With these words he stretched out his eager arms to clasp Patroclus to his breast; but the ghost eluded his grasp, and with one piercing wail melted away like smoke into the darkness. "Alas!" cried Achilles, springing up in amaze, and summoning his comrades, "I perceive that, even in the house of Hades, there is a spirit and a phantom of the dead--but understanding none at all--for all night long the ghost of the hapless Patroclus stood by my side moaning and lamenting, and straitly charging me concerning all that I must do. And the phantom was in aspect as the living man himself." II At earliest dawn a long train of mules was seen ascending the lower slopes of Ida, attended by a numerous company of men, all carrying axes and ropes of withes. The whole troop was under the command of Meriones, the squire of Idomeneus, on whom the task had been laid of providing fuel for the funeral pyre of Patroclus. A large grove of pines was felled, the trunks were divided into logs, and these were bound into bundles and laid on the backs of the mules. Then down the slope they were driven at a quick trot, the men running beside them; and when they reached the camp the mules were unloaded and the logs piled up in an open space pointed out by Achilles. A thousand willing hands aided in the work, and soon a huge stack of pinewood towered in the midst of the ships and tents. When the pyre was raised, Achilles gave the order to the Myrmidons to gird on their armour and harness the steeds to their cars. The whole army stood waiting, drawn up in silence on either side of the way by which the funeral train was to pass; and presently the procession was seen approaching. First came the chariots, each carrying two men--the driver, and the man-at-arms; behind these followed a numerous troop of infantry, marching slowly in dense array; and in the space between the corpse was borne, covered with locks of hair which the Myrmidons had cut off as a last tribute to the dead. Achilles walked behind the bier, supporting the head of Patroclus in his hands, and moving heavily, as one that mourns for a brother; and so they passed on, through the long lane of mailed warriors, until they came to the place where the pyre was built. Then Achilles took a sharp knife, and cut off from his forehead a long lock of hair, and, placing the lock in the dead man's hand, turned round and gazed wistfully across the dark gulf of waters which divided him from his home. "Alas for the hopes of men!" he said, in a voice of distress. "My father Peleus designed this lock for another purpose, as an offering to thee, Spercheus, my native stream, if ever I returned safe from the war. But now thine altar, which stands in thy grove near thy sacred source, shall never smoke for me again. A foreign grave awaits me, far from my home and kindred, and Peleus is absolved from his vow. Therefore to thee, Patroclus, I dedicate this lock."