Thus did he speak, and they all of them laughed heartily, which put them in a better humour with Telemachus; so Eumaeus brought the bow on and placed it in the hands of Ulysses.  When he had done this, he called Euryclea apart and said to her, “Euryclea, Telemachus says you are to close the doors of the women’s apartments.  If they hear any groaning or uproar as of men fighting about the house, they are not to come out, but are to keep quiet and stay where they are at their work.”

Euryclea did as she was told and closed the doors of the women’s apartments.

Meanwhile Philoetius slipped quietly out and made fast the gates of the outer court.  There was a ship’s cable of byblus fibre lying in the gatehouse, so he made the gates fast with it and then came in again, resuming the seat that he had left, and keeping an eye on Ulysses, who had now got the bow in his hands, and was turning it every way about, and proving it all over to see whether the worms had been eating into its two horns during his absence.  Then would one turn towards his neighbour saying, “This is some tricky old bow-fancier; either he has got one like it at home, or he wants to make one, in such workmanlike style does the old vagabond handle it.”

Another said, “I hope he may be no more successful in other things than he is likely to be in stringing this bow.”

But Ulysses, when he had taken it up and examined it all over, strung it as easily as a skilled bard strings a new peg of his lyre and makes the twisted gut fast at both ends.  Then he took it in his right hand to prove the string, and it sang sweetly under his touch like the twittering of a swallow.  The suitors were dismayed, and turned colour as they heard it; at that moment, moreover, Jove thundered loudly as a sign, and the heart of Ulysses rejoiced as he heard the omen that the son of scheming Saturn had sent him.

He took an arrow that was lying upon the table {165}—­for those which the Achaeans were so shortly about to taste were all inside the quiver—­he laid it on the centre-piece of the bow, and drew the notch of the arrow and the string toward him, still seated on his seat.  When he had taken aim he let fly, and his arrow pierced every one of the handle-holes of the axes from the first onwards till it had gone right through them, and into the outer courtyard.  Then he said to Telemachus: 

“Your guest has not disgraced you, Telemachus.  I did not miss what I aimed at, and I was not long in stringing my bow.  I am still strong, and not as the suitors twit me with being.  Now, however, it is time for the Achaeans to prepare supper while there is still daylight, and then otherwise to disport themselves with song and dance which are the crowning ornaments of a banquet.”

As he spoke he made a sign with his eyebrows, and Telemachus girded on his sword, grasped his spear, and stood armed beside his father’s seat.

Book XXII