fight, and his boy, Achilles, dwelt far away, in the island of Scyros,
dressed as a girl, among the daughters of King Lycomedes. To many
another town and to a hundred islands went the bitter news of approaching
war, for all princes knew that their honour and their oaths compelled
them to gather their spearmen, and bowmen, and slingers from the fields
and the fishing, and to make ready their ships, and meet King Agamemnon
in the harbour of Aulis, and cross the wide sea to besiege Troy town.

Now the story is told that Ulysses was very unwilling to leave his island
and his wife Penelope, and little Telemachus; while Penelope had no wish
that he should pass into danger, and into the sight of Helen of the fair
hands. So it is said that when two of the princes came to summon
Ulysses, he pretended to be mad, and went ploughing the sea sand with
oxen, and sowing the sand with salt. Then the prince Palamedes took the
baby Telemachus from the arms of his nurse, Eurycleia, and laid him in
the line of the furrow, where the ploughshare would strike him and kill
him. But Ulysses turned the plough aside, and they cried that he was not
mad, but sane, and he must keep his oath, and join the fleet at Aulis, a
long voyage for him to sail, round the stormy southern Cape of Maleia.

Whether this tale be true or not, Ulysses did go, leading twelve black
ships, with high beaks painted red at prow and stern. The ships had
oars, and the warriors manned the oars, to row when there was no wind.
There was a small raised deck at each end of the ships; on these decks
men stood to fight with sword and spear when there was a battle at sea.
Each ship had but one mast, with a broad lugger sail, and for anchors
they had only heavy stones attached to cables. They generally landed at
night, and slept on the shore of one of the many islands, when they
could, for they greatly feared to sail out of sight of land.