“Back water,” thundered Ameinias, “clear the vortex, she is going down!”
The Nausicaä’s people staggered to the oars. So busy were they in righting their own ship few saw the crowning horror. A moment more and a few drifting spars, a few bobbing heads, were all that was left of the Phœnician. The Ægean had swallowed her.
A shout was pealing from the ships of the Hellenes. “Zeus is with us! Athena is with us!”
At the outset of the battle, when advantage tells the most, advantage had been won. Themistocles’s deed had fused all the Greeks with hopeful courage. Eurybiades was charging. Adeimantus was charging. Their ships and all the rest went racing to meet the foe.
* * * * * * *
But the Nausicaä had paid for her victory. In the shock of ramming the triple-toothed beak on her prow had been wrenched away. In the mêlée of ships which had just begun, she must play her part robbed of her keenest weapon. The sinking of the Barbarian had been met with cheers by the Hellenes, by howls of revengeful rage by the host against them. Not lightly were the Asiatics who fought beneath the eyes of the king to be daunted. They came crowding up the strait in such masses that sheer numbers hindered them, leaving no space for the play of the oars, much less for fine manœuvre. Yet for an instant it seemed as if mere weight would sweep the Hellenes back to Salamis. Then the lines of battle dissolved into confused fragments. Captains singled out an opponent and charged home desperately, unmindful how it fared elsewhere in the battle. Here an Egyptian ran down a Eubœan, there a Sicyonian grappled a Cilician and flung her boarders on to the foeman’s decks. To the onlookers the scene could have meant naught save confusion. A hundred duels, a hundred varying victories, but to which side the final glory would fall, who knew?—perchance not even Zeus.
In the roaring mêlée the Nausicaä had for some moments moved almost aimlessly, her men gathering breath and letting their unscathed comrades pass. Then gradually the battle drifted round them also. A Cyprian, noting they [pg 321]had lost their ram, strove to charge them bow to bow. The skill of the governor avoided that disaster. They ran under the stem of a Tyrian, and Glaucon proved he had not forgotten his skill when he sent his javelins among the officers upon the poop. A second Sidonian swept down on them, but grown wise by her consort’s destruction turned aside to lock with an Æginetan galley. How the fight at large was going, who was winning, who losing, Glaucon saw no more than any one else. An arrow grazed his arm. He first learned it when he found his armour bloody. A sling-stone smote the marine next to him on the forehead. The man dropped without a groan. Glaucon flung the body overboard, almost by instinct. Themistocles was everywhere, on the poop, on the foreship, among the rowers’ benches, shouting, laughing, cheering, ordering, standing up boldly where the arrows flew thickest, yet never hit. So for a while, till out of the confusion of ships and wrecks came darting a trireme, loftier than her peers. The railing on poop and prow was silver. The shields of the javelin-men that crowded her high fighting decks were gilded. Ten pennons whipped from her masts, and the cry of horns, tambours, and kettledrums blended with the shoutings of her crew. A partially disabled Hellene drifted across her path. She ran the luckless ship down in a twinkling. Then her bow swung. She headed toward the Nausicaä.
“Do you know this ship?” asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop.
“A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.”
“She is attacking us, Excellency,” called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling.