They saw that he held his flints in his hands and that a tiny blaze was flickering up from a heap of rushes which he had crushed into a tinder-like mass.
They understood his plan and hope returned to them. Like madmen, they trampled the reeds to the right and left. A puff of wind came through and caught the darting tongue of fire. It leaped upward so suddenly that the Spartan's hair was singed before he had time to draw back. In an instant, it seemed, a sheet of flame flung itself into the air above the reed-tops, casting off a thin swirl of bluish smoke. With incredible swiftness the fire swept from them straight down upon their pursuers, leaving behind it a rapidly widening wake of black.
"Scatter it!" cried Leonidas, seizing the blazing reeds and throwing them in every direction. The others followed his example, spreading the fire as far as they could to the right and left so as to make it impossible for the Persians to evade it by avoiding its path.
As soon as the barbarians saw the first smoke, they halted, hesitated for a moment, and then turned wildly back in the hope of escaping by the way they had come. The Greeks had taken a position on the charred ground, where they themselves were safe from the flames, and were awaiting the result, sword in hand.
The conflagration, as it gathered headway, seemed to become a monster animated by a living spirit. One broad sheet of flame swept high into the air, roaring like a hungry beast, and throwing up clouds of smoke that hid the southern sky. With deadly swiftness it devoured the lake of reeds before it, leaving behind a bare and level plain of ashes from which here and there rose smoky spirals. It seemed to create a scorching gale stronger even than the wind that had fanned it into life. It rushed forward by great leaps and bounds, pausing now and then over some especially tempting thicket of reeds, and then starting up far in advance.
In vain the three young men tried to learn what had become of the pursuers upon whom Leonidas had let loose their terrible ally. Grasping their swords, they stood back to back amid the drifting smoke, striving to look beyond the flaming wall. The wave of fire reached the slope from which they had fled, lingered there for a few moments, and then vanished as quickly almost as it had sprung into existence. The smoke blew away over the uplands in a bellying cloud. Gazing through its rifts, they could see nothing of the Persians. They seemed to have disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed them.
"Where are they?" exclaimed Clearchus in bewilderment.
"They must have escaped," Leonidas replied.
"No, by Zeus, I see them!" Chares cried, pointing to a group of blackened mounds about halfway from where they stood to the edge of the marsh.
One of the mounds stirred as he spoke, and they saw that he was right. It was one of the horses. The animal tried to raise itself on its fore legs, gave a scream of agony, and fell back among the cinders.