A Victor of Salamis
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 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 the _Nausicaä_ kept 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 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 the _keleustes_ of the _Nausicaä_ slackened 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 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 the _keleustes_. The
master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the
sounding-board.
“_Aru! Aru! Aru!_ Put it on, my men!”
The _Nausicaä_ answered 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. The _Nausicaä_ swerved. 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 had been put out of play. The _diekplous_, 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 the _Nausicaä_ had 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 the _Nausicaä_
answered 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
the _Nausicaä’s_ poop 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!”
The _Nausicaä’s_ people 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 the _Nausicaä_ had paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the
triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In the _mêlée_ of
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 roaring _mêlée_ the _Nausicaä_ had 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 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 the _Nausicaä_.
“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.