Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/249

 They venture no reply, but hasten the faster to the woods, and make the night their friend. The horsemen bar each well-known passage right and left and set a guard on every outlet. The wood was shagged with thickets and dark ilex boughs; impenetrable briars filled it on every side;          5 through the concealed tracks just gleamed a narrow path. Euryalus is hampered by the darkness of the branches, and the encumbrance of his booty, and fear makes him miss the right line of road. Nisus shoots away: and now in his forgetfulness he had escaped the foe, and gained the          10 region afterwards called Alban from Alba's name; in that day king Latinus had there his stately stalls; when he halted, and looked back in vain for the friend he could not see. "My poor Euryalus! where have I left you? what way shall I trace you, unthreading all the tangled path of        15 that treacherous wood?" As he speaks, he scans and retraces each step, and wanders through the stillness of the brakes. He hears the horses, hears the noise and the tokens of pursuit. Pass a few moments, and a shout strikes on his ear, and he sees Euryalus, who is in the hands     20 of the whole crew, the victim of the ground and the night, bewildered by the sudden onslaught, hurried along, and making a thousand fruitless efforts. What should he do? with what force, what arms, can he attempt a rescue? should he dash through the thick of their swords with             25 death before his eyes, and hurry to a glorious end in a shower of wounds? Soon, with his arm drawn back, he poises his spear-shaft, looking up to the moon in the sky, and thus prays aloud: "Thou, goddess, be thou present, and befriend my endeavour, Latona's daughter, glory of the                     30 heavens and guardian of the woods: if ever my father Hyrtacus brought gift for me to thine altar, if ever my own hunting swelled the tribute, if ever I hung an offering from thy dome or fastened it on thy hallowed summit, suffer me to confound this mass, and guide my weapons through             35 the air." This said, with an effort of his whole frame he hurled the steel. The flying spear strikes through the shades of night, reaches the turned back of Sulmo, there