A Victor of Salamis
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 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 the
_Nausicaä_. 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!”
CHAPTER XXIX
SALAMIS
Sunrise. The _Nausicaä_ was 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 the _Nausicaä_ was 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,—the
_thranites_ of the upper tier, the _zygites_ of the middle, the
_thalamites_ of 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 the _prōreus_, Ameinias’s lieutenant, and with him
the _keleustes_, 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 the _Nausicaä_ life 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 the _prōreus_ quelled 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 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 the _Nausicaä_ rode 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 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” 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