[CHAPTER XXIX.]
AT DELOS.
CLEANOR gladly accepted the warm invitation of the young Scipio again to become his guest. For the present the Greek's plans were uncertain. His most definite idea was to follow Theoxena and her daughter to Italy as soon as possible. It had been arranged that the two women should depart on the following day. He would have to look for his own passage to the favour of the general; all that he could do, therefore, was to hold himself in readiness to depart as soon as the opportunity should offer.
The day was not to pass, however, without giving quite a new aspect to the future. The two friends had been exchanging experiences, and were just thinking of sleep,—when Polybius entered the tent. After greeting Cleanor—whom he had not seen since they had parted in Egypt—in the kindest way, not, however, without a smiling rebuke for the trick which he had played, he explained his errand.
"I am going," he said, "as soon as is possible to Greece, where things are in a critical condition, and I want you to go with me. I come direct from the general, who has put a ship of war at my service, and who fully approves of your accompanying me. I was, he said, to tell you this from him. He also gave me another message for you. He wants you to give what help you can in the translation of this great book on Agriculture. There will be a committee appointed to carry it out, and you are to be on it if it pleases you. But that will wait, anyhow for a few months. The affair in Greece will not wait; the sooner we get there the better, if we are to do any good."
Nothing could have been more to Cleanor's mind than this proposal, and he promised to be ready to depart as soon as he was wanted. Accordingly the very next day, after bidding Theoxena and her daughter an affectionate farewell in the morning, he himself embarked about sunset with Polybius. For some time the voyage was fairly prosperous, if not very rapid. The wind came mostly from the north, with a touch of east in it. The ship had but a poor crew of rowers, and its sailing capacities were small. If the wind had more than one point from the east the sails had to be hauled down and the oars resorted to.
On the tenth day there came a change in the weather. The wind shifted suddenly to the south-west. This change was at first hailed with delight by everyone on board; by the rowers, who were rejoiced to be set free from their toil, by the passengers, who were beginning to be impatient of their tedious progress. But a wind from the south-west has always something dangerous about it. At daybreak a steady breeze, it grew before night into something like a gale, and it was accompanied by weather so thick that, failing any observation of either sun or stars, the captain lost his reckoning entirely.
After two days of this alarming uncertainty the weather cleared only just in time, as everyone on board saw plainly enough, to save the ship from a catastrophe. About three miles to the north the cliffs of Malia[58] could be seen, crowned by the famous temple of Apollo, whose gilded roof showed itself when it was touched, from time to time, by some passing gleam of sunshine. On their right the cliffs of Cythera were visible. This was satisfactory in a way, but the plan of the voyage, which was to make for the western end of the Corinthian Gulf, had failed. The wind was blowing far too strongly to allow the captain to attempt a north-western course. He had, therefore, no alternative but to let it carry him up the Ægean. What had been lost was the safe and easy passage up the quiet landlocked waters of the gulf, and with it the certainty of reaching Corinth at or near the appointed time.
After a few hours the weather again changed for the worse. The clouds came lower, the wind rose. When night came all that the captain and the crew knew of their whereabouts was that they were not far from Melos, of which they had just caught a glimpse, in dangerous proximity, on their larboard bow. Melos, they knew, was not by any means on their straight course to Corinth. They were, indeed, being blown out of this more and more as time went on. The best they could hope for was that they might not be dashed on one of the rugged and inhospitable islands and islets with which the south-western Ægean was so thickly studded.
All night they scudded before the wind under one small sail, just enough to give some steering power to the rudder. More than once they heard the crash of unseen breakers on some unseen shore, and turned their course away from the warning sound. With the morning came another welcome change of weather. The wind dropped almost instantaneously; the sky cleared till not a cloud could be seen, and the sea, though the long rollers witnessed to its recent agitation, settled rapidly into calm.
About two miles to the north, yet seen so distinctly through the clear atmosphere of early spring that it seemed almost within a stone's-throw, lay a small island which Cleanor recognized at the first glance. Only one place in the world brought together so closely, within so small a space yet on a scale so magnificent, the two great elements of Greek life, commerce and religion. On the low-lying land of the west coast was to be seen the town of Delos, with its thickly-clustered dwellings. Almost, as it seemed, among these rose a forest of masts, for Delos was a mart of exchange for the trade of the Mediterranean, and the trade of the Mediterranean was practically the trade of the civilized world. Close behind the town, in all the splendour of its white Parian marble, rose the famous temple of the tutelary god of the isle, Phœbus Apollo, while nestling beside it were the smaller shrines of his twin sister Phœbe or Artemis and of Aphrodite. Behind these again was the hill of Cynthus, its steep declivity clothed with trees, among which gleamed here and there the white shining walls of buildings both sacred and secular.