For thou hadst also an Endymion.
Astarte! Dian! Tanith! Artemis!
Whate’er men name thee in thy mystic might,
With sacrifice and songs I worship thee:
So grant, O Moon! the bliss
Of feeling in my heart the pure delight,
Which tells my love is coming back to me.
Evidently Alcibiades had but little stomach for midnight fighting, for he made no attempt to storm the pass under the cover of darkness, and was apparently making preparations to begin the fight at the first flush of the dawn. In thus deciding, he was wiser than he knew, for many of his men had been killed in the tunnel by their own friends, owing to the confusion which prevailed during the retreat down the staircase. Moreover, with the electric light showing the position of the enemy to the defenders, and dazzling their eyesight when they advanced to the attack, there was nothing to be gained by a night sortie, and Alcibiades thought it best to storm the pass by day, so that he, at least in the matter of light, might have the same advantage as Justinian.
All day long, the Demarch and his nephew posted themselves on the heights above the gorge, and from their vantage, with the aid of strong field-glasses, saw the preparations which were being made for the final attack. Alcibiades, with more military precision than of yore, had divided his two hundred men into two bodies, one of which was commanded by himself and the other by Count Caliphronas. Under these two leaders were four other commanders responsible for fifty troops each, but these deferred to Caliphronas and Alcibiades, while the Count in his turn took his orders from the old pirate as the supreme head of the whole army.
Without doubt, Alcibiades desired to attack the island in two separate places, for he knew, thanks to the treachery of Caliphronas, that Justinian’s force was too few in numbers to admit of division, and thus, while the one body was attacking the palisade in the gorge, the other could get at the rear of the Melnosians by another way. Unfortunately for this daring scheme, the cliffs on either side of the pass were perfectly inaccessible, as they arose smooth and arid from the beach to the height of two hundred feet, and as the besiegers had not wings, they could scarcely hope to climb up these sterile steeps, which would not have afforded foothold even for a goat. The only path available for this plan was perfectly well known to Caliphronas, but, unluckily for the besiegers, was inside the outer palisade, from whence it wound up to the heights where the Demarch and his nephew were seated, and from thence went through the altar glade, down to the back of the Acropolis.