CHAPTER XXVIII

[pg 300]CHAPTER XXVIIIBEFORE THE DEATH GRAPPLEFor the fourth time the subaltern who stood at Eurybiades’s elbow turned the water-glass that marked the passing of the hours. The lamps in the low-ceiled cabin were flickering dimly. Men glared on one another across the narrow table with drawn and heated faces. Adeimantus of Corinth was rising to reply to the last appeal of the Athenian.“We have had enough, Eurybiades, of Themistocles’s wordy folly. Because the Athenian admiral is resolved to lead all Hellas to destruction, is no reason that we should follow. As for his threat that he will desert us with his ships if we refuse to fight, I fling it in his face that he dare not make it good. Why go all over the well-threshed straw again? Is not the fleet of the king overwhelming? Were we not saved by a miracle from overthrow at Artemisium? Do not the scouts tell us the Persians are advancing beyond Eleusis toward Megara and the Isthmus? Is not our best fighting blood here in the fleet? Then if the Isthmus is threatened, our business is to defend it and save the Peloponnesus, the last remnant of Hellas unconquered. Now then, headstrong son of Neocles, answer that!”The Corinthian, a tall domineering man, threw back his shoulders like a boxer awaiting battle. Themistocles did not answer, but only smiled up at him from his seat opposite.“I have silenced you, grinning babbler, at last,”thundered[pg 301]Adeimantus,“and I demand of you, O Eurybiades, that we end this tedious debate. If we are to retreat, let us retreat. A vote, I say, a vote!”Eurybiades rose at the head of the table. He was a heavy, florid individual with more than the average Spartan’s slowness of tongue and intellect. Physically he was no coward, but he dreaded responsibility.“Much has been said,”he announced ponderously,“many opinions offered. It would seem the majority of the council favour the decision to retire forthwith. Has Themistocles anything more to say why the vote should not be taken?”“Nothing,”rejoined the Athenian, with an equanimity that made Adeimantus snap his teeth.“We will therefore take the vote city by city,”went on Eurybiades.“Do you, Phlegon of Seriphos, give your vote.”Seriphos—wretched islet—sent only one ship, but thanks to the Greek mania for“equality”Phlegon’svote had equal weight with that of Themistocles.“Salamis is not defensible,”announced the Seriphian, shortly.“Retreat.”“And you, Charmides of Melos?”“Retreat.”“And you, Phoibodas of Trœzene?”“Retreat, by all the gods.”“And you, Hippocrates of Ægina?”“Stay and fight. If you go back to the Isthmus, Ægina must be abandoned to the Barbarians. I am with Themistocles.”“Record his vote,”shouted Adeimantus, ill-naturedly,“he is but one against twenty. But I warn you, Eurybiades, do not call for Themistocles’s vote, or the rest of us will be angry. The man whose city is under the power of the Bar[pg 302]barian has no vote in this council, however much we condescend to listen to his chatterings.”The Athenian sprang from his seat, his aspect as threatening as Apollo descending Olympus in wrath.“Where is my country, Adeimantus? Yonder!”he pointed out the open port-hole,“there rides the array of our Athenian ships. What other state in Hellas sends so many and sets better men within them? Athens still lives, though her Acropolis be wrapped in flames.‘Strong-hearted men and naught else are warp and woof of a city.’Do you forget Alcæus’s word so soon, O Boaster from Corinth? Yes, by Athena Promachos, Mistress of Battles, while those nine score ships ride on the deep, I have a city fairer, braver, than yours. And will you still deny me equal voice and vote with this noble trierarch from Siphinos with his one, or with his comrade from Melos with his twain?”Themistocles’s voice rang like a trumpet. Adeimantus winced. Eurybiades broke in with soothing tones.“No one intends to deny your right to vote, Themistocles. The excellent Corinthian did but jest.”“A fitting hour for jesting!”muttered the Athenian, sinking back into his seat.“The vote, the vote!”urged the Sicyonian chief, from Adeimantus’s elbow, and the voting went on. Of more than twenty voices only three—Themistocles’s and those of the Æginetan and Megarian admirals—were in favour of abiding the onset. Yet even when Eurybiades arose to announce the decision, the son of Neocles sat with his hands sprawling on the table, his face set in an inscrutable smile as he looked on Adeimantus.“It is the plain opinion,”—Eurybiades hemmed and hawed with his words,—“the plain opinion, I say, of this council that the allied fleet retire at once to the Isthmus. There[pg 303]fore, I, as admiral-in-chief, do order each commander to proceed to his own flag-ship and prepare his triremes to retire at dawn.”“Well said,”shouted Adeimantus, already on his feet;“now to obey.”But with him rose Themistocles. He stood tall and calm, his thumbs thrust in his girdle. His smile was a little broader, his head held a little higher, than of wont.“Good Eurybiades, I grieve to blast the wisdom of all these valiant gentlemen, but they cannot retire if they wish.”“Explain!”a dozen shouted.“Very simply. I have had good reason to know that the king has moved forward the western horn of his fleet, so as to enclose our anchorage at Salamis. It is impossible to retire save through the Persian line of battle.”Perseus upholding the Gorgon’s head before Polydectes’s guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus’s frightened wrath broke loose.“Fox!10Was this your doing?”“I did not ask you to thank me,philotate,”was the easy answer.“It is, however, urgent to consider whether you wish to be taken unresisting in the morning.”The Corinthian shook his fist across the table.“Liar, as a last device to ruin us, you invent this folly.”“It is easy to see if I lie,”rejoined Themistocles;“send out a pinnace and note where the Persians anchor. It will not take long.”For an instant swords seemed about to leap from their scabbards, and the enraged Peloponnesians to sheathe them in the Athenian’s breast. He stood unflinching, smiling,[pg 304]while a volley of curses flew over him. Then an orderly summoned him on deck, while Adeimantus and his fellows foamed and contended below. Under the battle lantern Themistocles saw a man who was his elder in years, rugged in feature, with massive forehead and wise gray eyes. This was Aristeides the Just, the admiral’s enemy, but their feud had died when Xerxes drew near to Athens.Hands clasped heartily as the twain stood face to face.“Our rivalry forever more shall be a rivalry which of us can do most to profit Athens,”spoke the returning exile; then Aristeides told how he had even now come from Ægina, how he had heard of the clamours to retreat, how retreat was impossible, for the Persians were pressing in. A laugh from Themistocles interrupted.“My handiwork! Come to the council. They will not believe me, no, not my oath.”Aristeides told his story, and how his vessel to Salamis had scarce escaped the Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him“liar.”The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter.“Captains of Hellas, a trireme of Teos has deserted from the Barbarian to us. Her navarch sends word that all is even as Themistocles and Aristeides tell. The Egyptians hold the passage to Eleusis. Infantry are disembarked on Psyttaleia. The Phœnicians and Ionians enclose us on the eastern strait. We are hemmed in.”* * * * * * *Once more the orderly turned the water-clock. It was past midnight. The clouds had blown apart before the rising wind. The debate must end. Eurybiades stood again to take the votes of the wearied, tense-strung men.[pg 305]“In view of the report of the Teans, what is your voice and vote?”Before all the rest up leaped Adeimantus. He was no craven at heart, though an evil genius had possessed him.“You have your will, Themistocles,”he made the concession sullenly yet firmly,“you have your will. May Poseidon prove you in the right. If it is battle or slavery at dawn, the choice is quick. Battle!”“Battle!”shouted the twenty, arising together, and Eurybiades had no need to declare the vote. The commanders scattered to their flag-ships, to give orders to be ready to fight at dawn. Themistocles went to his pinnace last. He walked proudly. He knew that whatever glory he might gain on the morrow, he could never win a fairer victory than he had won that night. When his barge came alongside, his boat crew knew that his eyes were dancing, that his whole mien was of a man in love with his fortune. Many times, as Glaucon sat beside him, he heard the son of Neocles repeating as in ecstasy:—“They must fight. They must fight.”* * * * * * *Glaucon sat mutely in the pinnace which had headed not for theNausicaä, but toward the shore, where a few faint beacons were burning.“I must confer with the strategi as to the morning,”Themistocles declared after a long interval, at which Sicinnus broke in anxiously:—“You will not sleep,kyrie?”“Sleep?”laughed the admiral, as at an excellent jest,“I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos.”Then, ignoring Sicinnus, he addressed the outlaw.“I am grateful to you, my friend,”he did not call Glaucon by name before the others,“you have saved me, and I have[pg 306]saved Hellas. You brought me a new plan when I seemed at the last resource. How can the son of Neocles reward you?”“Give me a part to play to-morrow.”“Thermopylæ was not brisk enough fighting, ha? Can you still fling a javelin?”“I can try.”“Euge!Try you shall.”He let his voice drop.“Do not forget your name henceforth is Critias. TheNausicaä’screw are mostly from Sunium and the Mesogia. They’d hardly recognize you under that beard; still Sicinnus must alter you.”“Command me,kyrie,”said the Asiatic.“A strange time and place, but you must do it. Find some dark dye for this man’s hair to-night, and at dawn have him aboard the flag-ship.”“The thing can be done,kyrie.”“After that, lie down and sleep. Because Themistocles is awake, is no cause for others’ star-gazing. Sleep sound. Pray Apollo and Hephæstus to make your eye sure, your hand strong. Then awake to see the glory of Hellas.”Confidence, yes, power came through the tones of the admiral’s voice. Themistocles went away to the belated council. Sicinnus led his charge through the crooked streets of the town of Salamis. Sailors were sleeping in the open night, and they stumbled over them. At last they found a small tavern where a dozen shipmen sprawled on the earthen floor, and a gaping host was just quenching his last lamp. Sicinnus, however, seemed to know him. There was much protesting and headshaking, at last ended by the glint of a daric. The man grumbled, departed, returned after a tedious interval with a pot of ointment, found Hermes knew[pg 307]where. By a rush-candle’s flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with a practised hand.“You know the art well,”observed the outlaw.“Assuredly; the agent of Themistocles must be a Proteus with his disguises.”Sicinnus laid down his pot and brushes. They had no mirror, but Glaucon knew that he was transformed. The host got his daric. Again they went out into the night and forsaking the crowded town sought the seaside. The strand was broad, the sand soft and cool, the circling stars gave three hours yet of night, and they lay down to rest. The sea and the shore stretched away, a magic vista with a thousand mystic shapes springing out of the charmed darkness, made and unmade as overwrought fancy summoned them. As from an unreal world Glaucon—whilst he lay—saw the lights of the scattered ships, heard the clank of chains, the rattling of tacklings. Nature slept. Only man was waking.“The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,Uplands and gorges hush!The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,The beasts under each bushCrouch, and the hived beesRest in their honeyed ease;In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,And each bird folds his wing over his head.”The school-learned lines of Alcman, with a thousand other trivial things, swarmed back through the head of Glaucon the Alcmæonid. How much he had lived through that night, how much he would live through,—if indeed he was to live,—upon the morrow! The thought was benumbing in its greatness. His head swam with confused memories. Then at last all things dimmed. Once more he dreamed. He was with Hermione gathering red poppies on the hill above[pg 308]Eleusis. She had filled her basket full. He called to her to wait for him. She ran away. He chased, she fled with laughter and sparkling eyes. He could hear the wavings of her dress, the little cries she flung back over her shoulder. Then by the sacred well near the temple he caught her. He felt her struggling gayly. He felt her warm breath upon his face, her hair was touching his forehead. Rejoicing in his strength, he was bending her head toward his—but here he wakened. Sicinnus had disappeared. A bar of gray gold hung over the water in the east.“This was the day.This was the day!”Some moments he lay trying to realize the fact in its full moment. A thin mist rested on the black water waiting to be dispelled by the sun. From afar came sounds not of seamen’s trumpets, but horns, harps, kettledrums, from the hidden mainland across the strait, as of a host advancing along the shore.“Xerxes goes down to the marge with his myriads,”Glaucon told himself.“Have not all his captains bowed and smiled,‘Your Eternity’s victory is certain. Come and behold.’”But here the Athenian shut his teeth.People at length were passing up and down the strand. The coast was waking. The gray bar was becoming silver. Friends passed, deep in talk,—perchance for the last time. Glaucon lay still a moment longer, and as he rested caught a voice so familiar he felt all the blood surge to his forehead,—Democrates’s voice.“I tell you, Hiram,—I told you before,—I have no part in the ordering of the fleet. Were I to interfere with ever so good a heart, it would only breed trouble for us all.”So close were the twain, the orator’s trailing chiton almost fell on Glaucon’s face. The latter marvelled that his own heart did not spring from its prison in his breast, so fierce were its beatings.[pg 309]“If my Lord would go to Adeimantus and suggest,”—the other’s Greek came with a marked Oriental accent.“Harpy! Adeimantus is no Medizer. He is pushed to bay now, and is sure to fight. Have you Barbarians no confidence? Has not the king two triremes to our one? Only fools can demand more. Tell Lycon, your master, I have long since done my uttermost to serve him.”“Yet remember, Excellency.”“Begone, scoundrel. Don’t threaten again. If I know your power over me, I can also promise you not to go down to Orchus alone, but take excellent pains to have fair company.”“I am sorry to bear such tidings to Lycon, Excellency.”“Away with you!”“Do not raise your voice,kyrie,”spoke Hiram, never more blandly,“here is a man asleep.”The hint sent Democrates from the spot almost on a run. Hiram disappeared in the opposite direction. Glaucon rose, shook the sand from his cloak, and stood an instant with his head whirling. The voice of his boyhood friend, of the man who had ruined him because of a suspicion of treason—and now deep in compromising talk with the agent of the chief of the peace party at Sparta! And wherefore had Mardonius spoken those mysterious words at their parting,“Beware of Democrates”? For an instant the problems evoked made him forget even the coming battle.A clear trumpet-blast down the strand gave a truce to questioning. Sicinnus reappeared, and led Glaucon to one of the great fires roaring on the beach, where the provident Greek sailors were breakfasting on barley porridge and meat broth before dining on spears and arrow-heads. A silent company, no laughter, no jesting. All knew another sun for them might never rise. Glaucon ate not because he hungered, but because duty ordered it. As the light strengthened, the[pg 310]strand grew alive with thousands of men at toil. The triremes drawn on shore went down into the sea on their rollers. More trumpet-blasts sent the rowers aboard their ships. But last of all, before thrusting out to do or die, the Greeks must feast their ears as well as their stomachs. On the sloping beach gathered the officers and the armoured marines,—eighteen from each trireme,—and heard one stirring harangue after another. The old feuds were forgotten. Adeimantus and Eurybiades both spoke bravely. The seers announced that every bird and cloud gave good omen. Prayer was offered to Ajax of Salamis that the hero should fight for his people. Last of all Themistocles spoke, and never to fairer purpose. No boasts, no lip courage, a painting of the noble and the base, the glory of dying as freemen, the infamy of existing as slaves. He told of Marathon, of Thermopylæ, and asked if Leonidas had died as died a fool. He drew tears. He drew vows of vengeance. He never drew applause. Men were too strained for that. At last he sent the thousands forth.“Go, then. Quit yourselves as Hellenes. That is all the task. And I say to you, in the after days this shall be your joy, to hear the greatest declare of you,‘Reverence this man, for he saved us all at Salamis.’”The company dispersed, each man to his ship. Themistocles went to his pinnace, and a cheer uprose from sea and land as the boat shot out to theNausicaä. Eurybiades might be chief in name; who did not know that Themistocles was the surest bulwark of Hellas?The son of Neocles, standing in the boat, uplifted his face to the now golden east.“Be witness, Helios,”he cried aloud,“be witness when thou comest, I have done all things possible. And do thou and thy fellow-gods on bright Olympus rule our battle now; the lot is in your hands!”[pg 311]CHAPTER XXIXSALAMISSunrise. TheNausicaäwas ready. Ameinias the navarch walked the deck above the stern-cabin with nervous strides. All that human forethought could do to prepare the ship had long been done. The slim hull one hundred and fifty feet long had been stripped of every superfluous rope and spar. The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of theNausicaäwas herself. To send the three-toothed beak through a foeman’s side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—thethranitesof the upper tier, thezygitesof the middle, thethalamitesof the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every oarsman dangled a sword, for boarders’ work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded theprōreus, Ameinias’s lieutenant,[pg 312]and with him thekeleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the“governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give theNausicaälife or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak.“The trireme is ready, admiral,”reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.The son of Neocles threw back his helmet, that all might see his calm, untroubled face. He wore a cuirass of silvered scale-armour over his purple chiton. At his side walked a young man, whom the ship’s people imagined the deserter of the preceding night, but he had drawn his helmet close.“This is Critias,”said Themistocles, briefly, to the navarch;“he is a good caster. See that he has plenty of darts.”“One of Themistocles’s secret agents,”muttered the captain to the governor,“we should have guessed it.”And they all had other things to think of than the whence and wherefore of this stranger.It was a weary, nervous interval. Men had said everything, done everything, hoped and feared everything. They were in no mood even to invoke the gods. In desperation some jested riotously as they gripped the oars on the benches,—demonstrations which theprōreusquelled with a loud“Silence in the ship.”The morning mist was breaking. A brisk wind was coming with the sun. Clear and strong sang the Notus, the breeze of the kindly south. It covered the blue bay with crisping whitecaps, it sent the surf foaming up along the Attic shore across the strait. Themistocles watched it all with silent eyes, but eyes that spoke of gladness. He knew the waves would beat with full force on the Persian[pg 313]prows, and make their swift movement difficult while the Greeks, taking the galloping surf astern, would suffer little.“Æolus fights for us. The first omen and a fair one.”The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced.How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain? Now as the vapour broke, men began to be able to look about them, and be delivered from their own thoughts. The shores of Salamis were alive,—old men, women, little children,—the fugitives from Attica were crowding to the marge in thousands to watch the deed that should decide their all. And many a bronze-cheeked oarsman arose from his bench to wave farewell to the wife or father or mother, and sank back again,—a clutching in his throat, a mist before his eyes, while his grip upon the oar grew like to steel.As theNausicaärode at her place in the long line of ships spread up and down the shore of Salamis, it was easy to detect forms if not faces on the strand. And Glaucon, peering out from his helmet bars, saw Democrates himself standing on the sands and beckoning to Themistocles. Then other figures became clear to him out of the many, this one or that whom he had loved and clasped hands with in the sunlit days gone by. And last of all he saw those his gaze hungered for the most, Hermippus, Lysistra, and another standing at their side all in white, and in her arms she bore something he knew must be her child,—Hermione’s son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only[pg 314]a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him.“You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,”spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything.“To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.”“No wine, for Athena’s sake!”cried the outlaw, drawing himself together,“it is passed. I am strong again.”A great shout from the shores and the waiting fleet made him forget even the sight of Hermione.“They come! The Persians! The Persians!”The fleet of the Barbarians was advancing from the havens of Athens.