to string again. There was a noise of a singing of the bow and of the
string, and the wordless song shaped itself thus in the heart of the
Wanderer:

Lo! the hour is nigh
And the time to smite,
When the foe shall fly
From the arrow's flight!
Let the bronze bite deep!
Let the war-birds fly
Upon them that sleep
And are ripe to die!
Shrill and low
Do the grey shafts sing
The Song of the Bow,
The sound of the string!

Then the low music died into the silence, and the Wanderer knew that the
next sun would not set on the day of slavery, and that his revenge was
near. His bonds would be no barrier to his vengeance; they would break
like burnt tow, he knew, in the fire of his anger. Long since, in his
old days of wandering, Calypso, his love, had taught him in the summer
leisure of her sea-girt isle how to tie the knots that no man could
untie, and to undo all the knots that men can bind. He remembered this
lesson in the night when the bow sang of war. So he thought no more
of sleeping, but cunningly and swiftly unknotted all the cords and
the bonds which bound him to a bar of iron in the hold. He might have
escaped now, perhaps, if he had stolen on deck without waking the
guards, dived thence and swam under water towards the island, where he
might have hidden himself in the bush. But he desired revenge no less