A Victor of Salamis
recoiled in horror at his fellow-citizen’s plight.
“Infernal gods! You a prisoner here? Where is this cursed vessel from?”
“From Trœzene,” gasped the refugee; “if you love Athens and Hellas—”
He turned just in time to fling an arm about Hiram, who—carelessly
guarded—was gliding down the hatchway.
“Seize that viper, bind, torture; he knows all. Make him tell or Hellas is
lost!”
“Control yourself, friend,” adjured Cimon, sorely perplexed, while Hiram
struggled and began tugging out a crooked knife, before two brawny seamen
nipped him fast and disarmed.
“Ah! you carrion meat,” shouted Phormio, shaking his fists under the
helpless creature’s nose. “Honest men have their day at last. There’s a
gay hour coming before Zeus claps the lid over you in Tartarus.”
“Peace,” commanded the navarch, who betwixt Phormio’s shouts, Lampaxo’s
howls, and Hiram’s moans was at his wit’s end. “Has no one on this ship
kept aboard his senses?”
“If you will be so good, sir captain,” the third Hellene at last broke his
silence, “you will hearken to me.”
“Who are you?”
“The _prōreus_ of the _Alcyone_ of Melos. More of myself hereafter. But if
you love the weal of Hellas, demand of this Hiram where he concealed the
treasonable despatches he received at Trœzene and now has aboard.”
“Hiram? O Lord Apollo, I recognize the snake! The one that was always
gliding around Lycon at the Isthmus. If despatches he has, I know the way
to get them. Now, black-hearted Cyclops,”—Cimon’s tone was not
gentle,—“where are your papers?”
Hiram had turned gray as a corpse, but his white teeth came together.
“Phormio is mistaken. Your slave has none.”
“Bah!” threw out Cimon, “I can smell your lies like garlic. Silent still?
Good, see how I am better than Asclepius. I make the dumb talk by a
miracle. A cord and belaying-pin, Naon.”
The seaman addressed passed a cord about the Phœnician’s forehead with a
fearful dexterity, and put the iron pin at the back of the skull.
“Twist!” commanded Cimon. Two mariners gripped the victim’s arms. Naon
pressed the cord tighter, tighter. A beastlike groan came through the lips
of the Phœnician. His beady eyes started from his head, but he did not
speak.
“Again,” thundered the navarch, and as the cord stretched a howl of mortal
agony escaped the prisoner.
“Pity! Mercy! My head bursts. I will tell!”
“Tell quick, or we’ll squeeze your brains out. Relax a little, Naon.”
“In the boat mast.” Hiram spit the words out one by one. “In the cabin.
There is a peg. Pull it out. The mast is hollowed. You will find the
papers. Woe! woe! cursed the day I was born. Cursed my mother for bearing
me.”
The miserable creature fell to the deck, pressing his hands to his temples
and moaning in agony. No one heeded him now. Cimon himself ran below to
the mast, and wrenched the peg from its socket. Papyrus sheets were there,
rolled compactly, covered with writing and sealed. The navarch turned over
the packet curiously, then to the amazement of the sailors seemed to
stagger against the mast. He was as pale as Hiram. He thrust the packet
into the hands of his _prōreus_, who stood near.
“What make you of this seal? As you fear Athena, tell the truth.”
“You need not adjure me so, captain. The device is simple: Theseus slaying
the Minotaur.”
“And who, in Zeus’s name, do you know in Athens who uses a seal like
that?”
Silence for a moment, then the _prōreus_ himself was pale.
“Your Excellency does not mean—”
“Democrates!” cried the trembling navarch.
“And why not Democrates?” The words came from the released prisoner, who
had been so silent, but who had glided down and stood at Cimon’s elbow. He
spoke in a changed voice now; again the navarch was startled.
“Is Themistocles on the _Nausicaä_?” asked the stranger, whilst Cimon
gazed on him spellbound, asking if he himself were growing mad.
“Yes—but your voice, your face, your manner—my head is dizzy.”
The stranger touched him gently on the hand.
“Have I so changed, you quite forget me, Cimon?”
The son of Miltiades was a strong man. He had looked on Hiram’s tortures
with a laugh. To his own death he would have gone with no eyelash
trembling. But now the rest saw him blench; then with a cry, at once of
wonder and inexpressible joy, his arms closed round the tattered outlaw’s
neck. Treason or no treason—what matter! He forgot all save that before
him was his long-time comrade.
“My friend! My boyhood’s friend!” and so for many times they kissed.
The _Nausicaä_ had followed the chase at easy distance, ready with aid in
case the _Bozra_ resisted. Themistocles was in his cabin with Simonides,
when Cimon and Glaucon came to him. The admiral heard his young navarch’s
report, then took the unopened packet and requested Cimon and the poet to
withdraw. As their feet sounded on the ladder in the companionway,
Themistocles turned on the outlaw, it seemed, fiercely.
“Tell your story.”
Glaucon told it: the encounter on the hillside at Trœzene, the seizure in
Phormio’s house, the coming of Democrates and his boasts over the
captives, the voyage and the pursuing. The son of Neocles never hastened
the recital, though once or twice he widened it by an incisive question.
At the end he demanded:—
“And does Phormio confirm all this?”
“All. Question him.”
“Humph! He’s a truthful man in everything save the price of fish. Now let
us open the packet.”
Themistocles was exceeding deliberate. He drew his dagger and pried the
wrapper open without breaking the seals or tearing the papyrus. He turned
the strips of paper carefully one by one, opened a casket, and drew thence
a written sheet which he compared painfully with those before him.