* * * * * * *The sun rose higher. He was far above Hymettus now, and shooting his bright javelins over mainland, islands, and waters. With his rising the southern breeze sang ever clearer, making the narrow channel betwixt Salamis and Attica white, and tossing each trireme merrily. Not a cloud hung upon Pentelicus, Hymettus, or the purple northern range of Parnes. Over the desolate Acropolis hovered a thin mist,—smoke from the smouldering temple, the sight of which made every Attic sailor blink hard and think of the vengeance.Yonder on the shore of the mainland the host of the Persian was moving: horsemen in gilded panoply, Hydarnes’s spearmen in armour like suns. They stood by myriads in glittering masses about a little spur of Mt. Ægaleos, where a holy close of Heracles looked out upon the sea. To them were coming more horsemen, chariots, litters, and across the strait drifted the thunderous acclamation,“Victory to the king!”For here on the ivory throne, with his mighty men, his captains, his harem, about him, the“Lord of the World”[pg 315]would look down on the battle and see how his slaves could fight.Now the Barbarians began to move forth by sea. From the havens of Peiræus and their anchorages along the shore swept their galleys,—Phœnician, Cilician, Egyptian, and, sorrow of sorrows, Ionian—Greek arrayed against Greek! Six hundred triremes and more they were, taller in poop and prow than the Hellenes, and braver to look upon.Each vied with each in the splendour of the scarlet, purple, and gold upon stern and foreship. Their thousands of white oars moved like the onward march of an army as they trampled down the foam. From the masts of their many admirals flew innumerable gay signal-flags. The commands shouted through trumpets in a dozen strange tongues—the shrill pipings of the oar masters, the hoarse shouts of the rowers—went up to heaven in a clamorous babel.“Swallows’ chatter,”cried the deriding Hellenes, but hearts were beating quicker, breath was coming faster in many a breast by Salamis then,—and no shame. For now was the hour of trial, the wrestle of Olympian Zeus with Ahura-Mazda. Now would a mighty one speak from the heavens to Hellas, and say to her“Die!”or“Be!”The Barbarians’ armadas were forming. Their black beaks, all pointing toward Salamis, stretched in two bristling lines from the islet of Psyttaleia—whence the shields of the landing force glittered—to that brighter glitter on the promontory by Ægaleos where sat the king. To charge their array seemed charging a moving hedge of spears, impenetrable in defence, invincible in attack. Slowly, rocked by the sea and rowing in steady order, the armament approached Salamis. And still the Greek ships lay spread out along the shore, each trireme swinging at the end of the cable which moored her to the land, each mariner listening[pg 316]to the beatings of his own heart and straining his eyes on one ship now—Eurybiades’s—which rode at the centre of their line and far ahead.All could read the order of battle at last as squadron lay against squadron. On the west, under Xerxes’s own eye, the Athenians must charge the serried Phœnicians, at the centre the Æginetans must face the Cilicians, on the east Adeimantus and his fellows from Peloponnese must make good against the vassal Ionians. But would the signal to row and strike never come? Had some god numbed Eurybiades’s will? Was treachery doing its darkest work? With men so highly wrought moments were precious. The bow strung too long will lose power. And wherefore did Eurybiades tarry?Every soul in theNausicaäkept his curses soft, and waited—waited till that trailing monster, the Persian fleet, had crept halfway from Psyttaleia toward them, then up the shrouds of the Spartan admiral leaped a flag. Eager hands drew it, yet it seemed mounting as a snail, till at the masthead the clear wind blew it wide,—a plain red banner, but as it spread hundreds of axes were hewing the cables that bound the triremes to the shore, every Greek oar was biting the sea, the ships were leaping away from Salamis. From the strand a shout went up, a prayer more than a cheer, mothers, wives, little ones, calling it together:—“Zeus prosper you!”A roar from the fleet, the tearing of countless blades on the thole-pins answered them. Eurybiades had spoken. There was no treason. All now was in the hand of the god.* * * * * * *Across the strait they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging[pg 317]their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phœnicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious strokes. The grudges, the commercial rivalries between Greek and Sidonian, were old. No Persian was hotter for Xerxes’s cause than his Phœnician vassals that day.And as they charged, the foemen’s lines seemed so dense, their ships so tall, their power so vast, that involuntarily hesitancy came over the Greeks. Their strokes slowed. The whole line lagged. Here an Æginetan galley dropped behind, yonder a Corinthian navarch suffered his men to back water. Even thekeleustesof theNausicaäslackened his beating on the sounding-board. Eurybiades’s ship had drifted behind to the line of her sisters, as in defiance a towering Sidonian sprang ahead of the Barbarian line of battle, twenty trumpets from her poop and foreship asking,“Dare you meet me?”The Greek line became almost stationary. Some ships were backing water. It was a moment which, suffered to slip unchecked, leads to irreparable disaster. Then like a god sprang Themistocles upon the capstan on his poop. He had torn off his helmet. The crews of scores of triremes saw him. His voice was like Stentor’s, the herald whose call was strong as fifty common men.In a lull amidst the howls of the Barbarians his call rang up and down the flagging ships:—“O Sons of Hellas! save your land,Your children save, your altars and your wives!Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”“Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”Navarch shouted it to navarch. The cry went up and[pg 318]down the line of the Hellenes,“loud as when billows lash the beetling crags.”The trailing oars beat again into the water, and even as the ships once more gained way, Themistocles nodded to Ameinias, and he to thekeleustes. The master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the sounding-board.“Aru! Aru! Aru!Put it on, my men!”TheNausicaäanswered with a leap. Men wrought at the oar butts, tugging like mad, their backs toward the foe, conscious only that duty bade them send the trireme across the waves as a stone whirls from the sling. Thus the men, but Themistocles, on the poop, standing at the captain’s and governor’s side, never took his gaze from the great Barbarian that leaped defiantly to meet them.“Can we risk the trick?”his swift question to Ameinias.The captain nodded.“With this crew—yes.”Two stadia, one stadium, half a stadium, a ship’s length, the triremes were charging prow to prow, rushing on a common death, when Ameinias clapped a whistle to his lips and blew shrilly. As one man every rower on the port-side leaped to his feet and dragged his oar inward through its row-hole. The deed was barely done ere the Sidonian was on them. They heard the roaring water round her prow, the cracking of the whips as the petty officers ran up and down the gangways urging on the panting cattle at the oars. Then almost at the shock the governor touched his steering oar. TheNausicaäswerved. The prow of the Sidonian rushed past them. A shower of darts pattered down on the deck of the Hellene, but a twinkling later from the Barbarians arose a frightful cry. Right across her triple oar bank, still in full speed, ploughed the Athenian. The Sidonian’s oars were snapping like faggots. The luckless rowers were flung from their benches in heaps. In less time than the telling every oar on the Barbarian’s port-side[pg 319]had been put out of play. Thediekplous, favourite trick of the Grecian seamen, had never been done more fairly.Now was Themistocles’s chance. He used it. There was no need for him to give orders to the oar master. Automatically every rower on the port-tiers of theNausicaähad run out his blade again. The governor sent the head of the trireme around with a grim smile locked about his grizzled lips. It was no woman’s task which lay before them. Exposing her whole broadside lay the long Sidonian; she was helpless, striving vainly to crawl away with her remaining oar banks. Her people were running to and fro, howling to Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and all their other foul gods, and stretching their hands for help to consorts too far away.“Aru! Aru! Aru!”was the shout of the oar master; again theNausicaäanswered with her leap. Straight across the narrow water she shot, the firm hand of the governor never veering now. The stroke grew faster, faster. Then with one instinct men dropped the oars, to trail in the rushing water, and seized stanchions, beams, anything to brace themselves for the shock. The crash which followed was heard on the mainland and on Salamis. The side of the Phœnician was beaten in like an egg-shell. From theNausicaä’spoop they saw her open hull reel over, saw the hundreds of upturned, frantic faces, heard the howls of agony, saw the waves leap into the gaping void.—“Back water,”thundered Ameinias,“clear the vortex, she is going down!”TheNausicaä’speople staggered to the oars. So busy were they in righting their own ship few saw the crowning horror. A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her.[pg 320]A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes.“Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!”At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging. Adeimantus was charging. Their ships and all the rest went racing to meet the foe.* * * * * * *But theNausicaähad paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In themêléeof ships which had just begun, she must play her part robbed of her keenest weapon. The sinking of the Barbarian had been met with cheers by the Hellenes, by howls of revengeful rage by the host against them. Not lightly were the Asiatics who fought beneath the eyes of the king to be daunted. They came crowding up the strait in such masses that sheer numbers hindered them, leaving no space for the play of the oars, much less for fine manœuvre. Yet for an instant it seemed as if mere weight would sweep the Hellenes back to Salamis. Then the lines of battle dissolved into confused fragments. Captains singled out an opponent and charged home desperately, unmindful how it fared elsewhere in the battle. Here an Egyptian ran down a Eubœan, there a Sicyonian grappled a Cilician and flung her boarders on to the foeman’s decks. To the onlookers the scene could have meant naught save confusion. A hundred duels, a hundred varying victories, but to which side the final glory would fall, who knew?—perchance not even Zeus.In the roaringmêléetheNausicaähad for some moments moved almost aimlessly, her men gathering breath and letting their unscathed comrades pass. Then gradually the battle drifted round them also. A Cyprian, noting they[pg 321]had lost their ram, strove to charge them bow to bow. The skill of the governor avoided that disaster. They ran under the stem of a Tyrian, and Glaucon proved he had not forgotten his skill when he sent his javelins among the officers upon the poop. A second Sidonian swept down on them, but grown wise by her consort’s destruction turned aside to lock with an Æginetan galley. How the fight at large was going, who was winning, who losing, Glaucon saw no more than any one else. An arrow grazed his arm. He first learned it when he found his armour bloody. A sling-stone smote the marine next to him on the forehead. The man dropped without a groan. Glaucon flung the body overboard, almost by instinct. Themistocles was everywhere, on the poop, on the foreship, among the rowers’ benches, shouting, laughing, cheering, ordering, standing up boldly where the arrows flew thickest, yet never hit. So for a while, till out of the confusion of ships and wrecks came darting a trireme, loftier than her peers. The railing on poop and prow was silver. The shields of the javelin-men that crowded her high fighting decks were gilded. Ten pennons whipped from her masts, and the cry of horns, tambours, and kettledrums blended with the shoutings of her crew. A partially disabled Hellene drifted across her path. She ran the luckless ship down in a twinkling. Then her bow swung. She headed toward theNausicaä.“Do you know this ship?”asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop.“A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.”“She is attacking us, Excellency,”called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling.Themistocles measured the water with his eye.[pg 322]“She will be alongside then in a moment,”was his answer,“and the beak is gone?”“Gone, and ten of our best rowers are dead.”Themistocles drew down the helmet, covering his face.“Euge!Since the choice is to grapple or fly, we had better grapple.”The governor shifted again the steering paddles. The head of theNausicaäfell away toward her attacker, but no signal was given to quicken the oars. The Barbarian, noting what her opponent did, but justly fearing the handiness of the Greeks, slackened also. The two ships drifted slowly together. Long before they closed in unfriendly contact the arrows of the Phœnician pelted over theNausicaälike hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop theprōreuslay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phœnician boarders were scrambling like cats upon her decks.“Swords, men!”called Themistocles, never less daunted than at the pinch,“up and feed them with iron!”Three times the Phœnicians poured as a flood over theNausicaä. Three times they were flung back with loss, but only to rage, call on their gods, and return with tenfold fury. Glaucon had hurled one sheaf of javelins, and tore loose another, eye and arm aiming, casting mechanically. In the lulls he saw how wind and sea were sweeping the two ships landward, until almost in arrow-shot of the rocky point where sat Xerxes and his lords. He saw the king upon his ivory throne and all his mighty men around him. He saw the scribes standing near with parchment and papyrus, inscribing the names of this or that ship which did well or[pg 323]ill in behalf of the lord of the Aryans. He saw the gaudy dresses of the eunuchs, the litters, and from them peering forth the veiled women. Did Artazostra thinknowthe Hellenes were mad fools to look her brother’s power in the face? From the shores of Attica and of Salamis, where the myriads rejoiced or wept as the scattered battle changed, the cries were rising, falling, like the throb of a tragic chorus,—a chorus of Titans, with the actors gods.“Another charge!”shouted Ameinias, through the din,“meet them briskly, lads!”Once more the hoarse Semitic war-shout, the dark-faced Asiatics dropping upon the decks, the whir of javelins, the scream of dying men, the clash of steel on steel. A frantic charge, but stoutly met. Themistocles was in the thickestmêlée. With his own spear he dashed two Tyrians overboard, as they sprang upon the poop. The band that had leaped down among the oar benches were hewn in pieces by the seamen. The remnant of the attackers recoiled in howls of despair. On the Phœnician’s decks the Greeks saw the officers laying the lash mercilessly across their men, but the disheartened creatures did not stir. Now could be seen Ariamenes, the high admiral himself, a giant warrior in his purple and gilded armour, going up and down the poop, cursing, praying, threatening,—all in vain. TheNausicaä’speople rose and cheered madly.“Enough! They have enough! Glory to Athens!”But here Ameinias gripped Themistocles’s arm. The chief turned, and all the Hellenes with him. The cheer died on their lips. A tall trireme was bearing down on them in full charge even while theNausicaädrifted. They were as helpless as the Sidonian they had sent to death. One groan broke from the Athenians.“Save, Athena! Save! It is Artemisia! The queen of Halicarnassus!”[pg 324]The heavy trireme of the amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm. The foam leaped in a cataract over her ram. The sun made fire of the tossing weapons on her prow. A yell of triumph rose from the Phœnicians. On theNausicaämen dropped sword and spear, moaned, raved, and gazed wildly on Themistocles as if he were a god possessing power to dash the death aside.“To your places, men!”rang his shout, as he faced the foe unmoved,“and die as Athenians!”Then even while men glanced up at the sun to greet Helios for the last time, there was a marvel. The threatening beak shot around. The trireme flew past them, her oars leaping madly, her people too intent on escape even to give a flight of javelins. And again the Athenians cheered.“ThePerseus! Cimon has saved us.”Not three ships’ lengths behind the Halicarnassian raced the ship of the son of Miltiades. They knew now whyArtemisiahad veered. Well she might; had she struck theNausicaädown, her own broadside would have swung defenceless to the fleet pursuer. ThePerseussped past her consort at full speed, Athenian cheering Athenian as she went.“Need you help?”called Cimon, from his poop, as Themistocles waved his sword.“None, press on, smite the Barbarian! Athena is with us!”“Athena is with us! Zeus is with us!”TheNausicaä’screw were lifted from panic to mad enthusiasm. Still above them towered the tall Phœnician, but they could have scaled Mt. Caucasus at that instant.“Onward! Up and after them,”rang Ameinias’s blast,“she is our own, we will take her under the king’s own eye.”[pg 325]The javelins and arrows were pelting from the Barbarian. The Athenians mocked the shower as they leaped the void from bulwark to bulwark. Vainly the Phœnicians strove to clear the grapples. Too firm! Their foes came on to their decks with long leaps, or here and there ran deftly on projecting spars, for what athlete of Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers’ deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phœnicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into themêlée, laying about with a mighty sword worthy of Ajax at Troy, showing he was a prince of the Aryans indeed. It took all the steadiness of Ameinias and his stoutest men to stop the rush, and save the Athenians in turn from being driven overboard. The rush was halted finally, though this was mere respite before a fiercer breaking of the storm. The two ships were drifting yet closer to the strand. Only the fear of striking their own men kept the Persians around the king from clouding the air with arrows. Glaucon saw the grandees near Xerxes’s throne brandishing their swords. In imagination he saw the monarch leaping from his throne in agony as at Thermopylæ.“Back to the charge,”pealed Ariamenes’s summons to the Tyrians;“will you be cowards and dogs beneath the very eyes of the king?”The defenders answered with a second rush. Others again hurled darts from the stern and foreship. Then out of themælstromof men and weapons came a truce. Athenian and Tyrian drew back, whilst Themistocles and Ariamenes were fighting blade to blade. Twice the giant Persian almost[pg 326]dashed the Hellene down. Twice Themistocles recovered poise, and paid back stroke for stroke. He had smitten the helmet from Ariamenes’s head and was swinging for a master-blow when his foot slipped on the bloody plank. He staggered. Before he could recover, the Persian had brought his own weapon up, and flung his might into the downward stroke.“The admiral—lost!”Athenians shuddered together, but with the groan shot a javelin. Clear through the scales of the cuirass it tore, and into the Persian’s shoulder,—Glaucon’s cast, never at the Isthmus truer with hand or eye. The ponderous blade turned, grazed the Athenian’s corselet, clattered on the deck. The Persian sprang back disarmed and powerless. At sight thereof the Phœnicians flung down their swords. True Orientals, in the fate of their chief they saw decreeing Destiny,—what use to resist it?“Yield, my Lord, yield,”called Glaucon, in Persian,“the battle is against you, and no fault of yours. Save the lives of your men.”Ariamenes gave a toss of his princely head, and with his left hand plucked the javelin from his shoulder.“A prince of the Aryans knows how to die, but not how to yield,”he cast back, and before the Athenians guessed his intent he sprang upon the bulwark. There in the sight of his king he stood and bowed his head and with his left arm made the sign of adoration.“Seize him!”shouted Ameinias, divining his intent, but too late. The Persian leaped into the water. In his heavy mail he sank like lead. The wave closed over him, as he passed forever from the sight of man.There was stillness on the Tyrian for a moment. A groan of helpless horror was rising from the Barbarians on the shore. Then the Phœnicians fell upon their knees, crying in their harsh tongue,“Quarter! Quarter!”and embracing and[pg 327]kissing the feet of the victors. Thanks to the moment of quietness given them, the Athenians’ blood had cooled a little; they gathered up the weapons cast upon the deck; there was no massacre.Themistocles mounted the poop of the captured flag-ship, and Glaucon with him. The wind was wafting them again into the centre of the channel. For the first time for many moments they were able to look about them, to ask,“How goes the battle?”Not the petty duel they had fought, but the great battle of battles which was the life-struggle of Hellas. And behold, as they gazed they pressed their hands upon their eyes and looked and looked again, for the thing they saw seemed overgood for truth. Where the great Barbarian line had been pushing up the strait, were only bands of scattered ships, and most of these turning their beaks from Salamis. The waves were strewn with wrecks, and nigh every one a Persian. And right, left, and centre the triumphant Hellenes were pressing home, ramming, grappling, capturing. Even whilst the fight raged, pinnaces were thrusting out from Salamis—Aristeides’s deed, they later heard—crowded with martial graybeards who could not look idly on while their sons fought on the ships, and who speedily landed onPsyttaleiato massacre the luckless Persians there stationed. The cheers of the Barbarians were ended now; from the shores came only a beastlike howling which drowned the pæans of the victors. As theNausicaä’speople looked, they could see the once haughty Phœnicians and Cilicians thrusting back against the land, and the thousands of footmen running down upon the shore to drag the shattered triremes up and away from the triumphant Hellenes.TheNausicaä’speople in wondering gaze stood there for a long time as if transfixed, forgetful how their ship and its prize drifted, forgetful of weariness, forgetful of wounds.[pg 328]Then as one man they turned to the poop of the captured Tyrian, and to Themistocles.Hehad done it—their admiral. He had saved Hellas under the eyes of the vaunting demigod who thought to be her destroyer. They called to Themistocles, they worshipped as if he were the Olympian himself.

