A Victor of Salamis

by William Stearns Davis

Sunrise. The Nausicaä was ready. Ameinias the navarch walked the deck above the stern-cabin with nervous strides. All that human forethought could do to prepare the ship had long been done. The slim hull one hundred and fifty feet long had been stripped of every superfluous rope and spar. The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of the Nausicaä was herself. To send the three-toothed beak through a foeman’s side was the end of her being. To meet the shock of collision two heavy cables had been bound horizontally around the hull from stem to stern. The oarsmen,—the thranites of the upper tier, the zygites of the middle, the thalamites of the lower,—one hundred and seventy swart, nervous-eyed men, sat on their benches, and let their hands close tight upon those oars which trailed now in the drifting water, but which soon and eagerly should spring to life. At the belt of every oarsman dangled a sword, for boarders’ work was more than likely. Thirty spare rowers rested impatiently on the centre deck, ready to leap wherever needed. On the forecastle commanded the prōreus, Ameinias’s lieutenant, [pg 312]and with him the keleustes, the oar master who must give time on his sounding-board for the rowing, and never fail,—not though the ships around reeled down to watery grave. And finally on the poop by the captain stood the “governor,”—knotted, grizzled, and keen,—the man whose touch upon the heavy steering oars might give the Nausicaä life or destruction when the ships charged beak to beak.

“The trireme is ready, admiral,” reported Ameinias, as Themistocles came up leisurely from the stern-cabin.

The son of Neocles threw back his helmet, that all might see his calm, untroubled face. He wore a cuirass of silvered scale-armour over his purple chiton. At his side walked a young man, whom the ship’s people imagined the deserter of the preceding night, but he had drawn his helmet close.

“This is Critias,” said Themistocles, briefly, to the navarch; “he is a good caster. See that he has plenty of darts.”

“One of Themistocles’s secret agents,” muttered the captain to the governor, “we should have guessed it.” And they all had other things to think of than the whence and wherefore of this stranger.

It was a weary, nervous interval. Men had said everything, done everything, hoped and feared everything. They were in no mood even to invoke the gods. In desperation some jested riotously as they gripped the oars on the benches,—demonstrations which the prōreus quelled with a loud “Silence in the ship.” The morning mist was breaking. A brisk wind was coming with the sun. Clear and strong sang the Notus, the breeze of the kindly south. It covered the blue bay with crisping whitecaps, it sent the surf foaming up along the Attic shore across the strait. Themistocles watched it all with silent eyes, but eyes that spoke of gladness. He knew the waves would beat with full force on the Persian [pg 313]prows, and make their swift movement difficult while the Greeks, taking the galloping surf astern, would suffer little.

“Æolus fights for us. The first omen and a fair one.” The word ran in whispers down the benches, and every soul on the trireme rejoiced.

How long did they sit thus? An æon? Would Eurybiades never draw out his line of battle? Would Adeimantus prove craven at the end? Would treachery undo Hellas to-day, as once before at Lade when the Ionian Greeks had faced the Persian fleet in vain? Now as the vapour broke, men began to be able to look about them, and be delivered from their own thoughts. The shores of Salamis were alive,—old men, women, little children,—the fugitives from Attica were crowding to the marge in thousands to watch the deed that should decide their all. And many a bronze-cheeked oarsman arose from his bench to wave farewell to the wife or father or mother, and sank back again,—a clutching in his throat, a mist before his eyes, while his grip upon the oar grew like to steel.

As the Nausicaä rode at her place in the long line of ships spread up and down the shore of Salamis, it was easy to detect forms if not faces on the strand. And Glaucon, peering out from his helmet bars, saw Democrates himself standing on the sands and beckoning to Themistocles. Then other figures became clear to him out of the many, this one or that whom he had loved and clasped hands with in the sunlit days gone by. And last of all he saw those his gaze hungered for the most, Hermippus, Lysistra, and another standing at their side all in white, and in her arms she bore something he knew must be her child,—Hermione’s son, his son, born to the lot of a free man of Athens or a slave of Xerxes according as his elders played their part this day. Only [pg 314]a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him.

“You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,” spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything. “To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.”