“Your business?” questioned the admiral, sharply.
“May it please your Excellency, a deserter.”
“A deserter, and how and why here?”
“He came to the Nausicaä in a skiff. He swears he has just come from the Barbarians at Phaleron. He demands to see the admiral.”
“He is a Barbarian?”
“No, a Greek. He affects to speak a kind of Doric dialect.”
Themistocles laughed again, and even more lightly.
“A deserter, you say. Then why, by Athena’s owls, has he left ‘the Land of Roast Hare’ among the Persians, whither so many are betaking themselves? We’ve not so many deserters to our cause that to-night we can ignore one. Fetch him in.”
“But the council with Eurybiades?” implored Simonides, almost on his knees.
“To the harpies with it! I asked Zeus for an omen. It comes—a fair one. There is time to hear this deserter, to confound Adeimantus, and to save Hellas too!”