“I will provide for her. Leap!”
Glaucon lifted the woman in his arms. He took a manner of pride in showing the Barbarian his skill. The man looked at him once, saw he could be trusted, and took the leap. He landed in the water, but caught the sail-cloth drifting from the mast, climbed beside it, and sat astride. The Athenian sprang at the next favoring wave. His burden made the task hard, but his stadium training never stood in better stead. The cold water closed around him. The wave dragged down in its black abyss, but he struck boldly [pg 158]upward, was beside the friendly spar, and the Barbarian aided him to mount beside him, then cut the lashings to the Solon with the dagger that still dangled at his belt. The billows swept them away just as the wreck reared wildly, and bow foremost plunged into the deep. They bound the woman—she was hardly conscious now—into the little shelter formed by the junction of the broken sail-yard and the mast. The two men sat beside her, shielding her with their bodies from the beat of the spray. Speech was all but impossible. They were fain to close their eyes and pray to be delivered from the unceasing screaming of the wind, the howling of the waters. And so for hours....
Glaucon never knew how long they thus drifted. The Solon had been smitten very early in the morning. She had foundered perhaps at noon. It may have been shortly before sunset—though Helios never pierced the clouds that storm-racked day—when Glaucon knew that the Barbarian was speaking to him.
“Look!” The wind had lulled a little; the man could make himself heard. “What is it?”
Through the masses of gray spray and driving mist Glaucon gazed when the next long wave tossed them. A glimpse,—but the joys of Olympus seemed given with that sight; wind-swept, wave-beaten, rock-bound, that half-seen ridge of brown was land,—and land meant life, the life he had longed to fling away in the morning, the life he longed to keep that night. He shouted the discovery to his companion, who bowed his head, manifestly in prayer.
The wind bore them rapidly. Glaucon, who knew the isles of the Ægean as became a Hellene, was certain they drove on Astypalæa, an isle subject to Persia, though one of the outermost Cyclades. The woman was in no state to realize their crisis. Only a hand laid on her bosom told that her [pg 159]heart still fluttered. She could not endure the surge and the suffocating spray much longer. The two men sat in silence, but their eyes went out hungrily toward the stretch of brown as it lifted above the wave crests. The last moments of the desperate voyage crept by like the pangs of Tantalus. Slowly they saw unfolding the fog-clothed mountains, a forest, scattered bits of white they knew were stuccoed houses; but while their eyes brought joy, their ears brought sadness. The booming of the surf upon an outlying ledge grew ever clearer. Almost ere they knew it the drifting mast was stayed with a shock. They saw two rocks swathed in dripping weed that crusted with knife-like barnacles, thrust their black heads out of the boiling water. And beyond—fifty paces away—the breakers raced up the sandy shore where waited refuge.
The spar wedged fast in the rocks. The waves beat over it pitilessly. He who stayed by it long had better have sunk with the Solon,—his would have been an easier death. Glaucon laid his mouth to the man’s ear.
“Swim through the surf. I will bear the woman safely.”
“Save her, and be you blessed forever. I die happy. I cannot swim.”
The moment was too terrible for Glaucon to feel amazed at this confession. To a Hellene swimming was second nature. He thought and spoke quickly.