“All? You stand with folded hands!”
“All—for I am thinking.”
“Thinking—oh, make actions of your thoughts!”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When the god opens the way. Just now the way is fast closed.”
“Ai! woe—and it is already far into the evening, and Hellas is lost.”
Themistocles laughed almost lightly.
“No, my friend. Hellas will not be lost until to-morrow [pg 285]morning, and much can happen in a night. Now go, and let me think yet more.”
Simonides lingered. He was not sure Themistocles was master of himself. But the admiral beckoned peremptorily, the poet’s hand was on the cabin door, when a loud knock sounded on the other side. The prōreus, commander of the fore-deck and Ameinas’s chief lieutenant, entered and saluted swiftly.