[pg 300]CHAPTER XXVIIIBEFORE THE DEATH GRAPPLEFor the fourth time the subaltern who stood at Eurybiades’s elbow turned the water-glass that marked the passing of the hours. The lamps in the low-ceiled cabin were flickering dimly. Men glared on one another across the narrow table with drawn and heated faces. Adeimantus of Corinth was rising to reply to the last appeal of the Athenian.“We have had enough, Eurybiades, of Themistocles’s wordy folly. Because the Athenian admiral is resolved to lead all Hellas to destruction, is no reason that we should follow. As for his threat that he will desert us with his ships if we refuse to fight, I fling it in his face that he dare not make it good. Why go all over the well-threshed straw again? Is not the fleet of the king overwhelming? Were we not saved by a miracle from overthrow at Artemisium? Do not the scouts tell us the Persians are advancing beyond Eleusis toward Megara and the Isthmus? Is not our best fighting blood here in the fleet? Then if the Isthmus is threatened, our business is to defend it and save the Peloponnesus, the last remnant of Hellas unconquered. Now then, headstrong son of Neocles, answer that!”The Corinthian, a tall domineering man, threw back his shoulders like a boxer awaiting battle. Themistocles did not answer, but only smiled up at him from his seat opposite.“I have silenced you, grinning babbler, at last,”thundered[pg 301]Adeimantus,“and I demand of you, O Eurybiades, that we end this tedious debate. If we are to retreat, let us retreat. A vote, I say, a vote!”Eurybiades rose at the head of the table. He was a heavy, florid individual with more than the average Spartan’s slowness of tongue and intellect. Physically he was no coward, but he dreaded responsibility.“Much has been said,”he announced ponderously,“many opinions offered. It would seem the majority of the council favour the decision to retire forthwith. Has Themistocles anything more to say why the vote should not be taken?”“Nothing,”rejoined the Athenian, with an equanimity that made Adeimantus snap his teeth.“We will therefore take the vote city by city,”went on Eurybiades.“Do you, Phlegon of Seriphos, give your vote.”Seriphos—wretched islet—sent only one ship, but thanks to the Greek mania for“equality”Phlegon’svote had equal weight with that of Themistocles.“Salamis is not defensible,”announced the Seriphian, shortly.“Retreat.”“And you, Charmides of Melos?”“Retreat.”“And you, Phoibodas of Trœzene?”“Retreat, by all the gods.”“And you, Hippocrates of Ægina?”“Stay and fight. If you go back to the Isthmus, Ægina must be abandoned to the Barbarians. I am with Themistocles.”“Record his vote,”shouted Adeimantus, ill-naturedly,“he is but one against twenty. But I warn you, Eurybiades, do not call for Themistocles’s vote, or the rest of us will be angry. The man whose city is under the power of the Bar[pg 302]barian has no vote in this council, however much we condescend to listen to his chatterings.”The Athenian sprang from his seat, his aspect as threatening as Apollo descending Olympus in wrath.“Where is my country, Adeimantus? Yonder!”he pointed out the open port-hole,“there rides the array of our Athenian ships. What other state in Hellas sends so many and sets better men within them? Athens still lives, though her Acropolis be wrapped in flames.‘Strong-hearted men and naught else are warp and woof of a city.’Do you forget Alcæus’s word so soon, O Boaster from Corinth? Yes, by Athena Promachos, Mistress of Battles, while those nine score ships ride on the deep, I have a city fairer, braver, than yours. And will you still deny me equal voice and vote with this noble trierarch from Siphinos with his one, or with his comrade from Melos with his twain?”Themistocles’s voice rang like a trumpet. Adeimantus winced. Eurybiades broke in with soothing tones.“No one intends to deny your right to vote, Themistocles. The excellent Corinthian did but jest.”“A fitting hour for jesting!”muttered the Athenian, sinking back into his seat.“The vote, the vote!”urged the Sicyonian chief, from Adeimantus’s elbow, and the voting went on. Of more than twenty voices only three—Themistocles’s and those of the Æginetan and Megarian admirals—were in favour of abiding the onset. Yet even when Eurybiades arose to announce the decision, the son of Neocles sat with his hands sprawling on the table, his face set in an inscrutable smile as he looked on Adeimantus.“It is the plain opinion,”—Eurybiades hemmed and hawed with his words,—“the plain opinion, I say, of this council that the allied fleet retire at once to the Isthmus. There[pg 303]fore, I, as admiral-in-chief, do order each commander to proceed to his own flag-ship and prepare his triremes to retire at dawn.”“Well said,”shouted Adeimantus, already on his feet;“now to obey.”But with him rose Themistocles. He stood tall and calm, his thumbs thrust in his girdle. His smile was a little broader, his head held a little higher, than of wont.“Good Eurybiades, I grieve to blast the wisdom of all these valiant gentlemen, but they cannot retire if they wish.”“Explain!”a dozen shouted.“Very simply. I have had good reason to know that the king has moved forward the western horn of his fleet, so as to enclose our anchorage at Salamis. It is impossible to retire save through the Persian line of battle.”Perseus upholding the Gorgon’s head before Polydectes’s guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus’s frightened wrath broke loose.“Fox!10Was this your doing?”“I did not ask you to thank me,philotate,”was the easy answer.“It is, however, urgent to consider whether you wish to be taken unresisting in the morning.”The Corinthian shook his fist across the table.“Liar, as a last device to ruin us, you invent this folly.”“It is easy to see if I lie,”rejoined Themistocles;“send out a pinnace and note where the Persians anchor. It will not take long.”For an instant swords seemed about to leap from their scabbards, and the enraged Peloponnesians to sheathe them in the Athenian’s breast. He stood unflinching, smiling,[pg 304]while a volley of curses flew over him. Then an orderly summoned him on deck, while Adeimantus and his fellows foamed and contended below. Under the battle lantern Themistocles saw a man who was his elder in years, rugged in feature, with massive forehead and wise gray eyes. This was Aristeides the Just, the admiral’s enemy, but their feud had died when Xerxes drew near to Athens.Hands clasped heartily as the twain stood face to face.“Our rivalry forever more shall be a rivalry which of us can do most to profit Athens,”spoke the returning exile; then Aristeides told how he had even now come from Ægina, how he had heard of the clamours to retreat, how retreat was impossible, for the Persians were pressing in. A laugh from Themistocles interrupted.“My handiwork! Come to the council. They will not believe me, no, not my oath.”Aristeides told his story, and how his vessel to Salamis had scarce escaped the Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him“liar.”The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter.“Captains of Hellas, a trireme of Teos has deserted from the Barbarian to us. Her navarch sends word that all is even as Themistocles and Aristeides tell. The Egyptians hold the passage to Eleusis. Infantry are disembarked on Psyttaleia. The Phœnicians and Ionians enclose us on the eastern strait. We are hemmed in.”* * * * * * *Once more the orderly turned the water-clock. It was past midnight. The clouds had blown apart before the rising wind. The debate must end. Eurybiades stood again to take the votes of the wearied, tense-strung men.[pg 305]“In view of the report of the Teans, what is your voice and vote?”Before all the rest up leaped Adeimantus. He was no craven at heart, though an evil genius had possessed him.“You have your will, Themistocles,”he made the concession sullenly yet firmly,“you have your will. May Poseidon prove you in the right. If it is battle or slavery at dawn, the choice is quick. Battle!”“Battle!”shouted the twenty, arising together, and Eurybiades had no need to declare the vote. The commanders scattered to their flag-ships, to give orders to be ready to fight at dawn. Themistocles went to his pinnace last. He walked proudly. He knew that whatever glory he might gain on the morrow, he could never win a fairer victory than he had won that night. When his barge came alongside, his boat crew knew that his eyes were dancing, that his whole mien was of a man in love with his fortune. Many times, as Glaucon sat beside him, he heard the son of Neocles repeating as in ecstasy:—“They must fight. They must fight.”* * * * * * *Glaucon sat mutely in the pinnace which had headed not for theNausicaä, but toward the shore, where a few faint beacons were burning.“I must confer with the strategi as to the morning,”Themistocles declared after a long interval, at which Sicinnus broke in anxiously:—“You will not sleep,kyrie?”“Sleep?”laughed the admiral, as at an excellent jest,“I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos.”Then, ignoring Sicinnus, he addressed the outlaw.“I am grateful to you, my friend,”he did not call Glaucon by name before the others,“you have saved me, and I have[pg 306]saved Hellas. You brought me a new plan when I seemed at the last resource. How can the son of Neocles reward you?”“Give me a part to play to-morrow.”“Thermopylæ was not brisk enough fighting, ha? Can you still fling a javelin?”“I can try.”“Euge!Try you shall.”He let his voice drop.“Do not forget your name henceforth is Critias. TheNausicaä’screw are mostly from Sunium and the Mesogia. They’d hardly recognize you under that beard; still Sicinnus must alter you.”“Command me,kyrie,”said the Asiatic.“A strange time and place, but you must do it. Find some dark dye for this man’s hair to-night, and at dawn have him aboard the flag-ship.”“The thing can be done,kyrie.”“After that, lie down and sleep. Because Themistocles is awake, is no cause for others’ star-gazing. Sleep sound. Pray Apollo and Hephæstus to make your eye sure, your hand strong. Then awake to see the glory of Hellas.”Confidence, yes, power came through the tones of the admiral’s voice. Themistocles went away to the belated council. Sicinnus led his charge through the crooked streets of the town of Salamis. Sailors were sleeping in the open night, and they stumbled over them. At last they found a small tavern where a dozen shipmen sprawled on the earthen floor, and a gaping host was just quenching his last lamp. Sicinnus, however, seemed to know him. There was much protesting and headshaking, at last ended by the glint of a daric. The man grumbled, departed, returned after a tedious interval with a pot of ointment, found Hermes knew[pg 307]where. By a rush-candle’s flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with a practised hand.“You know the art well,”observed the outlaw.“Assuredly; the agent of Themistocles must be a Proteus with his disguises.”Sicinnus laid down his pot and brushes. They had no mirror, but Glaucon knew that he was transformed. The host got his daric. Again they went out into the night and forsaking the crowded town sought the seaside. The strand was broad, the sand soft and cool, the circling stars gave three hours yet of night, and they lay down to rest. The sea and the shore stretched away, a magic vista with a thousand mystic shapes springing out of the charmed darkness, made and unmade as overwrought fancy summoned them. As from an unreal world Glaucon—whilst he lay—saw the lights of the scattered ships, heard the clank of chains, the rattling of tacklings. Nature slept. Only man was waking.“The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,Uplands and gorges hush!The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,The beasts under each bushCrouch, and the hived beesRest in their honeyed ease;In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,And each bird folds his wing over his head.”The school-learned lines of Alcman, with a thousand other trivial things, swarmed back through the head of Glaucon the Alcmæonid. How much he had lived through that night, how much he would live through,—if indeed he was to live,—upon the morrow! The thought was benumbing in its greatness. His head swam with confused memories. Then at last all things dimmed. Once more he dreamed. He was with Hermione gathering red poppies on the hill above[pg 308]Eleusis. She had filled her basket full. He called to her to wait for him. She ran away. He chased, she fled with laughter and sparkling eyes. He could hear the wavings of her dress, the little cries she flung back over her shoulder. Then by the sacred well near the temple he caught her. He felt her struggling gayly. He felt her warm breath upon his face, her hair was touching his forehead. Rejoicing in his strength, he was bending her head toward his—but here he wakened. Sicinnus had disappeared. A bar of gray gold hung over the water in the east.“This was the day.This was the day!”Some moments he lay trying to realize the fact in its full moment. A thin mist rested on the black water waiting to be dispelled by the sun. From afar came sounds not of seamen’s trumpets, but horns, harps, kettledrums, from the hidden mainland across the strait, as of a host advancing along the shore.“Xerxes goes down to the marge with his myriads,”Glaucon told himself.“Have not all his captains bowed and smiled,‘Your Eternity’s victory is certain. Come and behold.’”But here the Athenian shut his teeth.People at length were passing up and down the strand. The coast was waking. The gray bar was becoming silver. Friends passed, deep in talk,—perchance for the last time. Glaucon lay still a moment longer, and as he rested caught a voice so familiar he felt all the blood surge to his forehead,—Democrates’s voice.“I tell you, Hiram,—I told you before,—I have no part in the ordering of the fleet. Were I to interfere with ever so good a heart, it would only breed trouble for us all.”So close were the twain, the orator’s trailing chiton almost fell on Glaucon’s face. The latter marvelled that his own heart did not spring from its prison in his breast, so fierce were its beatings.[pg 309]“If my Lord would go to Adeimantus and suggest,”—the other’s Greek came with a marked Oriental accent.“Harpy! Adeimantus is no Medizer. He is pushed to bay now, and is sure to fight. Have you Barbarians no confidence? Has not the king two triremes to our one? Only fools can demand more. Tell Lycon, your master, I have long since done my uttermost to serve him.”“Yet remember, Excellency.”“Begone, scoundrel. Don’t threaten again. If I know your power over me, I can also promise you not to go down to Orchus alone, but take excellent pains to have fair company.”“I am sorry to bear such tidings to Lycon, Excellency.”“Away with you!”“Do not raise your voice,kyrie,”spoke Hiram, never more blandly,“here is a man asleep.”The hint sent Democrates from the spot almost on a run. Hiram disappeared in the opposite direction. Glaucon rose, shook the sand from his cloak, and stood an instant with his head whirling. The voice of his boyhood friend, of the man who had ruined him because of a suspicion of treason—and now deep in compromising talk with the agent of the chief of the peace party at Sparta! And wherefore had Mardonius spoken those mysterious words at their parting,“Beware of Democrates”? For an instant the problems evoked made him forget even the coming battle.A clear trumpet-blast down the strand gave a truce to questioning. Sicinnus reappeared, and led Glaucon to one of the great fires roaring on the beach, where the provident Greek sailors were breakfasting on barley porridge and meat broth before dining on spears and arrow-heads. A silent company, no laughter, no jesting. All knew another sun for them might never rise. Glaucon ate not because he hungered, but because duty ordered it. As the light strengthened, the[pg 310]strand grew alive with thousands of men at toil. The triremes drawn on shore went down into the sea on their rollers. More trumpet-blasts sent the rowers aboard their ships. But last of all, before thrusting out to do or die, the Greeks must feast their ears as well as their stomachs. On the sloping beach gathered the officers and the armoured marines,—eighteen from each trireme,—and heard one stirring harangue after another. The old feuds were forgotten. Adeimantus and Eurybiades both spoke bravely. The seers announced that every bird and cloud gave good omen. Prayer was offered to Ajax of Salamis that the hero should fight for his people. Last of all Themistocles spoke, and never to fairer purpose. No boasts, no lip courage, a painting of the noble and the base, the glory of dying as freemen, the infamy of existing as slaves. He told of Marathon, of Thermopylæ, and asked if Leonidas had died as died a fool. He drew tears. He drew vows of vengeance. He never drew applause. Men were too strained for that. At last he sent the thousands forth.“Go, then. Quit yourselves as Hellenes. That is all the task. And I say to you, in the after days this shall be your joy, to hear the greatest declare of you,‘Reverence this man, for he saved us all at Salamis.’”The company dispersed, each man to his ship. Themistocles went to his pinnace, and a cheer uprose from sea and land as the boat shot out to theNausicaä. Eurybiades might be chief in name; who did not know that Themistocles was the surest bulwark of Hellas?The son of Neocles, standing in the boat, uplifted his face to the now golden east.“Be witness, Helios,”he cried aloud,“be witness when thou comest, I have done all things possible. And do thou and thy fellow-gods on bright Olympus rule our battle now; the lot is in your hands!”[pg 311]CHAPTER XXIXSALAMISSunrise. TheNausicaäwas ready. Ameinias the navarch walked the deck above the stern-cabin with nervous strides. All that human forethought could do to prepare the ship had long been done. The slim hull one hundred and fifty feet long had been stripped of every superfluous rope and spar. The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of theNausicaäwas herself. To send the three-toothed beak through a foeman’s side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—thethranitesof the upper tier, thezygitesof the middle, thethalamitesof the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every oarsman dangled a sword, for boarders’ work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded theprōreus, Ameinias’s lieutenant,[pg 312]and with him thekeleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the“governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give theNausicaälife or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak.“The trireme is ready, admiral,”reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.The son of Neocles threw back his helmet, that all might see his calm, untroubled face. He wore a cuirass of silvered scale-armour over his purple chiton. At his side walked a young man, whom the ship’s people imagined the deserter of the preceding night, but he had drawn his helmet close.“This is Critias,”said Themistocles, briefly, to the navarch;“he is a good caster. See that he has plenty of darts.”“One of Themistocles’s secret agents,”muttered the captain to the governor,“we should have guessed it.”And they all had other things to think of than the whence and wherefore of this stranger.It was a weary, nervous interval. Men had said everything, done everything, hoped and feared everything. They were in no mood even to invoke the gods. In desperation some jested riotously as they gripped the oars on the benches,—demonstrations which theprōreusquelled with a loud“Silence in the ship.”The morning mist was breaking. A brisk wind was coming with the sun. Clear and strong sang the Notus, the breeze of the kindly south. It covered the blue bay with crisping whitecaps, it sent the surf foaming up along the Attic shore across the strait. Themistocles watched it all with silent eyes, but eyes that spoke of gladness. He knew the waves would beat with full force on the Persian[pg 313]prows, and make their swift movement difficult while the Greeks, taking the galloping surf astern, would suffer little.“Æolus fights for us. The first omen and a fair one.”The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced.How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain? Now as the vapour broke, men began to be able to look about them, and be delivered from their own thoughts. The shores of Salamis were alive,—old men, women, little children,—the fugitives from Attica were crowding to the marge in thousands to watch the deed that should decide their all. And many a bronze-cheeked oarsman arose from his bench to wave farewell to the wife or father or mother, and sank back again,—a clutching in his throat, a mist before his eyes, while his grip upon the oar grew like to steel.As theNausicaärode at her place in the long line of ships spread up and down the shore of Salamis, it was easy to detect forms if not faces on the strand. And Glaucon, peering out from his helmet bars, saw Democrates himself standing on the sands and beckoning to Themistocles. Then other figures became clear to him out of the many, this one or that whom he had loved and clasped hands with in the sunlit days gone by. And last of all he saw those his gaze hungered for the most, Hermippus, Lysistra, and another standing at their side all in white, and in her arms she bore something he knew must be her child,—Hermione’s son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only[pg 314]a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him.“You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,”spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything.“To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.”“No wine, for Athena’s sake!”cried the outlaw, drawing himself together,“it is passed. I am strong again.”A great shout from the shores and the waiting fleet made him forget even the sight of Hermione.“They come! The Persians! The Persians!”The fleet of the Barbarians was advancing from the havens of Athens.* * * * * * *The sun rose higher. He was far above Hymettus now, and shooting his bright javelins over mainland, islands, and waters. With his rising the southern breeze sang ever clearer, making the narrow channel betwixt Salamis and Attica white, and tossing each trireme merrily. Not a cloud hung upon Pentelicus, Hymettus, or the purple northern range of Parnes. Over the desolate Acropolis hovered a thin mist,—smoke from the smouldering temple, the sight of which made every Attic sailor blink hard and think of the vengeance.Yonder on the shore of the mainland the host of the Persian was moving: horsemen in gilded panoply, Hydarnes’s spearmen in armour like suns. They stood by myriads in glittering masses about a little spur of Mt. Ægaleos, where a holy close of Heracles looked out upon the sea. To them were coming more horsemen, chariots, litters, and across the strait drifted the thunderous acclamation,“Victory to the king!”For here on the ivory throne, with his mighty men, his captains, his harem, about him, the“Lord of the World”[pg 315]would look down on the battle and see how his slaves could fight.Now the Barbarians began to move forth by sea. From the havens of Peiræus and their anchorages along the shore swept their galleys,—Phœnician, Cilician, Egyptian, and, sorrow of sorrows, Ionian—Greek arrayed against Greek! Six hundred triremes and more they were, taller in poop and prow than the Hellenes, and braver to look upon.Each vied with each in the splendour of the scarlet, purple, and gold upon stern and foreship. Their thousands of white oars moved like the onward march of an army as they trampled down the foam. From the masts of their many admirals flew innumerable gay signal-flags. The commands shouted through trumpets in a dozen strange tongues—the shrill pipings of the oar masters, the hoarse shouts of the rowers—went up to heaven in a clamorous babel.“Swallows’ chatter,”cried the deriding Hellenes, but hearts were beating quicker, breath was coming faster in many a breast by Salamis then,—and no shame. For now was the hour of trial, the wrestle of Olympian Zeus with Ahura-Mazda. Now would a mighty one speak from the heavens to Hellas, and say to her“Die!”or“Be!”The Barbarians’ armadas were forming. Their black beaks, all pointing toward Salamis, stretched in two bristling lines from the islet of Psyttaleia—whence the shields of the landing force glittered—to that brighter glitter on the promontory by Ægaleos where sat the king. To charge their array seemed charging a moving hedge of spears, impenetrable in defence, invincible in attack. Slowly, rocked by the sea and rowing in steady order, the armament approached Salamis. And still the Greek ships lay spread out along the shore, each trireme swinging at the end of the cable which moored her to the land, each mariner listening[pg 316]to the beatings of his own heart and straining his eyes on one ship now—Eurybiades’s—which rode at the centre of their line and far ahead.All could read the order of battle at last as squadron lay against squadron. On the west, under Xerxes’s own eye, the Athenians must charge the serried Phœnicians, at the centre the Æginetans must face the Cilicians, on the east Adeimantus and his fellows from Peloponnese must make good against the vassal Ionians. But would the signal to row and strike never come? Had some god numbed Eurybiades’s will? Was treachery doing its darkest work? With men so highly wrought moments were precious. The bow strung too long will lose power. And wherefore did Eurybiades tarry?Every soul in theNausicaäkept his curses soft, and waited—waited till that trailing monster, the Persian fleet, had crept halfway from Psyttaleia toward them, then up the shrouds of the Spartan admiral leaped a flag. Eager hands drew it, yet it seemed mounting as a snail, till at the masthead the clear wind blew it wide,—a plain red banner, but as it spread hundreds of axes were hewing the cables that bound the triremes to the shore, every Greek oar was biting the sea, the ships were leaping away from Salamis. From the strand a shout went up, a prayer more than a cheer, mothers, wives, little ones, calling it together:—“Zeus prosper you!”A roar from the fleet, the tearing of countless blades on the thole-pins answered them. Eurybiades had spoken. There was no treason. All now was in the hand of the god.* * * * * * *Across the strait they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging[pg 317]their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phœnicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious strokes. The grudges, the commercial rivalries between Greek and Sidonian, were old. No Persian was hotter for Xerxes’s cause than his Phœnician vassals that day.And as they charged, the foemen’s lines seemed so dense, their ships so tall, their power so vast, that involuntarily hesitancy came over the Greeks. Their strokes slowed. The whole line lagged. Here an Æginetan galley dropped behind, yonder a Corinthian navarch suffered his men to back water. Even thekeleustesof theNausicaäslackened his beating on the sounding-board. Eurybiades’s ship had drifted behind to the line of her sisters, as in defiance a towering Sidonian sprang ahead of the Barbarian line of battle, twenty trumpets from her poop and foreship asking,“Dare you meet me?”The Greek line became almost stationary. Some ships were backing water. It was a moment which, suffered to slip unchecked, leads to irreparable disaster. Then like a god sprang Themistocles upon the capstan on his poop. He had torn off his helmet. The crews of scores of triremes saw him. His voice was like Stentor’s, the herald whose call was strong as fifty common men.In a lull amidst the howls of the Barbarians his call rang up and down the flagging ships:—“O Sons of Hellas! save your land,Your children save, your altars and your wives!Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”“Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”Navarch shouted it to navarch. The cry went up and[pg 318]down the line of the Hellenes,“loud as when billows lash the beetling crags.”The trailing oars beat again into the water, and even as the ships once more gained way, Themistocles nodded to Ameinias, and he to thekeleustes. The master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the sounding-board.“Aru! Aru! Aru!Put it on, my men!”TheNausicaäanswered with a leap. Men wrought at the oar butts, tugging like mad, their backs toward the foe, conscious only that duty bade them send the trireme across the waves as a stone whirls from the sling. Thus the men, but Themistocles, on the poop, standing at the captain’s and governor’s side, never took his gaze from the great Barbarian that leaped defiantly to meet them.“Can we risk the trick?”his swift question to Ameinias.The captain nodded.“With this crew—yes.”Two stadia, one stadium, half a stadium, a ship’s length, the triremes were charging prow to prow, rushing on a common death, when Ameinias clapped a whistle to his lips and blew shrilly. As one man every rower on the port-side leaped to his feet and dragged his oar inward through its row-hole. The deed was barely done ere the Sidonian was on them. They heard the roaring water round her prow, the cracking of the whips as the petty officers ran up and down the gangways urging on the panting cattle at the oars. Then almost at the shock the governor touched his steering oar. TheNausicaäswerved. The prow of the Sidonian rushed past them. A shower of darts pattered down on the deck of the Hellene, but a twinkling later from the Barbarians arose a frightful cry. Right across her triple oar bank, still in full speed, ploughed the Athenian. The Sidonian’s oars were snapping like faggots. The luckless rowers were flung from their benches in heaps. In less time than the telling every oar on the Barbarian’s port-side[pg 319]had been put out of play. Thediekplous, favourite trick of the Grecian seamen, had never been done more fairly.Now was Themistocles’s chance. He used it. There was no need for him to give orders to the oar master. Automatically every rower on the port-tiers of theNausicaähad run out his blade again. The governor sent the head of the trireme around with a grim smile locked about his grizzled lips. It was no woman’s task which lay before them. Exposing her whole broadside lay the long Sidonian; she was helpless, striving vainly to crawl away with her remaining oar banks. Her people were running to and fro, howling to Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and all their other foul gods, and stretching their hands for help to consorts too far away.“Aru! Aru! Aru!”was the shout of the oar master; again theNausicaäanswered with her leap. Straight across the narrow water she shot, the firm hand of the governor never veering now. The stroke grew faster, faster. Then with one instinct men dropped the oars, to trail in the rushing water, and seized stanchions, beams, anything to brace themselves for the shock. The crash which followed was heard on the mainland and on Salamis. The side of the Phœnician was beaten in like an egg-shell. From theNausicaä’spoop they saw her open hull reel over, saw the hundreds of upturned, frantic faces, heard the howls of agony, saw the waves leap into the gaping void.—“Back water,”thundered Ameinias,“clear the vortex, she is going down!”TheNausicaä’speople staggered to the oars. So busy were they in righting their own ship few saw the crowning horror. A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her.[pg 320]A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes.“Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!”At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging. Adeimantus was charging. Their ships and all the rest went racing to meet the foe.* * * * * * *But theNausicaähad paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In themêléeof ships which had just begun, she must play her part robbed of her keenest weapon. The sinking of the Barbarian had been met with cheers by the Hellenes, by howls of revengeful rage by the host against them. Not lightly were the Asiatics who fought beneath the eyes of the king to be daunted. They came crowding up the strait in such masses that sheer numbers hindered them, leaving no space for the play of the oars, much less for fine manœuvre. Yet for an instant it seemed as if mere weight would sweep the Hellenes back to Salamis. Then the lines of battle dissolved into confused fragments. Captains singled out an opponent and charged home desperately, unmindful how it fared elsewhere in the battle. Here an Egyptian ran down a Eubœan, there a Sicyonian grappled a Cilician and flung her boarders on to the foeman’s decks. To the onlookers the scene could have meant naught save confusion. A hundred duels, a hundred varying victories, but to which side the final glory would fall, who knew?—perchance not even Zeus.In the roaringmêléetheNausicaähad for some moments moved almost aimlessly, her men gathering breath and letting their unscathed comrades pass. Then gradually the battle drifted round them also. A Cyprian, noting they[pg 321]had lost their ram, strove to charge them bow to bow. The skill of the governor avoided that disaster. They ran under the stem of a Tyrian, and Glaucon proved he had not forgotten his skill when he sent his javelins among the officers upon the poop. A second Sidonian swept down on them, but grown wise by her consort’s destruction turned aside to lock with an Æginetan galley. How the fight at large was going, who was winning, who losing, Glaucon saw no more than any one else. An arrow grazed his arm. He first learned it when he found his armour bloody. A sling-stone smote the marine next to him on the forehead. The man dropped without a groan. Glaucon flung the body overboard, almost by instinct. Themistocles was everywhere, on the poop, on the foreship, among the rowers’ benches, shouting, laughing, cheering, ordering, standing up boldly where the arrows flew thickest, yet never hit. So for a while, till out of the confusion of ships and wrecks came darting a trireme, loftier than her peers. The railing on poop and prow was silver. The shields of the javelin-men that crowded her high fighting decks were gilded. Ten pennons whipped from her masts, and the cry of horns, tambours, and kettledrums blended with the shoutings of her crew. A partially disabled Hellene drifted across her path. She ran the luckless ship down in a twinkling. Then her bow swung. She headed toward theNausicaä.“Do you know this ship?”asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop.“A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.”“She is attacking us, Excellency,”called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling.Themistocles measured the water with his eye.[pg 322]“She will be alongside then in a moment,”was his answer,“and the beak is gone?”“Gone, and ten of our best rowers are dead.”Themistocles drew down the helmet, covering his face.“Euge!Since the choice is to grapple or fly, we had better grapple.”The governor shifted again the steering paddles. The head of theNausicaäfell away toward her attacker, but no signal was given to quicken the oars. The Barbarian, noting what her opponent did, but justly fearing the handiness of the Greeks, slackened also. The two ships drifted slowly together. Long before they closed in unfriendly contact the arrows of the Phœnician pelted over theNausicaälike hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop theprōreuslay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phœnician boarders were scrambling like cats upon her decks.“Swords, men!”called Themistocles, never less daunted than at the pinch,“up and feed them with iron!”Three times the Phœnicians poured as a flood over theNausicaä. Three times they were flung back with loss, but only to rage, call on their gods, and return with tenfold fury. Glaucon had hurled one sheaf of javelins, and tore loose another, eye and arm aiming, casting mechanically. In the lulls he saw how wind and sea were sweeping the two ships landward, until almost in arrow-shot of the rocky point where sat Xerxes and his lords. He saw the king upon his ivory throne and all his mighty men around him. He saw the scribes standing near with parchment and papyrus, inscribing the names of this or that ship which did well or[pg 323]ill in behalf of the lord of the Aryans. He saw the gaudy dresses of the eunuchs, the litters, and from them peering forth the veiled women. Did Artazostra thinknowthe Hellenes were mad fools to look her brother’s power in the face? From the shores of Attica and of Salamis, where the myriads rejoiced or wept as the scattered battle changed, the cries were rising, falling, like the throb of a tragic chorus,—a chorus of Titans, with the actors gods.“Another charge!”shouted Ameinias, through the din,“meet them briskly, lads!”Once more the hoarse Semitic war-shout, the dark-faced Asiatics dropping upon the decks, the whir of javelins, the scream of dying men, the clash of steel on steel. A frantic charge, but stoutly met. Themistocles was in the thickestmêlée. With his own spear he dashed two Tyrians overboard, as they sprang upon the poop. The band that had leaped down among the oar benches were hewn in pieces by the seamen. The remnant of the attackers recoiled in howls of despair. On the Phœnician’s decks the Greeks saw the officers laying the lash mercilessly across their men, but the disheartened creatures did not stir. Now could be seen Ariamenes, the high admiral himself, a giant warrior in his purple and gilded armour, going up and down the poop, cursing, praying, threatening,—all in vain. TheNausicaä’speople rose and cheered madly.“Enough! They have enough! Glory to Athens!”But here Ameinias gripped Themistocles’s arm. The chief turned, and all the Hellenes with him. The cheer died on their lips. A tall trireme was bearing down on them in full charge even while theNausicaädrifted. They were as helpless as the Sidonian they had sent to death. One groan broke from the Athenians.“Save, Athena! Save! It is Artemisia! The queen of Halicarnassus!”[pg 324]The heavy trireme of the amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm. The foam leaped in a cataract over her ram. The sun made fire of the tossing weapons on her prow. A yell of triumph rose from the Phœnicians. On theNausicaämen dropped sword and spear, moaned, raved, and gazed wildly on Themistocles as if he were a god possessing power to dash the death aside.“To your places, men!”rang his shout, as he faced the foe unmoved,“and die as Athenians!”Then even while men glanced up at the sun to greet Helios for the last time, there was a marvel. The threatening beak shot around. The trireme flew past them, her oars leaping madly, her people too intent on escape even to give a flight of javelins. And again the Athenians cheered.“ThePerseus! Cimon has saved us.”Not three ships’ lengths behind the Halicarnassian raced the ship of the son of Miltiades. They knew now whyArtemisiahad veered. Well she might; had she struck theNausicaädown, her own broadside would have swung defenceless to the fleet pursuer. ThePerseussped past her consort at full speed, Athenian cheering Athenian as she went.“Need you help?”called Cimon, from his poop, as Themistocles waved his sword.“None, press on, smite the Barbarian! Athena is with us!”“Athena is with us! Zeus is with us!”TheNausicaä’screw were lifted from panic to mad enthusiasm. Still above them towered the tall Phœnician, but they could have scaled Mt. Caucasus at that instant.“Onward! Up and after them,”rang Ameinias’s blast,“she is our own, we will take her under the king’s own eye.”[pg 325]The javelins and arrows were pelting from the Barbarian. The Athenians mocked the shower as they leaped the void from bulwark to bulwark. Vainly the Phœnicians strove to clear the grapples. Too firm! Their foes came on to their decks with long leaps, or here and there ran deftly on projecting spars, for what athlete of Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers’ deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phœnicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into themêlée, laying about with a mighty sword worthy of Ajax at Troy, showing he was a prince of the Aryans indeed. It took all the steadiness of Ameinias and his stoutest men to stop the rush, and save the Athenians in turn from being driven overboard. The rush was halted finally, though this was mere respite before a fiercer breaking of the storm. The two ships were drifting yet closer to the strand. Only the fear of striking their own men kept the Persians around the king from clouding the air with arrows. Glaucon saw the grandees near Xerxes’s throne brandishing their swords. In imagination he saw the monarch leaping from his throne in agony as at Thermopylæ.“Back to the charge,”pealed Ariamenes’s summons to the Tyrians;“will you be cowards and dogs beneath the very eyes of the king?”The defenders answered with a second rush. Others again hurled darts from the stern and foreship. Then out of themælstromof men and weapons came a truce. Athenian and Tyrian drew back, whilst Themistocles and Ariamenes were fighting blade to blade. Twice the giant Persian almost[pg 326]dashed the Hellene down. Twice Themistocles recovered poise, and paid back stroke for stroke. He had smitten the helmet from Ariamenes’s head and was swinging for a master-blow when his foot slipped on the bloody plank. He staggered. Before he could recover, the Persian had brought his own weapon up, and flung his might into the downward stroke.“The admiral—lost!”Athenians shuddered together, but with the groan shot a javelin. Clear through the scales of the cuirass it tore, and into the Persian’s shoulder,—Glaucon’s cast, never at the Isthmus truer with hand or eye. The ponderous blade turned, grazed the Athenian’s corselet, clattered on the deck. The Persian sprang back disarmed and powerless. At sight thereof the Phœnicians flung down their swords. True Orientals, in the fate of their chief they saw decreeing Destiny,—what use to resist it?“Yield, my Lord, yield,”called Glaucon, in Persian,“the battle is against you, and no fault of yours. Save the lives of your men.”Ariamenes gave a toss of his princely head, and with his left hand plucked the javelin from his shoulder.“A prince of the Aryans knows how to die, but not how to yield,”he cast back, and before the Athenians guessed his intent he sprang upon the bulwark. There in the sight of his king he stood and bowed his head and with his left arm made the sign of adoration.“Seize him!”shouted Ameinias, divining his intent, but too late. The Persian leaped into the water. In his heavy mail he sank like lead. The wave closed over him, as he passed forever from the sight of man.There was stillness on the Tyrian for a moment. A groan of helpless horror was rising from the Barbarians on the shore. Then the Phœnicians fell upon their knees, crying in their harsh tongue,“Quarter! Quarter!”and embracing and[pg 327]kissing the feet of the victors. Thanks to the moment of quietness given them, the Athenians’ blood had cooled a little; they gathered up the weapons cast upon the deck; there was no massacre.Themistocles mounted the poop of the captured flag-ship, and Glaucon with him. The wind was wafting them again into the centre of the channel. For the first time for many moments they were able to look about them, to ask,“How goes the battle?”Not the petty duel they had fought, but the great battle of battles which was the life-struggle of Hellas. And behold, as they gazed they pressed their hands upon their eyes and looked and looked again, for the thing they saw seemed overgood for truth. Where the great Barbarian line had been pushing up the strait, were only bands of scattered ships, and most of these turning their beaks from Salamis. The waves were strewn with wrecks, and nigh every one a Persian. And right, left, and centre the triumphant Hellenes were pressing home, ramming, grappling, capturing. Even whilst the fight raged, pinnaces were thrusting out from Salamis—Aristeides’s deed, they later heard—crowded with martial graybeards who could not look idly on while their sons fought on the ships, and who speedily landed onPsyttaleiato massacre the luckless Persians there stationed. The cheers of the Barbarians were ended now; from the shores came only a beastlike howling which drowned the pæans of the victors. As theNausicaä’speople looked, they could see the once haughty Phœnicians and Cilicians thrusting back against the land, and the thousands of footmen running down upon the shore to drag the shattered triremes up and away from the triumphant Hellenes.TheNausicaä’speople in wondering gaze stood there for a long time as if transfixed, forgetful how their ship and its prize drifted, forgetful of weariness, forgetful of wounds.[pg 328]Then as one man they turned to the poop of the captured Tyrian, and to Themistocles.Hehad done it—their admiral. He had saved Hellas under the eyes of the vaunting demigod who thought to be her destroyer. They called to Themistocles, they worshipped as if he were the Olympian himself.

