And may we have a fair and prosperous voyage
Where God thinks right, and these our ships are bound!"
Alas! the prayer, Philoctetes fears, will be in vain. The spasms have come on afresh; and his great fear is lest his new-found friend shall desert him after all:—
"And wilt thou stay?
Neop. Deem that beyond all doubt.
Phil. I do not care to bind thee by an oath.
Neop. I may not go from hence apart from thee.
Phil. Give me thy hand as pledge.
Neop. I give it thee
As pledge of our remaining."—(P.)
At length—after a scene of physical suffering protracted to a length which proves that the taste of an Athenian audience for sensation was as keen as that of any modern play-goer, though the sensation is of a different type—nature is exhausted, and the sufferer sinks into a death-like sleep. As he lies there, while Neoptolemus retires into the background, the Chorus take up their chant again. It is in part an invocation to sleep, mingled with hints to Neoptolemus (whose instructions from Ulysses they seem partly to understand, partly only to suspect) that now, while he lies thus helpless, there is an opportunity to carry him off bodily, or to make safe prize of the coveted weapons of Hercules:—
"O sleep that know'st not pain!
O sleep that know'st not care!
Would thou mightst come with blessed balmy air,
