Horse, weird and ghostly in the moonlight, not a sentinel to guard it. Leaning on the parapet he watched the white sails of the fleet as it sped landward, and soon he saw the preconcerted signal—a flaming torch at the masthead of the admiral ship. Then by the ropes still left hanging from the Horse's neck, he swarmed up and opened a secret panel in the side. One by one the mailed warriors let themselves down: first Ulysses, the arch-plotter, then Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, Menelaus, Epeos, the architect of the Horse, and other chieftains too many to name. They made straight for the city gates, and despatching the sentinels before any had time to give the alarm, let in the serried battalions who were waiting outside.
Like the rest of the Trojan warriors Æneas slept, but his sleep was disturbed by a vision of the night. At his bedside stood a ghostly form. His visage was marred, his locks and beard were clotted with gouts of blood, his breast was slashed and scarred, and his feet were pierced and livid with the marks of cords. Yet, though thus defaced and maimed, Æneas knew at once the godlike Hector, and cried to him, "Light of Troy, our country's hope and stay, thou com'st much looked for. Where hast thou tarried this long, long while? Why is thy visage thus marred? What mean those hideous scars?"
The ghost answered nothing but gazed down on Æneas with sad, lack-luster eyes. Only as it vanished it spoke. "Fly, goddess-born; save thyself from the flames. The foe is within the gates. Troy topples to its fall. Could faith and courage have availed, this right hand had saved it. To thee Troy now commends her household gods. Take them with thee in thy flight, and with them to guide and guard thee found beyond the seas a new and mightier Troy."
The ghost had vanished; but when Æneas woke he found at his bedside the household gods and the fillets of Vesta and her fire that is never quenched.
From without there came a confused sound of hurrying feet, the tramp of armed men, the clash of arms, and mingled shouts and groans. He climbed to the roof to see what it all meant. Volumes of smoke like a mountain torrent were rolling over the city, and from the murk there leapt tongues of flame. In desperate haste he donned his arms and went forth, bewildered and not knowing which way to turn. At his threshold he met Panthus, high priest of Apollo and custodian of the citadel, and asked him what was happening.
"All is over," cried the priest; "the gods have deserted us; Greece has triumphed; Troy is no more—a name, a city of the past."
Horror-stricken but undeterred, Æneas hurried on to where the fray seemed the hottest, and gathering round him some score of trusty comrades, he thus addressed them: "Friends and brothers in arms, all is not lost; let us take courage from despair, and at worst die like men with our breasts to the foe."