Lernaean Hydra just to slay Heracles. Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He shot flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, the spring of Amymone, a deep cave from which it emerged only to terrorize neighboring villages. He then confronted the Hydra, wielding either a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings), a sword, or his famed club. The chthonic creature's reaction to this decapitation was botanical: two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but
Greek ironclad Hydra the engagement. By 1914, "Hydra" had been withdrawn from active duty to serve as a gunnery training ship. At the outbreak of World War I in at the end of July 1914, Greece's pro-German monarch, Constantine I, decided to remain neutral. The Entente powers landed troops in Salonika in 1915, which was a source of tension between France and Greece. In October 1916, "Hydra" and a pair of torpedo boats defected to the Venizelist faction in the National Schism. Ultimately, the French seized the Greek Navy on 19 October; the heavy units of the Greek fleet were disarmed and placed