[pg 300]CHAPTER XXVIIIBEFORE THE DEATH GRAPPLEFor the fourth time the subaltern who stood at Eurybiades’s elbow turned the water-glass that marked the passing of the hours. The lamps in the low-ceiled cabin were flickering dimly. Men glared on one another across the narrow table with drawn and heated faces. Adeimantus of Corinth was rising to reply to the last appeal of the Athenian.“We have had enough, Eurybiades, of Themistocles’s wordy folly. Because the Athenian admiral is resolved to lead all Hellas to destruction, is no reason that we should follow. As for his threat that he will desert us with his ships if we refuse to fight, I fling it in his face that he dare not make it good. Why go all over the well-threshed straw again? Is not the fleet of the king overwhelming? Were we not saved by a miracle from overthrow at Artemisium? Do not the scouts tell us the Persians are advancing beyond Eleusis toward Megara and the Isthmus? Is not our best fighting blood here in the fleet? Then if the Isthmus is threatened, our business is to defend it and save the Peloponnesus, the last remnant of Hellas unconquered. Now then, headstrong son of Neocles, answer that!”The Corinthian, a tall domineering man, threw back his shoulders like a boxer awaiting battle. Themistocles did not answer, but only smiled up at him from his seat opposite.“I have silenced you, grinning babbler, at last,”thundered[pg 301]Adeimantus,“and I demand of you, O Eurybiades, that we end this tedious debate. If we are to retreat, let us retreat. A vote, I say, a vote!”Eurybiades rose at the head of the table. He was a heavy, florid individual with more than the average Spartan’s slowness of tongue and intellect. Physically he was no coward, but he dreaded responsibility.“Much has been said,”he announced ponderously,“many opinions offered. It would seem the majority of the council favour the decision to retire forthwith. Has Themistocles anything more to say why the vote should not be taken?”“Nothing,”rejoined the Athenian, with an equanimity that made Adeimantus snap his teeth.“We will therefore take the vote city by city,”went on Eurybiades.“Do you, Phlegon of Seriphos, give your vote.”Seriphos—wretched islet—sent only one ship, but thanks to the Greek mania for“equality”Phlegon’svote had equal weight with that of Themistocles.“Salamis is not defensible,”announced the Seriphian, shortly.“Retreat.”“And you, Charmides of Melos?”“Retreat.”“And you, Phoibodas of Trœzene?”“Retreat, by all the gods.”“And you, Hippocrates of Ægina?”“Stay and fight. If you go back to the Isthmus, Ægina must be abandoned to the Barbarians. I am with Themistocles.”“Record his vote,”shouted Adeimantus, ill-naturedly,“he is but one against twenty. But I warn you, Eurybiades, do not call for Themistocles’s vote, or the rest of us will be angry. The man whose city is under the power of the Bar[pg 302]barian has no vote in this council, however much we condescend to listen to his chatterings.”The Athenian sprang from his seat, his aspect as threatening as Apollo descending Olympus in wrath.“Where is my country, Adeimantus? Yonder!”he pointed out the open port-hole,“there rides the array of our Athenian ships. What other state in Hellas sends so many and sets better men within them? Athens still lives, though her Acropolis be wrapped in flames.‘Strong-hearted men and naught else are warp and woof of a city.’Do you forget Alcæus’s word so soon, O Boaster from Corinth? Yes, by Athena Promachos, Mistress of Battles, while those nine score ships ride on the deep, I have a city fairer, braver, than yours. And will you still deny me equal voice and vote with this noble trierarch from Siphinos with his one, or with his comrade from Melos with his twain?”Themistocles’s voice rang like a trumpet. Adeimantus winced. Eurybiades broke in with soothing tones.“No one intends to deny your right to vote, Themistocles. The excellent Corinthian did but jest.”“A fitting hour for jesting!”muttered the Athenian, sinking back into his seat.“The vote, the vote!”urged the Sicyonian chief, from Adeimantus’s elbow, and the voting went on. Of more than twenty voices only three—Themistocles’s and those of the Æginetan and Megarian admirals—were in favour of abiding the onset. Yet even when Eurybiades arose to announce the decision, the son of Neocles sat with his hands sprawling on the table, his face set in an inscrutable smile as he looked on Adeimantus.“It is the plain opinion,”—Eurybiades hemmed and hawed with his words,—“the plain opinion, I say, of this council that the allied fleet retire at once to the Isthmus. There[pg 303]fore, I, as admiral-in-chief, do order each commander to proceed to his own flag-ship and prepare his triremes to retire at dawn.”“Well said,”shouted Adeimantus, already on his feet;“now to obey.”But with him rose Themistocles. He stood tall and calm, his thumbs thrust in his girdle. His smile was a little broader, his head held a little higher, than of wont.“Good Eurybiades, I grieve to blast the wisdom of all these valiant gentlemen, but they cannot retire if they wish.”“Explain!”a dozen shouted.“Very simply. I have had good reason to know that the king has moved forward the western horn of his fleet, so as to enclose our anchorage at Salamis. It is impossible to retire save through the Persian line of battle.”Perseus upholding the Gorgon’s head before Polydectes’s guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus’s frightened wrath broke loose.“Fox!10Was this your doing?”“I did not ask you to thank me,philotate,”was the easy answer.“It is, however, urgent to consider whether you wish to be taken unresisting in the morning.”The Corinthian shook his fist across the table.“Liar, as a last device to ruin us, you invent this folly.”“It is easy to see if I lie,”rejoined Themistocles;“send out a pinnace and note where the Persians anchor. It will not take long.”For an instant swords seemed about to leap from their scabbards, and the enraged Peloponnesians to sheathe them in the Athenian’s breast. He stood unflinching, smiling,[pg 304]while a volley of curses flew over him. Then an orderly summoned him on deck, while Adeimantus and his fellows foamed and contended below. Under the battle lantern Themistocles saw a man who was his elder in years, rugged in feature, with massive forehead and wise gray eyes. This was Aristeides the Just, the admiral’s enemy, but their feud had died when Xerxes drew near to Athens.Hands clasped heartily as the twain stood face to face.“Our rivalry forever more shall be a rivalry which of us can do most to profit Athens,”spoke the returning exile; then Aristeides told how he had even now come from Ægina, how he had heard of the clamours to retreat, how retreat was impossible, for the Persians were pressing in. A laugh from Themistocles interrupted.“My handiwork! Come to the council. They will not believe me, no, not my oath.”Aristeides told his story, and how his vessel to Salamis had scarce escaped the Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him“liar.”The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter.“Captains of Hellas, a trireme of Teos has deserted from the Barbarian to us. Her navarch sends word that all is even as Themistocles and Aristeides tell. The Egyptians hold the passage to Eleusis. Infantry are disembarked on Psyttaleia. The Phœnicians and Ionians enclose us on the eastern strait. We are hemmed in.”* * * * * * *Once more the orderly turned the water-clock. It was past midnight. The clouds had blown apart before the rising wind. The debate must end. Eurybiades stood again to take the votes of the wearied, tense-strung men.[pg 305]“In view of the report of the Teans, what is your voice and vote?”Before all the rest up leaped Adeimantus. He was no craven at heart, though an evil genius had possessed him.“You have your will, Themistocles,”he made the concession sullenly yet firmly,“you have your will. May Poseidon prove you in the right. If it is battle or slavery at dawn, the choice is quick. Battle!”“Battle!”shouted the twenty, arising together, and Eurybiades had no need to declare the vote. The commanders scattered to their flag-ships, to give orders to be ready to fight at dawn. Themistocles went to his pinnace last. He walked proudly. He knew that whatever glory he might gain on the morrow, he could never win a fairer victory than he had won that night. When his barge came alongside, his boat crew knew that his eyes were dancing, that his whole mien was of a man in love with his fortune. Many times, as Glaucon sat beside him, he heard the son of Neocles repeating as in ecstasy:—“They must fight. They must fight.”* * * * * * *Glaucon sat mutely in the pinnace which had headed not for theNausicaä, but toward the shore, where a few faint beacons were burning.“I must confer with the strategi as to the morning,”Themistocles declared after a long interval, at which Sicinnus broke in anxiously:—“You will not sleep,kyrie?”“Sleep?”laughed the admiral, as at an excellent jest,“I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos.”Then, ignoring Sicinnus, he addressed the outlaw.“I am grateful to you, my friend,”he did not call Glaucon by name before the others,“you have saved me, and I have[pg 306]saved Hellas. You brought me a new plan when I seemed at the last resource. How can the son of Neocles reward you?”“Give me a part to play to-morrow.”“Thermopylæ was not brisk enough fighting, ha? Can you still fling a javelin?”“I can try.”“Euge!Try you shall.”He let his voice drop.“Do not forget your name henceforth is Critias. TheNausicaä’screw are mostly from Sunium and the Mesogia. They’d hardly recognize you under that beard; still Sicinnus must alter you.”“Command me,kyrie,”said the Asiatic.“A strange time and place, but you must do it. Find some dark dye for this man’s hair to-night, and at dawn have him aboard the flag-ship.”“The thing can be done,kyrie.”“After that, lie down and sleep. Because Themistocles is awake, is no cause for others’ star-gazing. Sleep sound. Pray Apollo and Hephæstus to make your eye sure, your hand strong. Then awake to see the glory of Hellas.”Confidence, yes, power came through the tones of the admiral’s voice. Themistocles went away to the belated council. Sicinnus led his charge through the crooked streets of the town of Salamis. Sailors were sleeping in the open night, and they stumbled over them. At last they found a small tavern where a dozen shipmen sprawled on the earthen floor, and a gaping host was just quenching his last lamp. Sicinnus, however, seemed to know him. There was much protesting and headshaking, at last ended by the glint of a daric. The man grumbled, departed, returned after a tedious interval with a pot of ointment, found Hermes knew[pg 307]where. By a rush-candle’s flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with a practised hand.“You know the art well,”observed the outlaw.“Assuredly; the agent of Themistocles must be a Proteus with his disguises.”Sicinnus laid down his pot and brushes. They had no mirror, but Glaucon knew that he was transformed. The host got his daric. Again they went out into the night and forsaking the crowded town sought the seaside. The strand was broad, the sand soft and cool, the circling stars gave three hours yet of night, and they lay down to rest. The sea and the shore stretched away, a magic vista with a thousand mystic shapes springing out of the charmed darkness, made and unmade as overwrought fancy summoned them. As from an unreal world Glaucon—whilst he lay—saw the lights of the scattered ships, heard the clank of chains, the rattling of tacklings. Nature slept. Only man was waking.“The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,Uplands and gorges hush!The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,The beasts under each bushCrouch, and the hived beesRest in their honeyed ease;In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,And each bird folds his wing over his head.”The school-learned lines of Alcman, with a thousand other trivial things, swarmed back through the head of Glaucon the Alcmæonid. How much he had lived through that night, how much he would live through,—if indeed he was to live,—upon the morrow! The thought was benumbing in its greatness. His head swam with confused memories. Then at last all things dimmed. Once more he dreamed. He was with Hermione gathering red poppies on the hill above[pg 308]Eleusis. She had filled her basket full. He called to her to wait for him. She ran away. He chased, she fled with laughter and sparkling eyes. He could hear the wavings of her dress, the little cries she flung back over her shoulder. Then by the sacred well near the temple he caught her. He felt her struggling gayly. He felt her warm breath upon his face, her hair was touching his forehead. Rejoicing in his strength, he was bending her head toward his—but here he wakened. Sicinnus had disappeared. A bar of gray gold hung over the water in the east.“This was the day.This was the day!”Some moments he lay trying to realize the fact in its full moment. A thin mist rested on the black water waiting to be dispelled by the sun. From afar came sounds not of seamen’s trumpets, but horns, harps, kettledrums, from the hidden mainland across the strait, as of a host advancing along the shore.“Xerxes goes down to the marge with his myriads,”Glaucon told himself.“Have not all his captains bowed and smiled,‘Your Eternity’s victory is certain. Come and behold.’”But here the Athenian shut his teeth.People at length were passing up and down the strand. The coast was waking. The gray bar was becoming silver. Friends passed, deep in talk,—perchance for the last time. Glaucon lay still a moment longer, and as he rested caught a voice so familiar he felt all the blood surge to his forehead,—Democrates’s voice.“I tell you, Hiram,—I told you before,—I have no part in the ordering of the fleet. Were I to interfere with ever so good a heart, it would only breed trouble for us all.”So close were the twain, the orator’s trailing chiton almost fell on Glaucon’s face. The latter marvelled that his own heart did not spring from its prison in his breast, so fierce were its beatings.[pg 309]“If my Lord would go to Adeimantus and suggest,”—the other’s Greek came with a marked Oriental accent.“Harpy! Adeimantus is no Medizer. He is pushed to bay now, and is sure to fight. Have you Barbarians no confidence? Has not the king two triremes to our one? Only fools can demand more. Tell Lycon, your master, I have long since done my uttermost to serve him.”“Yet remember, Excellency.”“Begone, scoundrel. Don’t threaten again. If I know your power over me, I can also promise you not to go down to Orchus alone, but take excellent pains to have fair company.”“I am sorry to bear such tidings to Lycon, Excellency.”“Away with you!”“Do not raise your voice,kyrie,”spoke Hiram, never more blandly,“here is a man asleep.”The hint sent Democrates from the spot almost on a run. Hiram disappeared in the opposite direction. Glaucon rose, shook the sand from his cloak, and stood an instant with his head whirling. The voice of his boyhood friend, of the man who had ruined him because of a suspicion of treason—and now deep in compromising talk with the agent of the chief of the peace party at Sparta! And wherefore had Mardonius spoken those mysterious words at their parting,“Beware of Democrates”? For an instant the problems evoked made him forget even the coming battle.A clear trumpet-blast down the strand gave a truce to questioning. Sicinnus reappeared, and led Glaucon to one of the great fires roaring on the beach, where the provident Greek sailors were breakfasting on barley porridge and meat broth before dining on spears and arrow-heads. A silent company, no laughter, no jesting. All knew another sun for them might never rise. Glaucon ate not because he hungered, but because duty ordered it. As the light strengthened, the[pg 310]strand grew alive with thousands of men at toil. The triremes drawn on shore went down into the sea on their rollers. More trumpet-blasts sent the rowers aboard their ships. But last of all, before thrusting out to do or die, the Greeks must feast their ears as well as their stomachs. On the sloping beach gathered the officers and the armoured marines,—eighteen from each trireme,—and heard one stirring harangue after another. The old feuds were forgotten. Adeimantus and Eurybiades both spoke bravely. The seers announced that every bird and cloud gave good omen. Prayer was offered to Ajax of Salamis that the hero should fight for his people. Last of all Themistocles spoke, and never to fairer purpose. No boasts, no lip courage, a painting of the noble and the base, the glory of dying as freemen, the infamy of existing as slaves. He told of Marathon, of Thermopylæ, and asked if Leonidas had died as died a fool. He drew tears. He drew vows of vengeance. He never drew applause. Men were too strained for that. At last he sent the thousands forth.“Go, then. Quit yourselves as Hellenes. That is all the task. And I say to you, in the after days this shall be your joy, to hear the greatest declare of you,‘Reverence this man, for he saved us all at Salamis.’”The company dispersed, each man to his ship. Themistocles went to his pinnace, and a cheer uprose from sea and land as the boat shot out to theNausicaä. Eurybiades might be chief in name; who did not know that Themistocles was the surest bulwark of Hellas?The son of Neocles, standing in the boat, uplifted his face to the now golden east.“Be witness, Helios,”he cried aloud,“be witness when thou comest, I have done all things possible. And do thou and thy fellow-gods on bright Olympus rule our battle now; the lot is in your hands!”[pg 311]CHAPTER XXIXSALAMISSunrise. TheNausicaäwas ready. Ameinias the navarch walked the deck above the stern-cabin with nervous strides. All that human forethought could do to prepare the ship had long been done. The slim hull one hundred and fifty feet long had been stripped of every superfluous rope and spar. The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of theNausicaäwas herself. To send the three-toothed beak through a foeman’s side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—thethranitesof the upper tier, thezygitesof the middle, thethalamitesof the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every oarsman dangled a sword, for boarders’ work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded theprōreus, Ameinias’s lieutenant,[pg 312]and with him thekeleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the“governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give theNausicaälife or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak.“The trireme is ready, admiral,”reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.The son of Neocles threw back his helmet, that all might see his calm, untroubled face. He wore a cuirass of silvered scale-armour over his purple chiton. At his side walked a young man, whom the ship’s people imagined the deserter of the preceding night, but he had drawn his helmet close.“This is Critias,”said Themistocles, briefly, to the navarch;“he is a good caster. See that he has plenty of darts.”“One of Themistocles’s secret agents,”muttered the captain to the governor,“we should have guessed it.”And they all had other things to think of than the whence and wherefore of this stranger.It was a weary, nervous interval. Men had said everything, done everything, hoped and feared everything. They were in no mood even to invoke the gods. In desperation some jested riotously as they gripped the oars on the benches,—demonstrations which theprōreusquelled with a loud“Silence in the ship.”The morning mist was breaking. A brisk wind was coming with the sun. Clear and strong sang the Notus, the breeze of the kindly south. It covered the blue bay with crisping whitecaps, it sent the surf foaming up along the Attic shore across the strait. Themistocles watched it all with silent eyes, but eyes that spoke of gladness. He knew the waves would beat with full force on the Persian[pg 313]prows, and make their swift movement difficult while the Greeks, taking the galloping surf astern, would suffer little.“Æolus fights for us. The first omen and a fair one.”The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced.How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain? Now as the vapour broke, men began to be able to look about them, and be delivered from their own thoughts. The shores of Salamis were alive,—old men, women, little children,—the fugitives from Attica were crowding to the marge in thousands to watch the deed that should decide their all. And many a bronze-cheeked oarsman arose from his bench to wave farewell to the wife or father or mother, and sank back again,—a clutching in his throat, a mist before his eyes, while his grip upon the oar grew like to steel.As theNausicaärode at her place in the long line of ships spread up and down the shore of Salamis, it was easy to detect forms if not faces on the strand. And Glaucon, peering out from his helmet bars, saw Democrates himself standing on the sands and beckoning to Themistocles. Then other figures became clear to him out of the many, this one or that whom he had loved and clasped hands with in the sunlit days gone by. And last of all he saw those his gaze hungered for the most, Hermippus, Lysistra, and another standing at their side all in white, and in her arms she bore something he knew must be her child,—Hermione’s son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only[pg 314]a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him.“You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,”spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything.“To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.”“No wine, for Athena’s sake!”cried the outlaw, drawing himself together,“it is passed. I am strong again.”A great shout from the shores and the waiting fleet made him forget even the sight of Hermione.“They come! The Persians! The Persians!”The fleet of the Barbarians was advancing from the havens of Athens.* * * * * * *The sun rose higher. He was far above Hymettus now, and shooting his bright javelins over mainland, islands, and waters. With his rising the southern breeze sang ever clearer, making the narrow channel betwixt Salamis and Attica white, and tossing each trireme merrily. Not a cloud hung upon Pentelicus, Hymettus, or the purple northern range of Parnes. Over the desolate Acropolis hovered a thin mist,—smoke from the smouldering temple, the sight of which made every Attic sailor blink hard and think of the vengeance.Yonder on the shore of the mainland the host of the Persian was moving: horsemen in gilded panoply, Hydarnes’s spearmen in armour like suns. They stood by myriads in glittering masses about a little spur of Mt. Ægaleos, where a holy close of Heracles looked out upon the sea. To them were coming more horsemen, chariots, litters, and across the strait drifted the thunderous acclamation,“Victory to the king!”For here on the ivory throne, with his mighty men, his captains, his harem, about him, the“Lord of the World”[pg 315]would look down on the battle and see how his slaves could fight.Now the Barbarians began to move forth by sea. From the havens of Peiræus and their anchorages along the shore swept their galleys,—Phœnician, Cilician, Egyptian, and, sorrow of sorrows, Ionian—Greek arrayed against Greek! Six hundred triremes and more they were, taller in poop and prow than the Hellenes, and braver to look upon.Each vied with each in the splendour of the scarlet, purple, and gold upon stern and foreship. Their thousands of white oars moved like the onward march of an army as they trampled down the foam. From the masts of their many admirals flew innumerable gay signal-flags. The commands shouted through trumpets in a dozen strange tongues—the shrill pipings of the oar masters, the hoarse shouts of the rowers—went up to heaven in a clamorous babel.“Swallows’ chatter,”cried the deriding Hellenes, but hearts were beating quicker, breath was coming faster in many a breast by Salamis then,—and no shame. For now was the hour of trial, the wrestle of Olympian Zeus with Ahura-Mazda. Now would a mighty one speak from the heavens to Hellas, and say to her“Die!”or“Be!”The Barbarians’ armadas were forming. Their black beaks, all pointing toward Salamis, stretched in two bristling lines from the islet of Psyttaleia—whence the shields of the landing force glittered—to that brighter glitter on the promontory by Ægaleos where sat the king. To charge their array seemed charging a moving hedge of spears, impenetrable in defence, invincible in attack. Slowly, rocked by the sea and rowing in steady order, the armament approached Salamis. And still the Greek ships lay spread out along the shore, each trireme swinging at the end of the cable which moored her to the land, each mariner listening[pg 316]to the beatings of his own heart and straining his eyes on one ship now—Eurybiades’s—which rode at the centre of their line and far ahead.All could read the order of battle at last as squadron lay against squadron. On the west, under Xerxes’s own eye, the Athenians must charge the serried Phœnicians, at the centre the Æginetans must face the Cilicians, on the east Adeimantus and his fellows from Peloponnese must make good against the vassal Ionians. But would the signal to row and strike never come? Had some god numbed Eurybiades’s will? Was treachery doing its darkest work? With men so highly wrought moments were precious. The bow strung too long will lose power. And wherefore did Eurybiades tarry?Every soul in theNausicaäkept his curses soft, and waited—waited till that trailing monster, the Persian fleet, had crept halfway from Psyttaleia toward them, then up the shrouds of the Spartan admiral leaped a flag. Eager hands drew it, yet it seemed mounting as a snail, till at the masthead the clear wind blew it wide,—a plain red banner, but as it spread hundreds of axes were hewing the cables that bound the triremes to the shore, every Greek oar was biting the sea, the ships were leaping away from Salamis. From the strand a shout went up, a prayer more than a cheer, mothers, wives, little ones, calling it together:—“Zeus prosper you!”A roar from the fleet, the tearing of countless blades on the thole-pins answered them. Eurybiades had spoken. There was no treason. All now was in the hand of the god.* * * * * * *Across the strait they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging[pg 317]their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phœnicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious strokes. The grudges, the commercial rivalries between Greek and Sidonian, were old. No Persian was hotter for Xerxes’s cause than his Phœnician vassals that day.And as they charged, the foemen’s lines seemed so dense, their ships so tall, their power so vast, that involuntarily hesitancy came over the Greeks. Their strokes slowed. The whole line lagged. Here an Æginetan galley dropped behind, yonder a Corinthian navarch suffered his men to back water. Even thekeleustesof theNausicaäslackened his beating on the sounding-board. Eurybiades’s ship had drifted behind to the line of her sisters, as in defiance a towering Sidonian sprang ahead of the Barbarian line of battle, twenty trumpets from her poop and foreship asking,“Dare you meet me?”The Greek line became almost stationary. Some ships were backing water. It was a moment which, suffered to slip unchecked, leads to irreparable disaster. Then like a god sprang Themistocles upon the capstan on his poop. He had torn off his helmet. The crews of scores of triremes saw him. His voice was like Stentor’s, the herald whose call was strong as fifty common men.In a lull amidst the howls of the Barbarians his call rang up and down the flagging ships:—“O Sons of Hellas! save your land,Your children save, your altars and your wives!Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”“Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”Navarch shouted it to navarch. The cry went up and[pg 318]down the line of the Hellenes,“loud as when billows lash the beetling crags.”The trailing oars beat again into the water, and even as the ships once more gained way, Themistocles nodded to Ameinias, and he to thekeleustes. The master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the sounding-board.“Aru! Aru! Aru!Put it on, my men!”TheNausicaäanswered with a leap. Men wrought at the oar butts, tugging like mad, their backs toward the foe, conscious only that duty bade them send the trireme across the waves as a stone whirls from the sling. Thus the men, but Themistocles, on the poop, standing at the captain’s and governor’s side, never took his gaze from the great Barbarian that leaped defiantly to meet them.“Can we risk the trick?”his swift question to Ameinias.The captain nodded.“With this crew—yes.”Two stadia, one stadium, half a stadium, a ship’s length, the triremes were charging prow to prow, rushing on a common death, when Ameinias clapped a whistle to his lips and blew shrilly. As one man every rower on the port-side leaped to his feet and dragged his oar inward through its row-hole. The deed was barely done ere the Sidonian was on them. They heard the roaring water round her prow, the cracking of the whips as the petty officers ran up and down the gangways urging on the panting cattle at the oars. Then almost at the shock the governor touched his steering oar. TheNausicaäswerved. The prow of the Sidonian rushed past them. A shower of darts pattered down on the deck of the Hellene, but a twinkling later from the Barbarians arose a frightful cry. Right across her triple oar bank, still in full speed, ploughed the Athenian. The Sidonian’s oars were snapping like faggots. The luckless rowers were flung from their benches in heaps. In less time than the telling every oar on the Barbarian’s port-side[pg 319]had been put out of play. Thediekplous, favourite trick of the Grecian seamen, had never been done more fairly.Now was Themistocles’s chance. He used it. There was no need for him to give orders to the oar master. Automatically every rower on the port-tiers of theNausicaähad run out his blade again. The governor sent the head of the trireme around with a grim smile locked about his grizzled lips. It was no woman’s task which lay before them. Exposing her whole broadside lay the long Sidonian; she was helpless, striving vainly to crawl away with her remaining oar banks. Her people were running to and fro, howling to Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and all their other foul gods, and stretching their hands for help to consorts too far away.“Aru! Aru! Aru!”was the shout of the oar master; again theNausicaäanswered with her leap. Straight across the narrow water she shot, the firm hand of the governor never veering now. The stroke grew faster, faster. Then with one instinct men dropped the oars, to trail in the rushing water, and seized stanchions, beams, anything to brace themselves for the shock. The crash which followed was heard on the mainland and on Salamis. The side of the Phœnician was beaten in like an egg-shell. From theNausicaä’spoop they saw her open hull reel over, saw the hundreds of upturned, frantic faces, heard the howls of agony, saw the waves leap into the gaping void.—“Back water,”thundered Ameinias,“clear the vortex, she is going down!”TheNausicaä’speople staggered to the oars. So busy were they in righting their own ship few saw the crowning horror. A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her.[pg 320]A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes.“Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!”At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging. Adeimantus was charging. Their ships and all the rest went racing to meet the foe.* * * * * * *But theNausicaähad paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In themêléeof ships which had just begun, she must play her part robbed of her keenest weapon. The sinking of the Barbarian had been met with cheers by the Hellenes, by howls of revengeful rage by the host against them. Not lightly were the Asiatics who fought beneath the eyes of the king to be daunted. They came crowding up the strait in such masses that sheer numbers hindered them, leaving no space for the play of the oars, much less for fine manœuvre. Yet for an instant it seemed as if mere weight would sweep the Hellenes back to Salamis. Then the lines of battle dissolved into confused fragments. Captains singled out an opponent and charged home desperately, unmindful how it fared elsewhere in the battle. Here an Egyptian ran down a Eubœan, there a Sicyonian grappled a Cilician and flung her boarders on to the foeman’s decks. To the onlookers the scene could have meant naught save confusion. A hundred duels, a hundred varying victories, but to which side the final glory would fall, who knew?—perchance not even Zeus.In the roaringmêléetheNausicaähad for some moments moved almost aimlessly, her men gathering breath and letting their unscathed comrades pass. Then gradually the battle drifted round them also. A Cyprian, noting they[pg 321]had lost their ram, strove to charge them bow to bow. The skill of the governor avoided that disaster. They ran under the stem of a Tyrian, and Glaucon proved he had not forgotten his skill when he sent his javelins among the officers upon the poop. A second Sidonian swept down on them, but grown wise by her consort’s destruction turned aside to lock with an Æginetan galley. How the fight at large was going, who was winning, who losing, Glaucon saw no more than any one else. An arrow grazed his arm. He first learned it when he found his armour bloody. A sling-stone smote the marine next to him on the forehead. The man dropped without a groan. Glaucon flung the body overboard, almost by instinct. Themistocles was everywhere, on the poop, on the foreship, among the rowers’ benches, shouting, laughing, cheering, ordering, standing up boldly where the arrows flew thickest, yet never hit. So for a while, till out of the confusion of ships and wrecks came darting a trireme, loftier than her peers. The railing on poop and prow was silver. The shields of the javelin-men that crowded her high fighting decks were gilded. Ten pennons whipped from her masts, and the cry of horns, tambours, and kettledrums blended with the shoutings of her crew. A partially disabled Hellene drifted across her path. She ran the luckless ship down in a twinkling. Then her bow swung. She headed toward theNausicaä.“Do you know this ship?”asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop.“A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.”“She is attacking us, Excellency,”called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling.Themistocles measured the water with his eye.[pg 322]“She will be alongside then in a moment,”was his answer,“and the beak is gone?”“Gone, and ten of our best rowers are dead.”Themistocles drew down the helmet, covering his face.“Euge!Since the choice is to grapple or fly, we had better grapple.”The governor shifted again the steering paddles. The head of theNausicaäfell away toward her attacker, but no signal was given to quicken the oars. The Barbarian, noting what her opponent did, but justly fearing the handiness of the Greeks, slackened also. The two ships drifted slowly together. Long before they closed in unfriendly contact the arrows of the Phœnician pelted over theNausicaälike hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop theprōreuslay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phœnician boarders were scrambling like cats upon her decks.“Swords, men!”called Themistocles, never less daunted than at the pinch,“up and feed them with iron!”Three times the Phœnicians poured as a flood over theNausicaä. Three times they were flung back with loss, but only to rage, call on their gods, and return with tenfold fury. Glaucon had hurled one sheaf of javelins, and tore loose another, eye and arm aiming, casting mechanically. In the lulls he saw how wind and sea were sweeping the two ships landward, until almost in arrow-shot of the rocky point where sat Xerxes and his lords. He saw the king upon his ivory throne and all his mighty men around him. He saw the scribes standing near with parchment and papyrus, inscribing the names of this or that ship which did well or[pg 323]ill in behalf of the lord of the Aryans. He saw the gaudy dresses of the eunuchs, the litters, and from them peering forth the veiled women. Did Artazostra thinknowthe Hellenes were mad fools to look her brother’s power in the face? From the shores of Attica and of Salamis, where the myriads rejoiced or wept as the scattered battle changed, the cries were rising, falling, like the throb of a tragic chorus,—a chorus of Titans, with the actors gods.“Another charge!”shouted Ameinias, through the din,“meet them briskly, lads!”Once more the hoarse Semitic war-shout, the dark-faced Asiatics dropping upon the decks, the whir of javelins, the scream of dying men, the clash of steel on steel. A frantic charge, but stoutly met. Themistocles was in the thickestmêlée. With his own spear he dashed two Tyrians overboard, as they sprang upon the poop. The band that had leaped down among the oar benches were hewn in pieces by the seamen. The remnant of the attackers recoiled in howls of despair. On the Phœnician’s decks the Greeks saw the officers laying the lash mercilessly across their men, but the disheartened creatures did not stir. Now could be seen Ariamenes, the high admiral himself, a giant warrior in his purple and gilded armour, going up and down the poop, cursing, praying, threatening,—all in vain. TheNausicaä’speople rose and cheered madly.“Enough! They have enough! Glory to Athens!”But here Ameinias gripped Themistocles’s arm. The chief turned, and all the Hellenes with him. The cheer died on their lips. A tall trireme was bearing down on them in full charge even while theNausicaädrifted. They were as helpless as the Sidonian they had sent to death. One groan broke from the Athenians.“Save, Athena! Save! It is Artemisia! The queen of Halicarnassus!”[pg 324]The heavy trireme of the amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm. The foam leaped in a cataract over her ram. The sun made fire of the tossing weapons on her prow. A yell of triumph rose from the Phœnicians. On theNausicaämen dropped sword and spear, moaned, raved, and gazed wildly on Themistocles as if he were a god possessing power to dash the death aside.“To your places, men!”rang his shout, as he faced the foe unmoved,“and die as Athenians!”Then even while men glanced up at the sun to greet Helios for the last time, there was a marvel. The threatening beak shot around. The trireme flew past them, her oars leaping madly, her people too intent on escape even to give a flight of javelins. And again the Athenians cheered.“ThePerseus! Cimon has saved us.”Not three ships’ lengths behind the Halicarnassian raced the ship of the son of Miltiades. They knew now whyArtemisiahad veered. Well she might; had she struck theNausicaädown, her own broadside would have swung defenceless to the fleet pursuer. ThePerseussped past her consort at full speed, Athenian cheering Athenian as she went.“Need you help?”called Cimon, from his poop, as Themistocles waved his sword.“None, press on, smite the Barbarian! Athena is with us!”“Athena is with us! Zeus is with us!”TheNausicaä’screw were lifted from panic to mad enthusiasm. Still above them towered the tall Phœnician, but they could have scaled Mt. Caucasus at that instant.“Onward! Up and after them,”rang Ameinias’s blast,“she is our own, we will take her under the king’s own eye.”[pg 325]The javelins and arrows were pelting from the Barbarian. The Athenians mocked the shower as they leaped the void from bulwark to bulwark. Vainly the Phœnicians strove to clear the grapples. Too firm! Their foes came on to their decks with long leaps, or here and there ran deftly on projecting spars, for what athlete of Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers’ deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phœnicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into themêlée, laying about with a mighty sword worthy of Ajax at Troy, showing he was a prince of the Aryans indeed. It took all the steadiness of Ameinias and his stoutest men to stop the rush, and save the Athenians in turn from being driven overboard. The rush was halted finally, though this was mere respite before a fiercer breaking of the storm. The two ships were drifting yet closer to the strand. Only the fear of striking their own men kept the Persians around the king from clouding the air with arrows. Glaucon saw the grandees near Xerxes’s throne brandishing their swords. In imagination he saw the monarch leaping from his throne in agony as at Thermopylæ.“Back to the charge,”pealed Ariamenes’s summons to the Tyrians;“will you be cowards and dogs beneath the very eyes of the king?”The defenders answered with a second rush. Others again hurled darts from the stern and foreship. Then out of themælstromof men and weapons came a truce. Athenian and Tyrian drew back, whilst Themistocles and Ariamenes were fighting blade to blade. Twice the giant Persian almost[pg 326]dashed the Hellene down. Twice Themistocles recovered poise, and paid back stroke for stroke. He had smitten the helmet from Ariamenes’s head and was swinging for a master-blow when his foot slipped on the bloody plank. He staggered. Before he could recover, the Persian had brought his own weapon up, and flung his might into the downward stroke.“The admiral—lost!”Athenians shuddered together, but with the groan shot a javelin. Clear through the scales of the cuirass it tore, and into the Persian’s shoulder,—Glaucon’s cast, never at the Isthmus truer with hand or eye. The ponderous blade turned, grazed the Athenian’s corselet, clattered on the deck. The Persian sprang back disarmed and powerless. At sight thereof the Phœnicians flung down their swords. True Orientals, in the fate of their chief they saw decreeing Destiny,—what use to resist it?“Yield, my Lord, yield,”called Glaucon, in Persian,“the battle is against you, and no fault of yours. Save the lives of your men.”Ariamenes gave a toss of his princely head, and with his left hand plucked the javelin from his shoulder.“A prince of the Aryans knows how to die, but not how to yield,”he cast back, and before the Athenians guessed his intent he sprang upon the bulwark. There in the sight of his king he stood and bowed his head and with his left arm made the sign of adoration.“Seize him!”shouted Ameinias, divining his intent, but too late. The Persian leaped into the water. In his heavy mail he sank like lead. The wave closed over him, as he passed forever from the sight of man.There was stillness on the Tyrian for a moment. A groan of helpless horror was rising from the Barbarians on the shore. Then the Phœnicians fell upon their knees, crying in their harsh tongue,“Quarter! Quarter!”and embracing and[pg 327]kissing the feet of the victors. Thanks to the moment of quietness given them, the Athenians’ blood had cooled a little; they gathered up the weapons cast upon the deck; there was no massacre.Themistocles mounted the poop of the captured flag-ship, and Glaucon with him. The wind was wafting them again into the centre of the channel. For the first time for many moments they were able to look about them, to ask,“How goes the battle?”Not the petty duel they had fought, but the great battle of battles which was the life-struggle of Hellas. And behold, as they gazed they pressed their hands upon their eyes and looked and looked again, for the thing they saw seemed overgood for truth. Where the great Barbarian line had been pushing up the strait, were only bands of scattered ships, and most of these turning their beaks from Salamis. The waves were strewn with wrecks, and nigh every one a Persian. And right, left, and centre the triumphant Hellenes were pressing home, ramming, grappling, capturing. Even whilst the fight raged, pinnaces were thrusting out from Salamis—Aristeides’s deed, they later heard—crowded with martial graybeards who could not look idly on while their sons fought on the ships, and who speedily landed onPsyttaleiato massacre the luckless Persians there stationed. The cheers of the Barbarians were ended now; from the shores came only a beastlike howling which drowned the pæans of the victors. As theNausicaä’speople looked, they could see the once haughty Phœnicians and Cilicians thrusting back against the land, and the thousands of footmen running down upon the shore to drag the shattered triremes up and away from the triumphant Hellenes.TheNausicaä’speople in wondering gaze stood there for a long time as if transfixed, forgetful how their ship and its prize drifted, forgetful of weariness, forgetful of wounds.[pg 328]Then as one man they turned to the poop of the captured Tyrian, and to Themistocles.Hehad done it—their admiral. He had saved Hellas under the eyes of the vaunting demigod who thought to be her destroyer. They called to Themistocles, they worshipped as if he were the Olympian himself.

[pg 300]CHAPTER XXVIIIBEFORE THE DEATH GRAPPLEFor the fourth time the subaltern who stood at Eurybiades’s elbow turned the water-glass that marked the passing of the hours. The lamps in the low-ceiled cabin were flickering dimly. Men glared on one another across the narrow table with drawn and heated faces. Adeimantus of Corinth was rising to reply to the last appeal of the Athenian.“We have had enough, Eurybiades, of Themistocles’s wordy folly. Because the Athenian admiral is resolved to lead all Hellas to destruction, is no reason that we should follow. As for his threat that he will desert us with his ships if we refuse to fight, I fling it in his face that he dare not make it good. Why go all over the well-threshed straw again? Is not the fleet of the king overwhelming? Were we not saved by a miracle from overthrow at Artemisium? Do not the scouts tell us the Persians are advancing beyond Eleusis toward Megara and the Isthmus? Is not our best fighting blood here in the fleet? Then if the Isthmus is threatened, our business is to defend it and save the Peloponnesus, the last remnant of Hellas unconquered. Now then, headstrong son of Neocles, answer that!”The Corinthian, a tall domineering man, threw back his shoulders like a boxer awaiting battle. Themistocles did not answer, but only smiled up at him from his seat opposite.“I have silenced you, grinning babbler, at last,”thundered[pg 301]Adeimantus,“and I demand of you, O Eurybiades, that we end this tedious debate. If we are to retreat, let us retreat. A vote, I say, a vote!”Eurybiades rose at the head of the table. He was a heavy, florid individual with more than the average Spartan’s slowness of tongue and intellect. Physically he was no coward, but he dreaded responsibility.“Much has been said,”he announced ponderously,“many opinions offered. It would seem the majority of the council favour the decision to retire forthwith. Has Themistocles anything more to say why the vote should not be taken?”“Nothing,”rejoined the Athenian, with an equanimity that made Adeimantus snap his teeth.“We will therefore take the vote city by city,”went on Eurybiades.“Do you, Phlegon of Seriphos, give your vote.”Seriphos—wretched islet—sent only one ship, but thanks to the Greek mania for“equality”Phlegon’svote had equal weight with that of Themistocles.“Salamis is not defensible,”announced the Seriphian, shortly.“Retreat.”“And you, Charmides of Melos?”“Retreat.”“And you, Phoibodas of Trœzene?”“Retreat, by all the gods.”“And you, Hippocrates of Ægina?”“Stay and fight. If you go back to the Isthmus, Ægina must be abandoned to the Barbarians. I am with Themistocles.”“Record his vote,”shouted Adeimantus, ill-naturedly,“he is but one against twenty. But I warn you, Eurybiades, do not call for Themistocles’s vote, or the rest of us will be angry. The man whose city is under the power of the Bar[pg 302]barian has no vote in this council, however much we condescend to listen to his chatterings.”The Athenian sprang from his seat, his aspect as threatening as Apollo descending Olympus in wrath.“Where is my country, Adeimantus? Yonder!”he pointed out the open port-hole,“there rides the array of our Athenian ships. What other state in Hellas sends so many and sets better men within them? Athens still lives, though her Acropolis be wrapped in flames.‘Strong-hearted men and naught else are warp and woof of a city.’Do you forget Alcæus’s word so soon, O Boaster from Corinth? Yes, by Athena Promachos, Mistress of Battles, while those nine score ships ride on the deep, I have a city fairer, braver, than yours. And will you still deny me equal voice and vote with this noble trierarch from Siphinos with his one, or with his comrade from Melos with his twain?”Themistocles’s voice rang like a trumpet. Adeimantus winced. Eurybiades broke in with soothing tones.“No one intends to deny your right to vote, Themistocles. The excellent Corinthian did but jest.”“A fitting hour for jesting!”muttered the Athenian, sinking back into his seat.“The vote, the vote!”urged the Sicyonian chief, from Adeimantus’s elbow, and the voting went on. Of more than twenty voices only three—Themistocles’s and those of the Æginetan and Megarian admirals—were in favour of abiding the onset. Yet even when Eurybiades arose to announce the decision, the son of Neocles sat with his hands sprawling on the table, his face set in an inscrutable smile as he looked on Adeimantus.“It is the plain opinion,”—Eurybiades hemmed and hawed with his words,—“the plain opinion, I say, of this council that the allied fleet retire at once to the Isthmus. There[pg 303]fore, I, as admiral-in-chief, do order each commander to proceed to his own flag-ship and prepare his triremes to retire at dawn.”“Well said,”shouted Adeimantus, already on his feet;“now to obey.”But with him rose Themistocles. He stood tall and calm, his thumbs thrust in his girdle. His smile was a little broader, his head held a little higher, than of wont.“Good Eurybiades, I grieve to blast the wisdom of all these valiant gentlemen, but they cannot retire if they wish.”“Explain!”a dozen shouted.“Very simply. I have had good reason to know that the king has moved forward the western horn of his fleet, so as to enclose our anchorage at Salamis. It is impossible to retire save through the Persian line of battle.”Perseus upholding the Gorgon’s head before Polydectes’s guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus’s frightened wrath broke loose.“Fox!10Was this your doing?”“I did not ask you to thank me,philotate,”was the easy answer.“It is, however, urgent to consider whether you wish to be taken unresisting in the morning.”The Corinthian shook his fist across the table.“Liar, as a last device to ruin us, you invent this folly.”“It is easy to see if I lie,”rejoined Themistocles;“send out a pinnace and note where the Persians anchor. It will not take long.”For an instant swords seemed about to leap from their scabbards, and the enraged Peloponnesians to sheathe them in the Athenian’s breast. He stood unflinching, smiling,[pg 304]while a volley of curses flew over him. Then an orderly summoned him on deck, while Adeimantus and his fellows foamed and contended below. Under the battle lantern Themistocles saw a man who was his elder in years, rugged in feature, with massive forehead and wise gray eyes. This was Aristeides the Just, the admiral’s enemy, but their feud had died when Xerxes drew near to Athens.Hands clasped heartily as the twain stood face to face.“Our rivalry forever more shall be a rivalry which of us can do most to profit Athens,”spoke the returning exile; then Aristeides told how he had even now come from Ægina, how he had heard of the clamours to retreat, how retreat was impossible, for the Persians were pressing in. A laugh from Themistocles interrupted.“My handiwork! Come to the council. They will not believe me, no, not my oath.”Aristeides told his story, and how his vessel to Salamis had scarce escaped the Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him“liar.”The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter.“Captains of Hellas, a trireme of Teos has deserted from the Barbarian to us. Her navarch sends word that all is even as Themistocles and Aristeides tell. The Egyptians hold the passage to Eleusis. Infantry are disembarked on Psyttaleia. The Phœnicians and Ionians enclose us on the eastern strait. We are hemmed in.”* * * * * * *Once more the orderly turned the water-clock. It was past midnight. The clouds had blown apart before the rising wind. The debate must end. Eurybiades stood again to take the votes of the wearied, tense-strung men.[pg 305]“In view of the report of the Teans, what is your voice and vote?”Before all the rest up leaped Adeimantus. He was no craven at heart, though an evil genius had possessed him.“You have your will, Themistocles,”he made the concession sullenly yet firmly,“you have your will. May Poseidon prove you in the right. If it is battle or slavery at dawn, the choice is quick. Battle!”“Battle!”shouted the twenty, arising together, and Eurybiades had no need to declare the vote. The commanders scattered to their flag-ships, to give orders to be ready to fight at dawn. Themistocles went to his pinnace last. He walked proudly. He knew that whatever glory he might gain on the morrow, he could never win a fairer victory than he had won that night. When his barge came alongside, his boat crew knew that his eyes were dancing, that his whole mien was of a man in love with his fortune. Many times, as Glaucon sat beside him, he heard the son of Neocles repeating as in ecstasy:—“They must fight. They must fight.”* * * * * * *Glaucon sat mutely in the pinnace which had headed not for theNausicaä, but toward the shore, where a few faint beacons were burning.“I must confer with the strategi as to the morning,”Themistocles declared after a long interval, at which Sicinnus broke in anxiously:—“You will not sleep,kyrie?”“Sleep?”laughed the admiral, as at an excellent jest,“I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos.”Then, ignoring Sicinnus, he addressed the outlaw.“I am grateful to you, my friend,”he did not call Glaucon by name before the others,“you have saved me, and I have[pg 306]saved Hellas. You brought me a new plan when I seemed at the last resource. How can the son of Neocles reward you?”“Give me a part to play to-morrow.”“Thermopylæ was not brisk enough fighting, ha? Can you still fling a javelin?”“I can try.”“Euge!Try you shall.”He let his voice drop.“Do not forget your name henceforth is Critias. TheNausicaä’screw are mostly from Sunium and the Mesogia. They’d hardly recognize you under that beard; still Sicinnus must alter you.”“Command me,kyrie,”said the Asiatic.“A strange time and place, but you must do it. Find some dark dye for this man’s hair to-night, and at dawn have him aboard the flag-ship.”“The thing can be done,kyrie.”“After that, lie down and sleep. Because Themistocles is awake, is no cause for others’ star-gazing. Sleep sound. Pray Apollo and Hephæstus to make your eye sure, your hand strong. Then awake to see the glory of Hellas.”Confidence, yes, power came through the tones of the admiral’s voice. Themistocles went away to the belated council. Sicinnus led his charge through the crooked streets of the town of Salamis. Sailors were sleeping in the open night, and they stumbled over them. At last they found a small tavern where a dozen shipmen sprawled on the earthen floor, and a gaping host was just quenching his last lamp. Sicinnus, however, seemed to know him. There was much protesting and headshaking, at last ended by the glint of a daric. The man grumbled, departed, returned after a tedious interval with a pot of ointment, found Hermes knew[pg 307]where. By a rush-candle’s flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with a practised hand.“You know the art well,”observed the outlaw.“Assuredly; the agent of Themistocles must be a Proteus with his disguises.”Sicinnus laid down his pot and brushes. They had no mirror, but Glaucon knew that he was transformed. The host got his daric. Again they went out into the night and forsaking the crowded town sought the seaside. The strand was broad, the sand soft and cool, the circling stars gave three hours yet of night, and they lay down to rest. The sea and the shore stretched away, a magic vista with a thousand mystic shapes springing out of the charmed darkness, made and unmade as overwrought fancy summoned them. As from an unreal world Glaucon—whilst he lay—saw the lights of the scattered ships, heard the clank of chains, the rattling of tacklings. Nature slept. Only man was waking.“The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,Uplands and gorges hush!The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,The beasts under each bushCrouch, and the hived beesRest in their honeyed ease;In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,And each bird folds his wing over his head.”The school-learned lines of Alcman, with a thousand other trivial things, swarmed back through the head of Glaucon the Alcmæonid. How much he had lived through that night, how much he would live through,—if indeed he was to live,—upon the morrow! The thought was benumbing in its greatness. His head swam with confused memories. Then at last all things dimmed. Once more he dreamed. He was with Hermione gathering red poppies on the hill above[pg 308]Eleusis. She had filled her basket full. He called to her to wait for him. She ran away. He chased, she fled with laughter and sparkling eyes. He could hear the wavings of her dress, the little cries she flung back over her shoulder. Then by the sacred well near the temple he caught her. He felt her struggling gayly. He felt her warm breath upon his face, her hair was touching his forehead. Rejoicing in his strength, he was bending her head toward his—but here he wakened. Sicinnus had disappeared. A bar of gray gold hung over the water in the east.“This was the day.This was the day!”Some moments he lay trying to realize the fact in its full moment. A thin mist rested on the black water waiting to be dispelled by the sun. From afar came sounds not of seamen’s trumpets, but horns, harps, kettledrums, from the hidden mainland across the strait, as of a host advancing along the shore.“Xerxes goes down to the marge with his myriads,”Glaucon told himself.“Have not all his captains bowed and smiled,‘Your Eternity’s victory is certain. Come and behold.’”But here the Athenian shut his teeth.People at length were passing up and down the strand. The coast was waking. The gray bar was becoming silver. Friends passed, deep in talk,—perchance for the last time. Glaucon lay still a moment longer, and as he rested caught a voice so familiar he felt all the blood surge to his forehead,—Democrates’s voice.“I tell you, Hiram,—I told you before,—I have no part in the ordering of the fleet. Were I to interfere with ever so good a heart, it would only breed trouble for us all.”So close were the twain, the orator’s trailing chiton almost fell on Glaucon’s face. The latter marvelled that his own heart did not spring from its prison in his breast, so fierce were its beatings.[pg 309]“If my Lord would go to Adeimantus and suggest,”—the other’s Greek came with a marked Oriental accent.“Harpy! Adeimantus is no Medizer. He is pushed to bay now, and is sure to fight. Have you Barbarians no confidence? Has not the king two triremes to our one? Only fools can demand more. Tell Lycon, your master, I have long since done my uttermost to serve him.”“Yet remember, Excellency.”“Begone, scoundrel. Don’t threaten again. If I know your power over me, I can also promise you not to go down to Orchus alone, but take excellent pains to have fair company.”“I am sorry to bear such tidings to Lycon, Excellency.”“Away with you!”“Do not raise your voice,kyrie,”spoke Hiram, never more blandly,“here is a man asleep.”The hint sent Democrates from the spot almost on a run. Hiram disappeared in the opposite direction. Glaucon rose, shook the sand from his cloak, and stood an instant with his head whirling. The voice of his boyhood friend, of the man who had ruined him because of a suspicion of treason—and now deep in compromising talk with the agent of the chief of the peace party at Sparta! And wherefore had Mardonius spoken those mysterious words at their parting,“Beware of Democrates”? For an instant the problems evoked made him forget even the coming battle.A clear trumpet-blast down the strand gave a truce to questioning. Sicinnus reappeared, and led Glaucon to one of the great fires roaring on the beach, where the provident Greek sailors were breakfasting on barley porridge and meat broth before dining on spears and arrow-heads. A silent company, no laughter, no jesting. All knew another sun for them might never rise. Glaucon ate not because he hungered, but because duty ordered it. As the light strengthened, the[pg 310]strand grew alive with thousands of men at toil. The triremes drawn on shore went down into the sea on their rollers. More trumpet-blasts sent the rowers aboard their ships. But last of all, before thrusting out to do or die, the Greeks must feast their ears as well as their stomachs. On the sloping beach gathered the officers and the armoured marines,—eighteen from each trireme,—and heard one stirring harangue after another. The old feuds were forgotten. Adeimantus and Eurybiades both spoke bravely. The seers announced that every bird and cloud gave good omen. Prayer was offered to Ajax of Salamis that the hero should fight for his people. Last of all Themistocles spoke, and never to fairer purpose. No boasts, no lip courage, a painting of the noble and the base, the glory of dying as freemen, the infamy of existing as slaves. He told of Marathon, of Thermopylæ, and asked if Leonidas had died as died a fool. He drew tears. He drew vows of vengeance. He never drew applause. Men were too strained for that. At last he sent the thousands forth.“Go, then. Quit yourselves as Hellenes. That is all the task. And I say to you, in the after days this shall be your joy, to hear the greatest declare of you,‘Reverence this man, for he saved us all at Salamis.’”The company dispersed, each man to his ship. Themistocles went to his pinnace, and a cheer uprose from sea and land as the boat shot out to theNausicaä. Eurybiades might be chief in name; who did not know that Themistocles was the surest bulwark of Hellas?The son of Neocles, standing in the boat, uplifted his face to the now golden east.“Be witness, Helios,”he cried aloud,“be witness when thou comest, I have done all things possible. And do thou and thy fellow-gods on bright Olympus rule our battle now; the lot is in your hands!”

For the fourth time the subaltern who stood at Eurybiades’s elbow turned the water-glass that marked the passing of the hours. The lamps in the low-ceiled cabin were flickering dimly. Men glared on one another across the narrow table with drawn and heated faces. Adeimantus of Corinth was rising to reply to the last appeal of the Athenian.

“We have had enough, Eurybiades, of Themistocles’s wordy folly. Because the Athenian admiral is resolved to lead all Hellas to destruction, is no reason that we should follow. As for his threat that he will desert us with his ships if we refuse to fight, I fling it in his face that he dare not make it good. Why go all over the well-threshed straw again? Is not the fleet of the king overwhelming? Were we not saved by a miracle from overthrow at Artemisium? Do not the scouts tell us the Persians are advancing beyond Eleusis toward Megara and the Isthmus? Is not our best fighting blood here in the fleet? Then if the Isthmus is threatened, our business is to defend it and save the Peloponnesus, the last remnant of Hellas unconquered. Now then, headstrong son of Neocles, answer that!”

The Corinthian, a tall domineering man, threw back his shoulders like a boxer awaiting battle. Themistocles did not answer, but only smiled up at him from his seat opposite.

“I have silenced you, grinning babbler, at last,”thundered[pg 301]Adeimantus,“and I demand of you, O Eurybiades, that we end this tedious debate. If we are to retreat, let us retreat. A vote, I say, a vote!”

Eurybiades rose at the head of the table. He was a heavy, florid individual with more than the average Spartan’s slowness of tongue and intellect. Physically he was no coward, but he dreaded responsibility.

“Much has been said,”he announced ponderously,“many opinions offered. It would seem the majority of the council favour the decision to retire forthwith. Has Themistocles anything more to say why the vote should not be taken?”

“Nothing,”rejoined the Athenian, with an equanimity that made Adeimantus snap his teeth.

“We will therefore take the vote city by city,”went on Eurybiades.“Do you, Phlegon of Seriphos, give your vote.”

Seriphos—wretched islet—sent only one ship, but thanks to the Greek mania for“equality”Phlegon’svote had equal weight with that of Themistocles.

“Salamis is not defensible,”announced the Seriphian, shortly.“Retreat.”

“And you, Charmides of Melos?”

“Retreat.”

“And you, Phoibodas of Trœzene?”

“Retreat, by all the gods.”

“And you, Hippocrates of Ægina?”

“Stay and fight. If you go back to the Isthmus, Ægina must be abandoned to the Barbarians. I am with Themistocles.”

“Record his vote,”shouted Adeimantus, ill-naturedly,“he is but one against twenty. But I warn you, Eurybiades, do not call for Themistocles’s vote, or the rest of us will be angry. The man whose city is under the power of the Bar[pg 302]barian has no vote in this council, however much we condescend to listen to his chatterings.”

The Athenian sprang from his seat, his aspect as threatening as Apollo descending Olympus in wrath.

“Where is my country, Adeimantus? Yonder!”he pointed out the open port-hole,“there rides the array of our Athenian ships. What other state in Hellas sends so many and sets better men within them? Athens still lives, though her Acropolis be wrapped in flames.‘Strong-hearted men and naught else are warp and woof of a city.’Do you forget Alcæus’s word so soon, O Boaster from Corinth? Yes, by Athena Promachos, Mistress of Battles, while those nine score ships ride on the deep, I have a city fairer, braver, than yours. And will you still deny me equal voice and vote with this noble trierarch from Siphinos with his one, or with his comrade from Melos with his twain?”

Themistocles’s voice rang like a trumpet. Adeimantus winced. Eurybiades broke in with soothing tones.

“No one intends to deny your right to vote, Themistocles. The excellent Corinthian did but jest.”

“A fitting hour for jesting!”muttered the Athenian, sinking back into his seat.

“The vote, the vote!”urged the Sicyonian chief, from Adeimantus’s elbow, and the voting went on. Of more than twenty voices only three—Themistocles’s and those of the Æginetan and Megarian admirals—were in favour of abiding the onset. Yet even when Eurybiades arose to announce the decision, the son of Neocles sat with his hands sprawling on the table, his face set in an inscrutable smile as he looked on Adeimantus.

“It is the plain opinion,”—Eurybiades hemmed and hawed with his words,—“the plain opinion, I say, of this council that the allied fleet retire at once to the Isthmus. There[pg 303]fore, I, as admiral-in-chief, do order each commander to proceed to his own flag-ship and prepare his triremes to retire at dawn.”

“Well said,”shouted Adeimantus, already on his feet;“now to obey.”

But with him rose Themistocles. He stood tall and calm, his thumbs thrust in his girdle. His smile was a little broader, his head held a little higher, than of wont.

“Good Eurybiades, I grieve to blast the wisdom of all these valiant gentlemen, but they cannot retire if they wish.”

“Explain!”a dozen shouted.

“Very simply. I have had good reason to know that the king has moved forward the western horn of his fleet, so as to enclose our anchorage at Salamis. It is impossible to retire save through the Persian line of battle.”

Perseus upholding the Gorgon’s head before Polydectes’s guests and turning them to stone wrought hardly more of a miracle than this calm announcement of Themistocles. Men stared at him vacantly, stunned by the tidings, then Adeimantus’s frightened wrath broke loose.

“Fox!10Was this your doing?”

“I did not ask you to thank me,philotate,”was the easy answer.“It is, however, urgent to consider whether you wish to be taken unresisting in the morning.”

The Corinthian shook his fist across the table.

“Liar, as a last device to ruin us, you invent this folly.”

“It is easy to see if I lie,”rejoined Themistocles;“send out a pinnace and note where the Persians anchor. It will not take long.”

For an instant swords seemed about to leap from their scabbards, and the enraged Peloponnesians to sheathe them in the Athenian’s breast. He stood unflinching, smiling,[pg 304]while a volley of curses flew over him. Then an orderly summoned him on deck, while Adeimantus and his fellows foamed and contended below. Under the battle lantern Themistocles saw a man who was his elder in years, rugged in feature, with massive forehead and wise gray eyes. This was Aristeides the Just, the admiral’s enemy, but their feud had died when Xerxes drew near to Athens.

Hands clasped heartily as the twain stood face to face.

“Our rivalry forever more shall be a rivalry which of us can do most to profit Athens,”spoke the returning exile; then Aristeides told how he had even now come from Ægina, how he had heard of the clamours to retreat, how retreat was impossible, for the Persians were pressing in. A laugh from Themistocles interrupted.

“My handiwork! Come to the council. They will not believe me, no, not my oath.”

Aristeides told his story, and how his vessel to Salamis had scarce escaped the Egyptian triremes, and how by this time all entrance and exit was surely closed. But even now many an angry captain called him“liar.”The strife of words was at white heat when Eurybiades himself silenced the fiercest doubter.

“Captains of Hellas, a trireme of Teos has deserted from the Barbarian to us. Her navarch sends word that all is even as Themistocles and Aristeides tell. The Egyptians hold the passage to Eleusis. Infantry are disembarked on Psyttaleia. The Phœnicians and Ionians enclose us on the eastern strait. We are hemmed in.”

* * * * * * *

Once more the orderly turned the water-clock. It was past midnight. The clouds had blown apart before the rising wind. The debate must end. Eurybiades stood again to take the votes of the wearied, tense-strung men.

“In view of the report of the Teans, what is your voice and vote?”

Before all the rest up leaped Adeimantus. He was no craven at heart, though an evil genius had possessed him.

“You have your will, Themistocles,”he made the concession sullenly yet firmly,“you have your will. May Poseidon prove you in the right. If it is battle or slavery at dawn, the choice is quick. Battle!”

“Battle!”shouted the twenty, arising together, and Eurybiades had no need to declare the vote. The commanders scattered to their flag-ships, to give orders to be ready to fight at dawn. Themistocles went to his pinnace last. He walked proudly. He knew that whatever glory he might gain on the morrow, he could never win a fairer victory than he had won that night. When his barge came alongside, his boat crew knew that his eyes were dancing, that his whole mien was of a man in love with his fortune. Many times, as Glaucon sat beside him, he heard the son of Neocles repeating as in ecstasy:—

“They must fight. They must fight.”

* * * * * * *

Glaucon sat mutely in the pinnace which had headed not for theNausicaä, but toward the shore, where a few faint beacons were burning.

“I must confer with the strategi as to the morning,”Themistocles declared after a long interval, at which Sicinnus broke in anxiously:—

“You will not sleep,kyrie?”

“Sleep?”laughed the admiral, as at an excellent jest,“I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos.”Then, ignoring Sicinnus, he addressed the outlaw.

“I am grateful to you, my friend,”he did not call Glaucon by name before the others,“you have saved me, and I have[pg 306]saved Hellas. You brought me a new plan when I seemed at the last resource. How can the son of Neocles reward you?”

“Give me a part to play to-morrow.”

“Thermopylæ was not brisk enough fighting, ha? Can you still fling a javelin?”

“I can try.”

“Euge!Try you shall.”He let his voice drop.“Do not forget your name henceforth is Critias. TheNausicaä’screw are mostly from Sunium and the Mesogia. They’d hardly recognize you under that beard; still Sicinnus must alter you.”

“Command me,kyrie,”said the Asiatic.

“A strange time and place, but you must do it. Find some dark dye for this man’s hair to-night, and at dawn have him aboard the flag-ship.”

“The thing can be done,kyrie.”

“After that, lie down and sleep. Because Themistocles is awake, is no cause for others’ star-gazing. Sleep sound. Pray Apollo and Hephæstus to make your eye sure, your hand strong. Then awake to see the glory of Hellas.”

Confidence, yes, power came through the tones of the admiral’s voice. Themistocles went away to the belated council. Sicinnus led his charge through the crooked streets of the town of Salamis. Sailors were sleeping in the open night, and they stumbled over them. At last they found a small tavern where a dozen shipmen sprawled on the earthen floor, and a gaping host was just quenching his last lamp. Sicinnus, however, seemed to know him. There was much protesting and headshaking, at last ended by the glint of a daric. The man grumbled, departed, returned after a tedious interval with a pot of ointment, found Hermes knew[pg 307]where. By a rush-candle’s flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with a practised hand.

“You know the art well,”observed the outlaw.

“Assuredly; the agent of Themistocles must be a Proteus with his disguises.”

Sicinnus laid down his pot and brushes. They had no mirror, but Glaucon knew that he was transformed. The host got his daric. Again they went out into the night and forsaking the crowded town sought the seaside. The strand was broad, the sand soft and cool, the circling stars gave three hours yet of night, and they lay down to rest. The sea and the shore stretched away, a magic vista with a thousand mystic shapes springing out of the charmed darkness, made and unmade as overwrought fancy summoned them. As from an unreal world Glaucon—whilst he lay—saw the lights of the scattered ships, heard the clank of chains, the rattling of tacklings. Nature slept. Only man was waking.

“The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,Uplands and gorges hush!The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,The beasts under each bushCrouch, and the hived beesRest in their honeyed ease;In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,And each bird folds his wing over his head.”

“The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,

Uplands and gorges hush!

The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,

The beasts under each bush

Crouch, and the hived bees

Rest in their honeyed ease;

In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,

And each bird folds his wing over his head.”

The school-learned lines of Alcman, with a thousand other trivial things, swarmed back through the head of Glaucon the Alcmæonid. How much he had lived through that night, how much he would live through,—if indeed he was to live,—upon the morrow! The thought was benumbing in its greatness. His head swam with confused memories. Then at last all things dimmed. Once more he dreamed. He was with Hermione gathering red poppies on the hill above[pg 308]Eleusis. She had filled her basket full. He called to her to wait for him. She ran away. He chased, she fled with laughter and sparkling eyes. He could hear the wavings of her dress, the little cries she flung back over her shoulder. Then by the sacred well near the temple he caught her. He felt her struggling gayly. He felt her warm breath upon his face, her hair was touching his forehead. Rejoicing in his strength, he was bending her head toward his—but here he wakened. Sicinnus had disappeared. A bar of gray gold hung over the water in the east.

“This was the day.This was the day!”

Some moments he lay trying to realize the fact in its full moment. A thin mist rested on the black water waiting to be dispelled by the sun. From afar came sounds not of seamen’s trumpets, but horns, harps, kettledrums, from the hidden mainland across the strait, as of a host advancing along the shore.“Xerxes goes down to the marge with his myriads,”Glaucon told himself.“Have not all his captains bowed and smiled,‘Your Eternity’s victory is certain. Come and behold.’”But here the Athenian shut his teeth.

People at length were passing up and down the strand. The coast was waking. The gray bar was becoming silver. Friends passed, deep in talk,—perchance for the last time. Glaucon lay still a moment longer, and as he rested caught a voice so familiar he felt all the blood surge to his forehead,—Democrates’s voice.

“I tell you, Hiram,—I told you before,—I have no part in the ordering of the fleet. Were I to interfere with ever so good a heart, it would only breed trouble for us all.”

So close were the twain, the orator’s trailing chiton almost fell on Glaucon’s face. The latter marvelled that his own heart did not spring from its prison in his breast, so fierce were its beatings.

“If my Lord would go to Adeimantus and suggest,”—the other’s Greek came with a marked Oriental accent.

“Harpy! Adeimantus is no Medizer. He is pushed to bay now, and is sure to fight. Have you Barbarians no confidence? Has not the king two triremes to our one? Only fools can demand more. Tell Lycon, your master, I have long since done my uttermost to serve him.”

“Yet remember, Excellency.”

“Begone, scoundrel. Don’t threaten again. If I know your power over me, I can also promise you not to go down to Orchus alone, but take excellent pains to have fair company.”

“I am sorry to bear such tidings to Lycon, Excellency.”

“Away with you!”

“Do not raise your voice,kyrie,”spoke Hiram, never more blandly,“here is a man asleep.”