“The same hand,” his remark in undertone.
He was so calm that a stranger would have thought him engaged with routine
business. Many of the sheets he simply lifted, glanced at, laid down
again. They did not seem to interest. So through half the roll, but the
outlaw, watching patiently, at last saw he eyebrows of the son of Neocles
pressing ever closer,—sign that the inscrutable brain was at its fateful
work.
At last he uttered one word, “Cipher.”
A sheet lay before him covered with broken words and phrases—seemingly
without meaning—but the admiral knew the secret of the Spartan _scytalē_,
the “cipher wood.” Forth from his casket came a number of rounded sticks
of varying lengths. On one after another he wound the sheet spirally until
at the fifth trial the scattered words came together. He read with ease.
Then Themistocles’s brows grew closer than before. He muttered softly in
his beard. But still he said nothing aloud. He read the cipher sheet
through once, twice; it seemed thrice. Other sheets he fingered
delicately, as though he feared the touch of venom. All without haste, but
at the end, when Themistocles arose from his seat, the outlaw trembled.
Many things he had seen, but never a face so changed. The admiral was
neither flushed nor pale. But ten years seemed added to those lines above
his eyes. His cheeks were hollowed. Was it fancy that put the gray into
his beard and hair? Slowly he rose; slowly he ordered the marine on guard
outside the cabin to summon Simonides, Cimon, and all the officers of the
flag-ship. They trooped hither and filled the narrow cabin—fifteen or more
hale, handsome Athenians, intent on the orders of the admiral. Were they
to dash at once for Samos and surprise the Persian? Or what other
adventure waited? The breeze had died. The gray breast of the Ægean rocked
the _Nausicaä_ softly. The thranites of the upper oar bank were alone on
the benches, and stroking the great trireme along to a singsong chant
about Amphitrite and the Tritons. On the poop above two sailors were
grumbling lest the penteconter’s people get all the booty of the _Bozra_.
Glaucon heard their grunts and complainings whilst he looked on
Themistocles’s awful face.
The officers ranged themselves and saluted stiffly. Themistocles stood
before them, his hands closed over the packet. The first time he started
to speak his lips closed desperately. The silence grew awkward. Then the
admiral gave his head a toss, and drew his form together as a runner
before a race.
“Democrates is a traitor. Unless Athena shows us mercy, Hellas is lost.”
“Democrates is a traitor!”
The cry from the startled men rang through the ship. The rowers ceased
their chant and their stroking. Themistocles beckoned angrily for silence.
“I did not call you down to wail and groan.” He never raised his voice;
his calmness made him terrible. But now the questions broke loose as a
flood.
“When? How? Declare.”
“Peace, men of Athens; you conquered the Persian at Salamis, conquer now
yourselves. Harken to this cipher. Then to our task and prove our comrades
did not die in vain.”
Yet despite him men wept on one another’s shoulders as became true
Hellenes, whilst Themistocles, whose inexorable face never relaxed,
rewound the papyrus on the cipher stick and read in hard voice the words
of doom.
“This is the letter secreted on the Carthaginian. The hand is
Democrates’s, the seals are his. Give ear.
“Democrates the Athenian to Tigranes, commander of the hosts of Xerxes on
the coasts of Asia, greeting:—Understand, dear Persian, that Lycon and I
as well as the other friends of the king among the Hellenes are prepared
to bring all things to pass in a way right pleasing to your master. Even
now I depart from Trœzene to join the army of the allied Hellenes in
Bœotia, and, the gods helping, we cannot fail. Lycon and I will contrive
to separate the Athenians and Spartans from their other allies, to force
them to give battle, and at the crisis cause the divisions under our
personal commands to retire, breaking the phalanx and making Mardonius’s
victory certain.
“For your part, excellent Tigranes, you must avoid the Hellenic ships at
Delos and come back to Mardonius with your fleet ready to second him at
once after his victory, which will be speedy; then with your aid he can
readily turn the wall at the Isthmus. I send also letters written, as it
were, in the hand of Themistocles. See that they fall into the hands of
the other Greek admirals. They will breed more hurt amongst the Hellenes
than you can accomplish with all your ships. I send, likewise, lists of
such Athenians and Spartans as are friendly to his Majesty, also memoranda
of such secret plans of the Greeks as have come to my knowledge.
“From Trœzene, given into the hands of Hiram on the second of
Metageitnion, in the archonship of Xanthippus. _Chaire!_”
Themistocles ceased. No man spoke a word. It was as if a god had flung a
bolt from heaven. What use to cry against it? Then, in an ominously low
voice, Simonides asked a question.
“What are these letters which purport to come from your pen,
Themistocles?”
The admiral unrolled another papyrus, and as he looked thereon his fine
face contracted with loathing.
“Let another read. I am made to pour contempt and ridicule upon my
fellow-captains. I am made to boast ‘when the war ends, I will be tyrant
of Athens.’ A thousand follies and wickednesses are put in my mouth. Were
this letter true, I were the vilest wretch escaping Orcus. Since forged—”
his hands clinched—“by that man, that man whom I have trusted, loved,
cherished, called ‘younger brother,’ ‘oldest son’—” He spat in rising fury
and was still.
“ ‘Fain would I grip his liver in my teeth,’ ” cried the little poet, even
in storm and stress not forgetting his Homer. And the howl from the
man-of-war’s men was as the howl of beasts desiring their prey. But the
admiral’s burst of anger ended. He stood again an image of calm power. The
voice that had charmed the thousands rang forth in its strength and
sweetness.