The cutter was close beside them, but the officer dropped his lantern.
“Good, then. Give the password.”
“ ‘Hystaspes.’ ”
They could see the Phœnician’s hand rise to his head in salute.
“Forgive my rudeness, worthy sir. It’s truly needless to seek deserters to-night with the Hellenes’ affairs so desperate, yet we must obey his Eternity’s orders.”
“I pardon you,” quoth the emissary, loftily, “I will commend your vigilance to the admiral.”
“May Moloch give your Lordship ten thousand children,” called back the mollified Semite.
The crew of the cutter dropped their blades into the water. The boats glided apart. Not till there was a safe stretch betwixt them did Glaucon begin to grow hot, then cold, then hot again. Chill Thanatos had passed and missed by a hair’s breadth. Again the bumping of the oars and [pg 297]the slow, slow creeping over the water. The night was darkening. The clouds had hid the moon and all her stars. Sicinnus, shrewd and weatherwise, remarked, “There will be a stiff wind in the morning,” and lapsed into silence. Glaucon toiled on resolutely. A fixed conviction was taking possession of his mind,—one that had come on the day he had been preserved at Thermopylæ, now deepened by the event just passed,—that he was being reserved by the god for some crowning service to Hellas, after which should come peace, whether the peace of a warrior who dies in the arms of victory, whether the peace of a life spent after a deed well done, he scarcely knew, and in the meantime, if the storms must beat and the waves rise up against him, he would bear them still. Like the hero of his race, he could say, “Already have I suffered much and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war, let this be added to the tale of those.”
Bump—bump, the oars played their monotonous music on the thole-pins. Sicinnus stirred on his seat. He was peering northward anxiously, and Glaucon knew what he was seeking. Through the void of the night their straining eyes saw masses gliding across the face of the water. Ariabignes was making his promise good. Yonder the Egyptian fleet were swinging forth to close the last retreat of the Hellenes. Thus on the north, and southward, too, other triremes were thrusting out, bearing—both watchers wisely guessed—a force to disembark on Psyttaleia, the islet betwixt Salamis and the main, a vantage-point in the coming battle.
The coming battle? It was so silent, ghostlike, far away, imagination scarce could picture it. Was this black slumberous water to be the scene at dawn of a combat beside which that of Hector and Achilles under Troy would be only [pg 298]as a tale that is told? And was he, Glaucon, son of Conon the Alcmæonid, sitting there in the skiff alone with Sicinnus, to have a part therein, in a battle the fame whereof should ring through the ages? Bump, bump—still the monologue of the oars. A fish near by leaped from the water, splashing loudly. Then for an instant the clouds broke. Selene uncovered her face. The silvery flash quickly come, more quickly flying, showed him the headlands of that Attica now in Xerxes’s hands. He saw Pentelicus and Hymettus, Parnes and Cithæron, the hills he had wandered over in glad boyhood, the hills where rested his ancestors’ dust. It was no dream. He felt his warm blood quicken. He felt the round-bowed skiff spring over the waves, as with unwearied hands he tugged at the oar. There are moments when the dullest mind grows prophetic, and the mind of the Athenian was not dull. The moonlight had vanished. In its place through the magic darkness seemed gathering all the heroes of his people beckoning him and his compeers onward. Perseus was there, and Theseus and Erechtheus, Heracles the Mighty, and Odysseus the Patient, whose intellect Themistocles possessed, Solon the Wise, Periander the Crafty, Diomedes the Undaunted, men of reality, men of fable, sages, warriors, demigods, crowding together, speaking one message: “Be strong, for the heritage of what you do this coming day shall be passed beyond children’s children, shall be passed down to peoples to whom the tongue, the gods, yea, the name of Hellas, are but as a dream.”