Page:The Story of the Iliad.djvu/337

Rh prayed not to Apollo, nor vowed that he would offer to him a sacrifice of a hundred lambs. The bird he hit not, for this Apollo gave not to him; but he smote the cord wherewith the dove was bound, and divided it; and the bird flew into the air, and the Greeks clapped their hands to see it. Then did Meriones take the bow from his hand,—for they shot with the same, the two of them,—and the arrow he had made ready before against his turn. Also he vowed a sacrifice of a hundred lambs to King Apollo. Then he beheld, and lo! the dove was very high in the clouds above his head, and he shot, and the arrow smote it under the wing as it wheeled in the air, and passed right through it. Before the feet of the archer fell the arrow, and the bird lighted on the mast. Then speedily it died, so that it fell upon the ground. So Meriones took the double-edged axes, and Teucer them that had one edge only.

Then there was a contest of throwing the spear; and the prize was a long-shafted spear, and a caldron that had never felt the fire, of the worth of an ox. For this there stood up King Agamemnon and Meriones, who was the