The hint sent Democrates from the spot almost on a run. Hiram disappeared in the opposite direction. Glaucon rose, shook the sand from his cloak, and stood an instant with his head whirling. The voice of his boyhood friend, of the man who had ruined him because of a suspicion of treason—and now deep in compromising talk with the agent of the chief of the peace party at Sparta! And wherefore had Mardonius spoken those mysterious words at their parting,“Beware of Democrates”? For an instant the problems evoked made him forget even the coming battle.

A clear trumpet-blast down the strand gave a truce to questioning. Sicinnus reappeared, and led Glaucon to one of the great fires roaring on the beach, where the provident Greek sailors were breakfasting on barley porridge and meat broth before dining on spears and arrow-heads. A silent company, no laughter, no jesting. All knew another sun for them might never rise. Glaucon ate not because he hungered, but because duty ordered it. As the light strengthened, the[pg 310]strand grew alive with thousands of men at toil. The triremes drawn on shore went down into the sea on their rollers. More trumpet-blasts sent the rowers aboard their ships. But last of all, before thrusting out to do or die, the Greeks must feast their ears as well as their stomachs. On the sloping beach gathered the officers and the armoured marines,—eighteen from each trireme,—and heard one stirring harangue after another. The old feuds were forgotten. Adeimantus and Eurybiades both spoke bravely. The seers announced that every bird and cloud gave good omen. Prayer was offered to Ajax of Salamis that the hero should fight for his people. Last of all Themistocles spoke, and never to fairer purpose. No boasts, no lip courage, a painting of the noble and the base, the glory of dying as freemen, the infamy of existing as slaves. He told of Marathon, of Thermopylæ, and asked if Leonidas had died as died a fool. He drew tears. He drew vows of vengeance. He never drew applause. Men were too strained for that. At last he sent the thousands forth.

“Go, then. Quit yourselves as Hellenes. That is all the task. And I say to you, in the after days this shall be your joy, to hear the greatest declare of you,‘Reverence this man, for he saved us all at Salamis.’”

The company dispersed, each man to his ship. Themistocles went to his pinnace, and a cheer uprose from sea and land as the boat shot out to theNausicaä. Eurybiades might be chief in name; who did not know that Themistocles was the surest bulwark of Hellas?

The son of Neocles, standing in the boat, uplifted his face to the now golden east.

“Be witness, Helios,”he cried aloud,“be witness when thou comest, I have done all things possible. And do thou and thy fellow-gods on bright Olympus rule our battle now; the lot is in your hands!”

[pg 311]CHAPTER XXIXSALAMISSunrise. TheNausicaäwas ready. Ameinias the navarch walked the deck above the stern-cabin with nervous strides. All that human forethought could do to prepare the ship had long been done. The slim hull one hundred and fifty feet long had been stripped of every superfluous rope and spar. The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of theNausicaäwas herself. To send the three-toothed beak through a foeman’s side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—thethranitesof the upper tier, thezygitesof the middle, thethalamitesof the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every oarsman dangled a sword, for boarders’ work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded theprōreus, Ameinias’s lieutenant,[pg 312]and with him thekeleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the“governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give theNausicaälife or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak.“The trireme is ready, admiral,”reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.The son of Neocles threw back his helmet, that all might see his calm, untroubled face. He wore a cuirass of silvered scale-armour over his purple chiton. At his side walked a young man, whom the ship’s people imagined the deserter of the preceding night, but he had drawn his helmet close.“This is Critias,”said Themistocles, briefly, to the navarch;“he is a good caster. See that he has plenty of darts.”“One of Themistocles’s secret agents,”muttered the captain to the governor,“we should have guessed it.”And they all had other things to think of than the whence and wherefore of this stranger.It was a weary, nervous interval. Men had said everything, done everything, hoped and feared everything. They were in no mood even to invoke the gods. In desperation some jested riotously as they gripped the oars on the benches,—demonstrations which theprōreusquelled with a loud“Silence in the ship.”The morning mist was breaking. A brisk wind was coming with the sun. Clear and strong sang the Notus, the breeze of the kindly south. It covered the blue bay with crisping whitecaps, it sent the surf foaming up along the Attic shore across the strait. Themistocles watched it all with silent eyes, but eyes that spoke of gladness. He knew the waves would beat with full force on the Persian[pg 313]prows, and make their swift movement difficult while the Greeks, taking the galloping surf astern, would suffer little.“Æolus fights for us. The first omen and a fair one.”The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced.How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain? Now as the vapour broke, men began to be able to look about them, and be delivered from their own thoughts. The shores of Salamis were alive,—old men, women, little children,—the fugitives from Attica were crowding to the marge in thousands to watch the deed that should decide their all. And many a bronze-cheeked oarsman arose from his bench to wave farewell to the wife or father or mother, and sank back again,—a clutching in his throat, a mist before his eyes, while his grip upon the oar grew like to steel.As theNausicaärode at her place in the long line of ships spread up and down the shore of Salamis, it was easy to detect forms if not faces on the strand. And Glaucon, peering out from his helmet bars, saw Democrates himself standing on the sands and beckoning to Themistocles. Then other figures became clear to him out of the many, this one or that whom he had loved and clasped hands with in the sunlit days gone by. And last of all he saw those his gaze hungered for the most, Hermippus, Lysistra, and another standing at their side all in white, and in her arms she bore something he knew must be her child,—Hermione’s son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only[pg 314]a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him.“You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,”spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything.“To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.”“No wine, for Athena’s sake!”cried the outlaw, drawing himself together,“it is passed. I am strong again.”A great shout from the shores and the waiting fleet made him forget even the sight of Hermione.“They come! The Persians! The Persians!”The fleet of the Barbarians was advancing from the havens of Athens.* * * * * * *The sun rose higher. He was far above Hymettus now, and shooting his bright javelins over mainland, islands, and waters. With his rising the southern breeze sang ever clearer, making the narrow channel betwixt Salamis and Attica white, and tossing each trireme merrily. Not a cloud hung upon Pentelicus, Hymettus, or the purple northern range of Parnes. Over the desolate Acropolis hovered a thin mist,—smoke from the smouldering temple, the sight of which made every Attic sailor blink hard and think of the vengeance.Yonder on the shore of the mainland the host of the Persian was moving: horsemen in gilded panoply, Hydarnes’s spearmen in armour like suns. They stood by myriads in glittering masses about a little spur of Mt. Ægaleos, where a holy close of Heracles looked out upon the sea. To them were coming more horsemen, chariots, litters, and across the strait drifted the thunderous acclamation,“Victory to the king!”For here on the ivory throne, with his mighty men, his captains, his harem, about him, the“Lord of the World”[pg 315]would look down on the battle and see how his slaves could fight.Now the Barbarians began to move forth by sea. From the havens of Peiræus and their anchorages along the shore swept their galleys,—Phœnician, Cilician, Egyptian, and, sorrow of sorrows, Ionian—Greek arrayed against Greek! Six hundred triremes and more they were, taller in poop and prow than the Hellenes, and braver to look upon.Each vied with each in the splendour of the scarlet, purple, and gold upon stern and foreship. Their thousands of white oars moved like the onward march of an army as they trampled down the foam. From the masts of their many admirals flew innumerable gay signal-flags. The commands shouted through trumpets in a dozen strange tongues—the shrill pipings of the oar masters, the hoarse shouts of the rowers—went up to heaven in a clamorous babel.“Swallows’ chatter,”cried the deriding Hellenes, but hearts were beating quicker, breath was coming faster in many a breast by Salamis then,—and no shame. For now was the hour of trial, the wrestle of Olympian Zeus with Ahura-Mazda. Now would a mighty one speak from the heavens to Hellas, and say to her“Die!”or“Be!”The Barbarians’ armadas were forming. Their black beaks, all pointing toward Salamis, stretched in two bristling lines from the islet of Psyttaleia—whence the shields of the landing force glittered—to that brighter glitter on the promontory by Ægaleos where sat the king. To charge their array seemed charging a moving hedge of spears, impenetrable in defence, invincible in attack. Slowly, rocked by the sea and rowing in steady order, the armament approached Salamis. And still the Greek ships lay spread out along the shore, each trireme swinging at the end of the cable which moored her to the land, each mariner listening[pg 316]to the beatings of his own heart and straining his eyes on one ship now—Eurybiades’s—which rode at the centre of their line and far ahead.All could read the order of battle at last as squadron lay against squadron. On the west, under Xerxes’s own eye, the Athenians must charge the serried Phœnicians, at the centre the Æginetans must face the Cilicians, on the east Adeimantus and his fellows from Peloponnese must make good against the vassal Ionians. But would the signal to row and strike never come? Had some god numbed Eurybiades’s will? Was treachery doing its darkest work? With men so highly wrought moments were precious. The bow strung too long will lose power. And wherefore did Eurybiades tarry?Every soul in theNausicaäkept his curses soft, and waited—waited till that trailing monster, the Persian fleet, had crept halfway from Psyttaleia toward them, then up the shrouds of the Spartan admiral leaped a flag. Eager hands drew it, yet it seemed mounting as a snail, till at the masthead the clear wind blew it wide,—a plain red banner, but as it spread hundreds of axes were hewing the cables that bound the triremes to the shore, every Greek oar was biting the sea, the ships were leaping away from Salamis. From the strand a shout went up, a prayer more than a cheer, mothers, wives, little ones, calling it together:—“Zeus prosper you!”A roar from the fleet, the tearing of countless blades on the thole-pins answered them. Eurybiades had spoken. There was no treason. All now was in the hand of the god.* * * * * * *Across the strait they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging[pg 317]their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phœnicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious strokes. The grudges, the commercial rivalries between Greek and Sidonian, were old. No Persian was hotter for Xerxes’s cause than his Phœnician vassals that day.And as they charged, the foemen’s lines seemed so dense, their ships so tall, their power so vast, that involuntarily hesitancy came over the Greeks. Their strokes slowed. The whole line lagged. Here an Æginetan galley dropped behind, yonder a Corinthian navarch suffered his men to back water. Even thekeleustesof theNausicaäslackened his beating on the sounding-board. Eurybiades’s ship had drifted behind to the line of her sisters, as in defiance a towering Sidonian sprang ahead of the Barbarian line of battle, twenty trumpets from her poop and foreship asking,“Dare you meet me?”The Greek line became almost stationary. Some ships were backing water. It was a moment which, suffered to slip unchecked, leads to irreparable disaster. Then like a god sprang Themistocles upon the capstan on his poop. He had torn off his helmet. The crews of scores of triremes saw him. His voice was like Stentor’s, the herald whose call was strong as fifty common men.In a lull amidst the howls of the Barbarians his call rang up and down the flagging ships:—“O Sons of Hellas! save your land,Your children save, your altars and your wives!Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”“Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”Navarch shouted it to navarch. The cry went up and[pg 318]down the line of the Hellenes,“loud as when billows lash the beetling crags.”The trailing oars beat again into the water, and even as the ships once more gained way, Themistocles nodded to Ameinias, and he to thekeleustes. The master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the sounding-board.“Aru! Aru! Aru!Put it on, my men!”TheNausicaäanswered with a leap. Men wrought at the oar butts, tugging like mad, their backs toward the foe, conscious only that duty bade them send the trireme across the waves as a stone whirls from the sling. Thus the men, but Themistocles, on the poop, standing at the captain’s and governor’s side, never took his gaze from the great Barbarian that leaped defiantly to meet them.“Can we risk the trick?”his swift question to Ameinias.The captain nodded.“With this crew—yes.”Two stadia, one stadium, half a stadium, a ship’s length, the triremes were charging prow to prow, rushing on a common death, when Ameinias clapped a whistle to his lips and blew shrilly. As one man every rower on the port-side leaped to his feet and dragged his oar inward through its row-hole. The deed was barely done ere the Sidonian was on them. They heard the roaring water round her prow, the cracking of the whips as the petty officers ran up and down the gangways urging on the panting cattle at the oars. Then almost at the shock the governor touched his steering oar. TheNausicaäswerved. The prow of the Sidonian rushed past them. A shower of darts pattered down on the deck of the Hellene, but a twinkling later from the Barbarians arose a frightful cry. Right across her triple oar bank, still in full speed, ploughed the Athenian. The Sidonian’s oars were snapping like faggots. The luckless rowers were flung from their benches in heaps. In less time than the telling every oar on the Barbarian’s port-side[pg 319]had been put out of play. Thediekplous, favourite trick of the Grecian seamen, had never been done more fairly.Now was Themistocles’s chance. He used it. There was no need for him to give orders to the oar master. Automatically every rower on the port-tiers of theNausicaähad run out his blade again. The governor sent the head of the trireme around with a grim smile locked about his grizzled lips. It was no woman’s task which lay before them. Exposing her whole broadside lay the long Sidonian; she was helpless, striving vainly to crawl away with her remaining oar banks. Her people were running to and fro, howling to Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and all their other foul gods, and stretching their hands for help to consorts too far away.“Aru! Aru! Aru!”was the shout of the oar master; again theNausicaäanswered with her leap. Straight across the narrow water she shot, the firm hand of the governor never veering now. The stroke grew faster, faster. Then with one instinct men dropped the oars, to trail in the rushing water, and seized stanchions, beams, anything to brace themselves for the shock. The crash which followed was heard on the mainland and on Salamis. The side of the Phœnician was beaten in like an egg-shell. From theNausicaä’spoop they saw her open hull reel over, saw the hundreds of upturned, frantic faces, heard the howls of agony, saw the waves leap into the gaping void.—“Back water,”thundered Ameinias,“clear the vortex, she is going down!”TheNausicaä’speople staggered to the oars. So busy were they in righting their own ship few saw the crowning horror. A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her.[pg 320]A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes.“Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!”At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging. Adeimantus was charging. Their ships and all the rest went racing to meet the foe.* * * * * * *But theNausicaähad paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In themêléeof ships which had just begun, she must play her part robbed of her keenest weapon. The sinking of the Barbarian had been met with cheers by the Hellenes, by howls of revengeful rage by the host against them. Not lightly were the Asiatics who fought beneath the eyes of the king to be daunted. They came crowding up the strait in such masses that sheer numbers hindered them, leaving no space for the play of the oars, much less for fine manœuvre. Yet for an instant it seemed as if mere weight would sweep the Hellenes back to Salamis. Then the lines of battle dissolved into confused fragments. Captains singled out an opponent and charged home desperately, unmindful how it fared elsewhere in the battle. Here an Egyptian ran down a Eubœan, there a Sicyonian grappled a Cilician and flung her boarders on to the foeman’s decks. To the onlookers the scene could have meant naught save confusion. A hundred duels, a hundred varying victories, but to which side the final glory would fall, who knew?—perchance not even Zeus.In the roaringmêléetheNausicaähad for some moments moved almost aimlessly, her men gathering breath and letting their unscathed comrades pass. Then gradually the battle drifted round them also. A Cyprian, noting they[pg 321]had lost their ram, strove to charge them bow to bow. The skill of the governor avoided that disaster. They ran under the stem of a Tyrian, and Glaucon proved he had not forgotten his skill when he sent his javelins among the officers upon the poop. A second Sidonian swept down on them, but grown wise by her consort’s destruction turned aside to lock with an Æginetan galley. How the fight at large was going, who was winning, who losing, Glaucon saw no more than any one else. An arrow grazed his arm. He first learned it when he found his armour bloody. A sling-stone smote the marine next to him on the forehead. The man dropped without a groan. Glaucon flung the body overboard, almost by instinct. Themistocles was everywhere, on the poop, on the foreship, among the rowers’ benches, shouting, laughing, cheering, ordering, standing up boldly where the arrows flew thickest, yet never hit. So for a while, till out of the confusion of ships and wrecks came darting a trireme, loftier than her peers. The railing on poop and prow was silver. The shields of the javelin-men that crowded her high fighting decks were gilded. Ten pennons whipped from her masts, and the cry of horns, tambours, and kettledrums blended with the shoutings of her crew. A partially disabled Hellene drifted across her path. She ran the luckless ship down in a twinkling. Then her bow swung. She headed toward theNausicaä.“Do you know this ship?”asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop.“A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.”“She is attacking us, Excellency,”called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling.Themistocles measured the water with his eye.[pg 322]“She will be alongside then in a moment,”was his answer,“and the beak is gone?”“Gone, and ten of our best rowers are dead.”Themistocles drew down the helmet, covering his face.“Euge!Since the choice is to grapple or fly, we had better grapple.”The governor shifted again the steering paddles. The head of theNausicaäfell away toward her attacker, but no signal was given to quicken the oars. The Barbarian, noting what her opponent did, but justly fearing the handiness of the Greeks, slackened also. The two ships drifted slowly together. Long before they closed in unfriendly contact the arrows of the Phœnician pelted over theNausicaälike hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop theprōreuslay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phœnician boarders were scrambling like cats upon her decks.“Swords, men!”called Themistocles, never less daunted than at the pinch,“up and feed them with iron!”Three times the Phœnicians poured as a flood over theNausicaä. Three times they were flung back with loss, but only to rage, call on their gods, and return with tenfold fury. Glaucon had hurled one sheaf of javelins, and tore loose another, eye and arm aiming, casting mechanically. In the lulls he saw how wind and sea were sweeping the two ships landward, until almost in arrow-shot of the rocky point where sat Xerxes and his lords. He saw the king upon his ivory throne and all his mighty men around him. He saw the scribes standing near with parchment and papyrus, inscribing the names of this or that ship which did well or[pg 323]ill in behalf of the lord of the Aryans. He saw the gaudy dresses of the eunuchs, the litters, and from them peering forth the veiled women. Did Artazostra thinknowthe Hellenes were mad fools to look her brother’s power in the face? From the shores of Attica and of Salamis, where the myriads rejoiced or wept as the scattered battle changed, the cries were rising, falling, like the throb of a tragic chorus,—a chorus of Titans, with the actors gods.“Another charge!”shouted Ameinias, through the din,“meet them briskly, lads!”Once more the hoarse Semitic war-shout, the dark-faced Asiatics dropping upon the decks, the whir of javelins, the scream of dying men, the clash of steel on steel. A frantic charge, but stoutly met. Themistocles was in the thickestmêlée. With his own spear he dashed two Tyrians overboard, as they sprang upon the poop. The band that had leaped down among the oar benches were hewn in pieces by the seamen. The remnant of the attackers recoiled in howls of despair. On the Phœnician’s decks the Greeks saw the officers laying the lash mercilessly across their men, but the disheartened creatures did not stir. Now could be seen Ariamenes, the high admiral himself, a giant warrior in his purple and gilded armour, going up and down the poop, cursing, praying, threatening,—all in vain. TheNausicaä’speople rose and cheered madly.“Enough! They have enough! Glory to Athens!”But here Ameinias gripped Themistocles’s arm. The chief turned, and all the Hellenes with him. The cheer died on their lips. A tall trireme was bearing down on them in full charge even while theNausicaädrifted. They were as helpless as the Sidonian they had sent to death. One groan broke from the Athenians.“Save, Athena! Save! It is Artemisia! The queen of Halicarnassus!”[pg 324]The heavy trireme of the amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm. The foam leaped in a cataract over her ram. The sun made fire of the tossing weapons on her prow. A yell of triumph rose from the Phœnicians. On theNausicaämen dropped sword and spear, moaned, raved, and gazed wildly on Themistocles as if he were a god possessing power to dash the death aside.“To your places, men!”rang his shout, as he faced the foe unmoved,“and die as Athenians!”Then even while men glanced up at the sun to greet Helios for the last time, there was a marvel. The threatening beak shot around. The trireme flew past them, her oars leaping madly, her people too intent on escape even to give a flight of javelins. And again the Athenians cheered.“ThePerseus! Cimon has saved us.”Not three ships’ lengths behind the Halicarnassian raced the ship of the son of Miltiades. They knew now whyArtemisiahad veered. Well she might; had she struck theNausicaädown, her own broadside would have swung defenceless to the fleet pursuer. ThePerseussped past her consort at full speed, Athenian cheering Athenian as she went.“Need you help?”called Cimon, from his poop, as Themistocles waved his sword.“None, press on, smite the Barbarian! Athena is with us!”“Athena is with us! Zeus is with us!”TheNausicaä’screw were lifted from panic to mad enthusiasm. Still above them towered the tall Phœnician, but they could have scaled Mt. Caucasus at that instant.“Onward! Up and after them,”rang Ameinias’s blast,“she is our own, we will take her under the king’s own eye.”[pg 325]The javelins and arrows were pelting from the Barbarian. The Athenians mocked the shower as they leaped the void from bulwark to bulwark. Vainly the Phœnicians strove to clear the grapples. Too firm! Their foes came on to their decks with long leaps, or here and there ran deftly on projecting spars, for what athlete of Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers’ deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phœnicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into themêlée, laying about with a mighty sword worthy of Ajax at Troy, showing he was a prince of the Aryans indeed. It took all the steadiness of Ameinias and his stoutest men to stop the rush, and save the Athenians in turn from being driven overboard. The rush was halted finally, though this was mere respite before a fiercer breaking of the storm. The two ships were drifting yet closer to the strand. Only the fear of striking their own men kept the Persians around the king from clouding the air with arrows. Glaucon saw the grandees near Xerxes’s throne brandishing their swords. In imagination he saw the monarch leaping from his throne in agony as at Thermopylæ.“Back to the charge,”pealed Ariamenes’s summons to the Tyrians;“will you be cowards and dogs beneath the very eyes of the king?”The defenders answered with a second rush. Others again hurled darts from the stern and foreship. Then out of themælstromof men and weapons came a truce. Athenian and Tyrian drew back, whilst Themistocles and Ariamenes were fighting blade to blade. Twice the giant Persian almost[pg 326]dashed the Hellene down. Twice Themistocles recovered poise, and paid back stroke for stroke. He had smitten the helmet from Ariamenes’s head and was swinging for a master-blow when his foot slipped on the bloody plank. He staggered. Before he could recover, the Persian had brought his own weapon up, and flung his might into the downward stroke.“The admiral—lost!”Athenians shuddered together, but with the groan shot a javelin. Clear through the scales of the cuirass it tore, and into the Persian’s shoulder,—Glaucon’s cast, never at the Isthmus truer with hand or eye. The ponderous blade turned, grazed the Athenian’s corselet, clattered on the deck. The Persian sprang back disarmed and powerless. At sight thereof the Phœnicians flung down their swords. True Orientals, in the fate of their chief they saw decreeing Destiny,—what use to resist it?“Yield, my Lord, yield,”called Glaucon, in Persian,“the battle is against you, and no fault of yours. Save the lives of your men.”Ariamenes gave a toss of his princely head, and with his left hand plucked the javelin from his shoulder.“A prince of the Aryans knows how to die, but not how to yield,”he cast back, and before the Athenians guessed his intent he sprang upon the bulwark. There in the sight of his king he stood and bowed his head and with his left arm made the sign of adoration.“Seize him!”shouted Ameinias, divining his intent, but too late. The Persian leaped into the water. In his heavy mail he sank like lead. The wave closed over him, as he passed forever from the sight of man.There was stillness on the Tyrian for a moment. A groan of helpless horror was rising from the Barbarians on the shore. Then the Phœnicians fell upon their knees, crying in their harsh tongue,“Quarter! Quarter!”and embracing and[pg 327]kissing the feet of the victors. Thanks to the moment of quietness given them, the Athenians’ blood had cooled a little; they gathered up the weapons cast upon the deck; there was no massacre.Themistocles mounted the poop of the captured flag-ship, and Glaucon with him. The wind was wafting them again into the centre of the channel. For the first time for many moments they were able to look about them, to ask,“How goes the battle?”Not the petty duel they had fought, but the great battle of battles which was the life-struggle of Hellas. And behold, as they gazed they pressed their hands upon their eyes and looked and looked again, for the thing they saw seemed overgood for truth. Where the great Barbarian line had been pushing up the strait, were only bands of scattered ships, and most of these turning their beaks from Salamis. The waves were strewn with wrecks, and nigh every one a Persian. And right, left, and centre the triumphant Hellenes were pressing home, ramming, grappling, capturing. Even whilst the fight raged, pinnaces were thrusting out from Salamis—Aristeides’s deed, they later heard—crowded with martial graybeards who could not look idly on while their sons fought on the ships, and who speedily landed onPsyttaleiato massacre the luckless Persians there stationed. The cheers of the Barbarians were ended now; from the shores came only a beastlike howling which drowned the pæans of the victors. As theNausicaä’speople looked, they could see the once haughty Phœnicians and Cilicians thrusting back against the land, and the thousands of footmen running down upon the shore to drag the shattered triremes up and away from the triumphant Hellenes.TheNausicaä’speople in wondering gaze stood there for a long time as if transfixed, forgetful how their ship and its prize drifted, forgetful of weariness, forgetful of wounds.[pg 328]Then as one man they turned to the poop of the captured Tyrian, and to Themistocles.Hehad done it—their admiral. He had saved Hellas under the eyes of the vaunting demigod who thought to be her destroyer. They called to Themistocles, they worshipped as if he were the Olympian himself.

