"Zeus grant that they may succeed!" cried Artemisia.
Some of the stones struck the ship, scattering her load of combustibles; but they failed to check her approach. The best marksmen in the army strove to pick off her crew. The divers raised shields, from which the arrows harmlessly rebounded.
When the ship had come within a few fathoms of the mole, the men on board of her scattered blazing oil into the caldrons swinging from her yards and thrust their torches into the heaps of material that lay upon her deck. Then they plunged into the sea and swam back to the city. The steersman followed, and the next instant the transport, sending before her a roaring banner of flame, ran high upon the mole at the foot of the northern tower.
A mighty shout arose from the walls of Tyre as the spectators saw the flames wrap themselves around the tower, shrivelling up the green skins of cattle that had been hung to protect it. The soldiers swarmed down through the smoke and fire like rats, leaping from the lower stories in their haste. In a moment the lofty structure was sending out red tongues from every loophole and window. A great cloud of black smoke rolled from the end of the mole toward the shore.
Thais and Artemisia saw the Greeks driven back from the towers and from the defences which had protected the work. Presently the fire attacked these and ran across to the second tower. The transport still lay with her nose in the rocks, belching flames that were streaked with green and blue and white as they fed upon the various substances which had been stored in her hull.
Dashing down from the windward side, the Tyrian vessels tore away such of the work as had escaped the conflagration, while the bowmen on their decks sent flights of arrows upon the huddled workmen who had been forced back by the heat and smoke. The towers fell one after the other with a crash into the sea, which hissed into steam as the glowing timbers sank. In an hour nothing was left at the end of the causeway but the blackened ruin and part of the transport, through whose ribs the waves washed.
"The time is at hand," Phradates said to Thais, with a smile full of meaning.
"Not yet," she exclaimed, smiling. "The siege has only begun. I told you you did not know Alexander."
Nevertheless, secretly her heart was full of misgivings, and the slave women who waited upon her that night found her hard to please.