plain and into the city to ensure victory. While they stood talking,
two immense serpents rose out of the sea and made towards the camp.
Some of the people took flight, others were transfixed with terror; but
all, near and far, watched this new omen. Rearing their crests, the
sea-serpents crossed the shore, swift, shining, terrible as a risen
water-flood that descends upon a helpless little town. Straight through
the crowd they swept, and seized the priest Laocooen where he stood,
with his two sons, and wrapped them all round and round in fearful
coils. There was no chance of escape. Father and sons perished
together; and when the monsters had devoured the three men, into the
sea they slipped again, leaving no trace of the horror.

The terrified Trojans saw an omen in this. To their minds, punishment
had come upon Laocooen for his words against the Wooden Horse. Surely,
it was sacred to the gods; he had spoken blasphemy, and had perished
before their eyes. They flung his warning to the winds. They wreathed
the horse with garlands, amid great acclaim; and then, all lending a
hand, they dragged it, little by little, out of the camp and into the
city of Troy. With the close of that victorious day, they gave up every
memory of danger and made merry after ten years of privation.

That very night Sinon the spy opened the hidden door of the Wooden
Horse, and in the darkness, Odysseus, Menelaus, and the other chiefs
who had lain hidden there crept out and gave the signal to the Grecian
army. For, under cover of night, those ships that had been moored
behind the island had sailed back again, and the Greeks were come upon
Troy.

Not a Trojan was on guard. The whole city was at feast when the enemy
rose in its midst, and the warning of Laocooen was fulfilled.