Then Antinous, the proudest of the wooers, made answer and said, ’Why should we strive to bend the bow to-day?  Nay, lay the bow aside, Eurymachus, and let the wine-bearers pour us out a cupful each.  In the morning let us make sacrifice to the Archer-god, and pray that the bow be fitted to some of our hands.’

Then Odysseus came forward and said, ’Sirs, you do well to lay the bow aside for to-day.  But will you not put the bow into my hands, that I may try to bend it, and judge for myself whether I have any of the strength that once was mine?’

All the wooers were angry that a seeming beggar should attempt to bend the bow that none of their company were able to bend; Antinous spoke to him sharply and said: 

’Thou wretched beggar!  Is it not enough that thou art let into this high hall to pick up scraps, but thou must listen to our speech and join in our conversation?  If thou shouldst bend that bow we will make short shrift of thee, I promise.  We will put thee on a ship and send thee over to King Echetus, who will cut thee to pieces and give thy flesh to his hounds.’

Old Eumaeus had taken up the bow.  As he went with it to Odysseus some of them shouted to him, ’Where art thou going with the bow, thou crazy fellow?  Put it down,’ Eumaeus was confused by their shouts, and he put down the bow.

Then Telemachus spoke to him and said, ’Eumaeus, beware of being the man who served many masters.’  Eumaeus, hearing these words, took it up again and brought it to Odysseus, and put the bow into his hands.

As Odysseus stood in the doorway of the hall, the bow in his hands, and with the arrows scattered at his feet, Eumaeus went to Eurycleia, and told her to bar the door of the women’s apartment at the back.  Then Philoetius, the cattleherd, went out of the hall and barred the gates leading out of the courtyard.

For long Odysseus stood with the bow in his hands, handling it as a minstrel handles a lyre when he stretches a cord or tightens a peg.  Then he bent the great bow; he bent it without an effort, and at his touch the bow-string made a sound that was like the cry of a swallow.  The wooers seeing him bend that mighty bow felt, every man of them, a sharp pain at the heart.  They saw Odysseus take up an arrow and fit it to the string.  He held the notch, and he drew the string, and he shot the bronze-weighted arrow straight through the holes in the back of the axe-heads.

Then as Eumaeus took up the axes, and brought them outside, he said, ’Thou seest, lord Telemachus, that thy guest does not shame thee through foolish boasting.  I have bent the bow of Odysseus, and I have shot the arrow aright.  But now it is time to provide the feast for the lords who woo thy lady mother.  While it is yet light, the feast must be served to them, and with the feast they must have music and the dance.’

[Illustration.]

Saying this he nodded to Telemachus, bending his terrible brows.  Telemachus instantly girt his sword upon him and took his spear in his hand.  Outside was heard the thunder of Zeus.  And now Odysseus had stripped his rags from him and was standing upright, looking a master of men.  The mighty bow was in his hands, and at his feet were scattered many bronze-weighted arrows.