Sunrise. TheNausicaäwas ready. Ameinias the navarch walked the deck above the stern-cabin with nervous strides. All that human forethought could do to prepare the ship had long been done. The slim hull one hundred and fifty feet long had been stripped of every superfluous rope and spar. The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of theNausicaäwas herself. To send the three-toothed beak through a foeman’s side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—thethranitesof the upper tier, thezygitesof the middle, thethalamitesof the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every oarsman dangled a sword, for boarders’ work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded theprōreus, Ameinias’s lieutenant,[pg 312]and with him thekeleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the“governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give theNausicaälife or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak.

“The trireme is ready, admiral,”reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.

The son of Neocles threw back his helmet, that all might see his calm, untroubled face. He wore a cuirass of silvered scale-armour over his purple chiton. At his side walked a young man, whom the ship’s people imagined the deserter of the preceding night, but he had drawn his helmet close.

“This is Critias,”said Themistocles, briefly, to the navarch;“he is a good caster. See that he has plenty of darts.”

“One of Themistocles’s secret agents,”muttered the captain to the governor,“we should have guessed it.”And they all had other things to think of than the whence and wherefore of this stranger.

It was a weary, nervous interval. Men had said everything, done everything, hoped and feared everything. They were in no mood even to invoke the gods. In desperation some jested riotously as they gripped the oars on the benches,—demonstrations which theprōreusquelled with a loud“Silence in the ship.”The morning mist was breaking. A brisk wind was coming with the sun. Clear and strong sang the Notus, the breeze of the kindly south. It covered the blue bay with crisping whitecaps, it sent the surf foaming up along the Attic shore across the strait. Themistocles watched it all with silent eyes, but eyes that spoke of gladness. He knew the waves would beat with full force on the Persian[pg 313]prows, and make their swift movement difficult while the Greeks, taking the galloping surf astern, would suffer little.

“Æolus fights for us. The first omen and a fair one.”The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced.

How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain? Now as the vapour broke, men began to be able to look about them, and be delivered from their own thoughts. The shores of Salamis were alive,—old men, women, little children,—the fugitives from Attica were crowding to the marge in thousands to watch the deed that should decide their all. And many a bronze-cheeked oarsman arose from his bench to wave farewell to the wife or father or mother, and sank back again,—a clutching in his throat, a mist before his eyes, while his grip upon the oar grew like to steel.

As theNausicaärode at her place in the long line of ships spread up and down the shore of Salamis, it was easy to detect forms if not faces on the strand. And Glaucon, peering out from his helmet bars, saw Democrates himself standing on the sands and beckoning to Themistocles. Then other figures became clear to him out of the many, this one or that whom he had loved and clasped hands with in the sunlit days gone by. And last of all he saw those his gaze hungered for the most, Hermippus, Lysistra, and another standing at their side all in white, and in her arms she bore something he knew must be her child,—Hermione’s son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only[pg 314]a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him.

“You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,”spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything.“To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.”

“No wine, for Athena’s sake!”cried the outlaw, drawing himself together,“it is passed. I am strong again.”

A great shout from the shores and the waiting fleet made him forget even the sight of Hermione.

“They come! The Persians! The Persians!”

The fleet of the Barbarians was advancing from the havens of Athens.

* * * * * * *

The sun rose higher. He was far above Hymettus now, and shooting his bright javelins over mainland, islands, and waters. With his rising the southern breeze sang ever clearer, making the narrow channel betwixt Salamis and Attica white, and tossing each trireme merrily. Not a cloud hung upon Pentelicus, Hymettus, or the purple northern range of Parnes. Over the desolate Acropolis hovered a thin mist,—smoke from the smouldering temple, the sight of which made every Attic sailor blink hard and think of the vengeance.

Yonder on the shore of the mainland the host of the Persian was moving: horsemen in gilded panoply, Hydarnes’s spearmen in armour like suns. They stood by myriads in glittering masses about a little spur of Mt. Ægaleos, where a holy close of Heracles looked out upon the sea. To them were coming more horsemen, chariots, litters, and across the strait drifted the thunderous acclamation,“Victory to the king!”For here on the ivory throne, with his mighty men, his captains, his harem, about him, the“Lord of the World”[pg 315]would look down on the battle and see how his slaves could fight.

Now the Barbarians began to move forth by sea. From the havens of Peiræus and their anchorages along the shore swept their galleys,—Phœnician, Cilician, Egyptian, and, sorrow of sorrows, Ionian—Greek arrayed against Greek! Six hundred triremes and more they were, taller in poop and prow than the Hellenes, and braver to look upon.

Each vied with each in the splendour of the scarlet, purple, and gold upon stern and foreship. Their thousands of white oars moved like the onward march of an army as they trampled down the foam. From the masts of their many admirals flew innumerable gay signal-flags. The commands shouted through trumpets in a dozen strange tongues—the shrill pipings of the oar masters, the hoarse shouts of the rowers—went up to heaven in a clamorous babel.“Swallows’ chatter,”cried the deriding Hellenes, but hearts were beating quicker, breath was coming faster in many a breast by Salamis then,—and no shame. For now was the hour of trial, the wrestle of Olympian Zeus with Ahura-Mazda. Now would a mighty one speak from the heavens to Hellas, and say to her“Die!”or“Be!”

The Barbarians’ armadas were forming. Their black beaks, all pointing toward Salamis, stretched in two bristling lines from the islet of Psyttaleia—whence the shields of the landing force glittered—to that brighter glitter on the promontory by Ægaleos where sat the king. To charge their array seemed charging a moving hedge of spears, impenetrable in defence, invincible in attack. Slowly, rocked by the sea and rowing in steady order, the armament approached Salamis. And still the Greek ships lay spread out along the shore, each trireme swinging at the end of the cable which moored her to the land, each mariner listening[pg 316]to the beatings of his own heart and straining his eyes on one ship now—Eurybiades’s—which rode at the centre of their line and far ahead.

All could read the order of battle at last as squadron lay against squadron. On the west, under Xerxes’s own eye, the Athenians must charge the serried Phœnicians, at the centre the Æginetans must face the Cilicians, on the east Adeimantus and his fellows from Peloponnese must make good against the vassal Ionians. But would the signal to row and strike never come? Had some god numbed Eurybiades’s will? Was treachery doing its darkest work? With men so highly wrought moments were precious. The bow strung too long will lose power. And wherefore did Eurybiades tarry?

Every soul in theNausicaäkept his curses soft, and waited—waited till that trailing monster, the Persian fleet, had crept halfway from Psyttaleia toward them, then up the shrouds of the Spartan admiral leaped a flag. Eager hands drew it, yet it seemed mounting as a snail, till at the masthead the clear wind blew it wide,—a plain red banner, but as it spread hundreds of axes were hewing the cables that bound the triremes to the shore, every Greek oar was biting the sea, the ships were leaping away from Salamis. From the strand a shout went up, a prayer more than a cheer, mothers, wives, little ones, calling it together:—

“Zeus prosper you!”

A roar from the fleet, the tearing of countless blades on the thole-pins answered them. Eurybiades had spoken. There was no treason. All now was in the hand of the god.

* * * * * * *

Across the strait they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging[pg 317]their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phœnicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious strokes. The grudges, the commercial rivalries between Greek and Sidonian, were old. No Persian was hotter for Xerxes’s cause than his Phœnician vassals that day.

And as they charged, the foemen’s lines seemed so dense, their ships so tall, their power so vast, that involuntarily hesitancy came over the Greeks. Their strokes slowed. The whole line lagged. Here an Æginetan galley dropped behind, yonder a Corinthian navarch suffered his men to back water. Even thekeleustesof theNausicaäslackened his beating on the sounding-board. Eurybiades’s ship had drifted behind to the line of her sisters, as in defiance a towering Sidonian sprang ahead of the Barbarian line of battle, twenty trumpets from her poop and foreship asking,“Dare you meet me?”The Greek line became almost stationary. Some ships were backing water. It was a moment which, suffered to slip unchecked, leads to irreparable disaster. Then like a god sprang Themistocles upon the capstan on his poop. He had torn off his helmet. The crews of scores of triremes saw him. His voice was like Stentor’s, the herald whose call was strong as fifty common men.

In a lull amidst the howls of the Barbarians his call rang up and down the flagging ships:—

“O Sons of Hellas! save your land,Your children save, your altars and your wives!Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”

“O Sons of Hellas! save your land,

Your children save, your altars and your wives!

Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”

“Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!”

Navarch shouted it to navarch. The cry went up and[pg 318]down the line of the Hellenes,“loud as when billows lash the beetling crags.”The trailing oars beat again into the water, and even as the ships once more gained way, Themistocles nodded to Ameinias, and he to thekeleustes. The master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the sounding-board.

“Aru! Aru! Aru!Put it on, my men!”

TheNausicaäanswered with a leap. Men wrought at the oar butts, tugging like mad, their backs toward the foe, conscious only that duty bade them send the trireme across the waves as a stone whirls from the sling. Thus the men, but Themistocles, on the poop, standing at the captain’s and governor’s side, never took his gaze from the great Barbarian that leaped defiantly to meet them.

“Can we risk the trick?”his swift question to Ameinias.

The captain nodded.“With this crew—yes.”

Two stadia, one stadium, half a stadium, a ship’s length, the triremes were charging prow to prow, rushing on a common death, when Ameinias clapped a whistle to his lips and blew shrilly. As one man every rower on the port-side leaped to his feet and dragged his oar inward through its row-hole. The deed was barely done ere the Sidonian was on them. They heard the roaring water round her prow, the cracking of the whips as the petty officers ran up and down the gangways urging on the panting cattle at the oars. Then almost at the shock the governor touched his steering oar. TheNausicaäswerved. The prow of the Sidonian rushed past them. A shower of darts pattered down on the deck of the Hellene, but a twinkling later from the Barbarians arose a frightful cry. Right across her triple oar bank, still in full speed, ploughed the Athenian. The Sidonian’s oars were snapping like faggots. The luckless rowers were flung from their benches in heaps. In less time than the telling every oar on the Barbarian’s port-side[pg 319]had been put out of play. Thediekplous, favourite trick of the Grecian seamen, had never been done more fairly.

Now was Themistocles’s chance. He used it. There was no need for him to give orders to the oar master. Automatically every rower on the port-tiers of theNausicaähad run out his blade again. The governor sent the head of the trireme around with a grim smile locked about his grizzled lips. It was no woman’s task which lay before them. Exposing her whole broadside lay the long Sidonian; she was helpless, striving vainly to crawl away with her remaining oar banks. Her people were running to and fro, howling to Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and all their other foul gods, and stretching their hands for help to consorts too far away.

“Aru! Aru! Aru!”was the shout of the oar master; again theNausicaäanswered with her leap. Straight across the narrow water she shot, the firm hand of the governor never veering now. The stroke grew faster, faster. Then with one instinct men dropped the oars, to trail in the rushing water, and seized stanchions, beams, anything to brace themselves for the shock. The crash which followed was heard on the mainland and on Salamis. The side of the Phœnician was beaten in like an egg-shell. From theNausicaä’spoop they saw her open hull reel over, saw the hundreds of upturned, frantic faces, heard the howls of agony, saw the waves leap into the gaping void.—

“Back water,”thundered Ameinias,“clear the vortex, she is going down!”

TheNausicaä’speople staggered to the oars. So busy were they in righting their own ship few saw the crowning horror. A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her.

A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes.“Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!”

At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging. Adeimantus was charging. Their ships and all the rest went racing to meet the foe.

* * * * * * *

But theNausicaähad paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In themêléeof ships which had just begun, she must play her part robbed of her keenest weapon. The sinking of the Barbarian had been met with cheers by the Hellenes, by howls of revengeful rage by the host against them. Not lightly were the Asiatics who fought beneath the eyes of the king to be daunted. They came crowding up the strait in such masses that sheer numbers hindered them, leaving no space for the play of the oars, much less for fine manœuvre. Yet for an instant it seemed as if mere weight would sweep the Hellenes back to Salamis. Then the lines of battle dissolved into confused fragments. Captains singled out an opponent and charged home desperately, unmindful how it fared elsewhere in the battle. Here an Egyptian ran down a Eubœan, there a Sicyonian grappled a Cilician and flung her boarders on to the foeman’s decks. To the onlookers the scene could have meant naught save confusion. A hundred duels, a hundred varying victories, but to which side the final glory would fall, who knew?—perchance not even Zeus.

In the roaringmêléetheNausicaähad for some moments moved almost aimlessly, her men gathering breath and letting their unscathed comrades pass. Then gradually the battle drifted round them also. A Cyprian, noting they[pg 321]had lost their ram, strove to charge them bow to bow. The skill of the governor avoided that disaster. They ran under the stem of a Tyrian, and Glaucon proved he had not forgotten his skill when he sent his javelins among the officers upon the poop. A second Sidonian swept down on them, but grown wise by her consort’s destruction turned aside to lock with an Æginetan galley. How the fight at large was going, who was winning, who losing, Glaucon saw no more than any one else. An arrow grazed his arm. He first learned it when he found his armour bloody. A sling-stone smote the marine next to him on the forehead. The man dropped without a groan. Glaucon flung the body overboard, almost by instinct. Themistocles was everywhere, on the poop, on the foreship, among the rowers’ benches, shouting, laughing, cheering, ordering, standing up boldly where the arrows flew thickest, yet never hit. So for a while, till out of the confusion of ships and wrecks came darting a trireme, loftier than her peers. The railing on poop and prow was silver. The shields of the javelin-men that crowded her high fighting decks were gilded. Ten pennons whipped from her masts, and the cry of horns, tambours, and kettledrums blended with the shoutings of her crew. A partially disabled Hellene drifted across her path. She ran the luckless ship down in a twinkling. Then her bow swung. She headed toward theNausicaä.

“Do you know this ship?”asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop.

“A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.”

“She is attacking us, Excellency,”called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling.

Themistocles measured the water with his eye.

“She will be alongside then in a moment,”was his answer,“and the beak is gone?”

“Gone, and ten of our best rowers are dead.”

Themistocles drew down the helmet, covering his face.

“Euge!Since the choice is to grapple or fly, we had better grapple.”

The governor shifted again the steering paddles. The head of theNausicaäfell away toward her attacker, but no signal was given to quicken the oars. The Barbarian, noting what her opponent did, but justly fearing the handiness of the Greeks, slackened also. The two ships drifted slowly together. Long before they closed in unfriendly contact the arrows of the Phœnician pelted over theNausicaälike hail. Rowers fell as they sat on the upper benches; on the poop theprōreuslay with half his men. Glaucon never counted how many missiles dinted his helmet and buckler. The next instant the two ships were drifting without steerage-way. The grappling-irons dashed down upon the Athenian, and simultaneously the brown Phœnician boarders were scrambling like cats upon her decks.

“Swords, men!”called Themistocles, never less daunted than at the pinch,“up and feed them with iron!”

Three times the Phœnicians poured as a flood over theNausicaä. Three times they were flung back with loss, but only to rage, call on their gods, and return with tenfold fury. Glaucon had hurled one sheaf of javelins, and tore loose another, eye and arm aiming, casting mechanically. In the lulls he saw how wind and sea were sweeping the two ships landward, until almost in arrow-shot of the rocky point where sat Xerxes and his lords. He saw the king upon his ivory throne and all his mighty men around him. He saw the scribes standing near with parchment and papyrus, inscribing the names of this or that ship which did well or[pg 323]ill in behalf of the lord of the Aryans. He saw the gaudy dresses of the eunuchs, the litters, and from them peering forth the veiled women. Did Artazostra thinknowthe Hellenes were mad fools to look her brother’s power in the face? From the shores of Attica and of Salamis, where the myriads rejoiced or wept as the scattered battle changed, the cries were rising, falling, like the throb of a tragic chorus,—a chorus of Titans, with the actors gods.

“Another charge!”shouted Ameinias, through the din,“meet them briskly, lads!”

Once more the hoarse Semitic war-shout, the dark-faced Asiatics dropping upon the decks, the whir of javelins, the scream of dying men, the clash of steel on steel. A frantic charge, but stoutly met. Themistocles was in the thickestmêlée. With his own spear he dashed two Tyrians overboard, as they sprang upon the poop. The band that had leaped down among the oar benches were hewn in pieces by the seamen. The remnant of the attackers recoiled in howls of despair. On the Phœnician’s decks the Greeks saw the officers laying the lash mercilessly across their men, but the disheartened creatures did not stir. Now could be seen Ariamenes, the high admiral himself, a giant warrior in his purple and gilded armour, going up and down the poop, cursing, praying, threatening,—all in vain. TheNausicaä’speople rose and cheered madly.

“Enough! They have enough! Glory to Athens!”

But here Ameinias gripped Themistocles’s arm. The chief turned, and all the Hellenes with him. The cheer died on their lips. A tall trireme was bearing down on them in full charge even while theNausicaädrifted. They were as helpless as the Sidonian they had sent to death. One groan broke from the Athenians.

“Save, Athena! Save! It is Artemisia! The queen of Halicarnassus!”

The heavy trireme of the amazon princess was a magnificent sight as they looked on her. Her oars flew in a flashing rhythm. The foam leaped in a cataract over her ram. The sun made fire of the tossing weapons on her prow. A yell of triumph rose from the Phœnicians. On theNausicaämen dropped sword and spear, moaned, raved, and gazed wildly on Themistocles as if he were a god possessing power to dash the death aside.

“To your places, men!”rang his shout, as he faced the foe unmoved,“and die as Athenians!”

Then even while men glanced up at the sun to greet Helios for the last time, there was a marvel. The threatening beak shot around. The trireme flew past them, her oars leaping madly, her people too intent on escape even to give a flight of javelins. And again the Athenians cheered.

“ThePerseus! Cimon has saved us.”

Not three ships’ lengths behind the Halicarnassian raced the ship of the son of Miltiades. They knew now whyArtemisiahad veered. Well she might; had she struck theNausicaädown, her own broadside would have swung defenceless to the fleet pursuer. ThePerseussped past her consort at full speed, Athenian cheering Athenian as she went.

“Need you help?”called Cimon, from his poop, as Themistocles waved his sword.

“None, press on, smite the Barbarian! Athena is with us!”

“Athena is with us! Zeus is with us!”

TheNausicaä’screw were lifted from panic to mad enthusiasm. Still above them towered the tall Phœnician, but they could have scaled Mt. Caucasus at that instant.

“Onward! Up and after them,”rang Ameinias’s blast,“she is our own, we will take her under the king’s own eye.”

The javelins and arrows were pelting from the Barbarian. The Athenians mocked the shower as they leaped the void from bulwark to bulwark. Vainly the Phœnicians strove to clear the grapples. Too firm! Their foes came on to their decks with long leaps, or here and there ran deftly on projecting spars, for what athlete of Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers’ deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phœnicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into themêlée, laying about with a mighty sword worthy of Ajax at Troy, showing he was a prince of the Aryans indeed. It took all the steadiness of Ameinias and his stoutest men to stop the rush, and save the Athenians in turn from being driven overboard. The rush was halted finally, though this was mere respite before a fiercer breaking of the storm. The two ships were drifting yet closer to the strand. Only the fear of striking their own men kept the Persians around the king from clouding the air with arrows. Glaucon saw the grandees near Xerxes’s throne brandishing their swords. In imagination he saw the monarch leaping from his throne in agony as at Thermopylæ.

“Back to the charge,”pealed Ariamenes’s summons to the Tyrians;“will you be cowards and dogs beneath the very eyes of the king?”

The defenders answered with a second rush. Others again hurled darts from the stern and foreship. Then out of themælstromof men and weapons came a truce. Athenian and Tyrian drew back, whilst Themistocles and Ariamenes were fighting blade to blade. Twice the giant Persian almost[pg 326]dashed the Hellene down. Twice Themistocles recovered poise, and paid back stroke for stroke. He had smitten the helmet from Ariamenes’s head and was swinging for a master-blow when his foot slipped on the bloody plank. He staggered. Before he could recover, the Persian had brought his own weapon up, and flung his might into the downward stroke.

“The admiral—lost!”Athenians shuddered together, but with the groan shot a javelin. Clear through the scales of the cuirass it tore, and into the Persian’s shoulder,—Glaucon’s cast, never at the Isthmus truer with hand or eye. The ponderous blade turned, grazed the Athenian’s corselet, clattered on the deck. The Persian sprang back disarmed and powerless. At sight thereof the Phœnicians flung down their swords. True Orientals, in the fate of their chief they saw decreeing Destiny,—what use to resist it?

“Yield, my Lord, yield,”called Glaucon, in Persian,“the battle is against you, and no fault of yours. Save the lives of your men.”

Ariamenes gave a toss of his princely head, and with his left hand plucked the javelin from his shoulder.

“A prince of the Aryans knows how to die, but not how to yield,”he cast back, and before the Athenians guessed his intent he sprang upon the bulwark. There in the sight of his king he stood and bowed his head and with his left arm made the sign of adoration.

“Seize him!”shouted Ameinias, divining his intent, but too late. The Persian leaped into the water. In his heavy mail he sank like lead. The wave closed over him, as he passed forever from the sight of man.

There was stillness on the Tyrian for a moment. A groan of helpless horror was rising from the Barbarians on the shore. Then the Phœnicians fell upon their knees, crying in their harsh tongue,“Quarter! Quarter!”and embracing and[pg 327]kissing the feet of the victors. Thanks to the moment of quietness given them, the Athenians’ blood had cooled a little; they gathered up the weapons cast upon the deck; there was no massacre.

Themistocles mounted the poop of the captured flag-ship, and Glaucon with him. The wind was wafting them again into the centre of the channel. For the first time for many moments they were able to look about them, to ask,“How goes the battle?”Not the petty duel they had fought, but the great battle of battles which was the life-struggle of Hellas. And behold, as they gazed they pressed their hands upon their eyes and looked and looked again, for the thing they saw seemed overgood for truth. Where the great Barbarian line had been pushing up the strait, were only bands of scattered ships, and most of these turning their beaks from Salamis. The waves were strewn with wrecks, and nigh every one a Persian. And right, left, and centre the triumphant Hellenes were pressing home, ramming, grappling, capturing. Even whilst the fight raged, pinnaces were thrusting out from Salamis—Aristeides’s deed, they later heard—crowded with martial graybeards who could not look idly on while their sons fought on the ships, and who speedily landed onPsyttaleiato massacre the luckless Persians there stationed. The cheers of the Barbarians were ended now; from the shores came only a beastlike howling which drowned the pæans of the victors. As theNausicaä’speople looked, they could see the once haughty Phœnicians and Cilicians thrusting back against the land, and the thousands of footmen running down upon the shore to drag the shattered triremes up and away from the triumphant Hellenes.

TheNausicaä’speople in wondering gaze stood there for a long time as if transfixed, forgetful how their ship and its prize drifted, forgetful of weariness, forgetful of wounds.[pg 328]Then as one man they turned to the poop of the captured Tyrian, and to Themistocles.Hehad done it—their admiral. He had saved Hellas under the eyes of the vaunting demigod who thought to be her destroyer. They called to Themistocles, they worshipped as if he were the Olympian himself.

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