“Athena is with us! Zeus is with us!”
The Nausicaä’s crew were lifted from panic to mad enthusiasm. Still above them towered the tall Phœnician, but they could have scaled Mt. Caucasus at that instant.
“Onward! Up and after them,” rang Ameinias’s blast, “she is our own, we will take her under the king’s own eye.”
The javelins and arrows were pelting from the Barbarian. The Athenians mocked the shower as they leaped the void from bulwark to bulwark. Vainly the Phœnicians strove to clear the grapples. Too firm! Their foes came on to their decks with long leaps, or here and there ran deftly on projecting spars, for what athlete of Hellas could not run the tight rope? In an instant the long rowers’ deck of the Tyrian was won, and the attackers cheered and blessed Athena. But this was only storming the first outpost. Like castles forward and aft reared the prow and poop, whither the sullen defenders retreated. Turning at bay, the Phœnicians swarmed back into the waist, waiting no scourging from their officers. Now their proud admiral himself plunged into the mêlée, laying about with a mighty sword worthy of Ajax at Troy, showing he was a prince of the Aryans indeed. It took all the steadiness of Ameinias and his stoutest men to stop the rush, and save the Athenians in turn from being driven overboard. The rush was halted finally, though this was mere respite before a fiercer breaking of the storm. The two ships were drifting yet closer to the strand. Only the fear of striking their own men kept the Persians around the king from clouding the air with arrows. Glaucon saw the grandees near Xerxes’s throne brandishing their swords. In imagination he saw the monarch leaping from his throne in agony as at Thermopylæ.
“Back to the charge,” pealed Ariamenes’s summons to the Tyrians; “will you be cowards and dogs beneath the very eyes of the king?”
The defenders answered with a second rush. Others again hurled darts from the stern and foreship. Then out of the mælstrom of men and weapons came a truce. Athenian and Tyrian drew back, whilst Themistocles and Ariamenes were fighting blade to blade. Twice the giant Persian almost [pg 326]dashed the Hellene down. Twice Themistocles recovered poise, and paid back stroke for stroke. He had smitten the helmet from Ariamenes’s head and was swinging for a master-blow when his foot slipped on the bloody plank. He staggered. Before he could recover, the Persian had brought his own weapon up, and flung his might into the downward stroke.
“The admiral—lost!” Athenians shuddered together, but with the groan shot a javelin. Clear through the scales of the cuirass it tore, and into the Persian’s shoulder,—Glaucon’s cast, never at the Isthmus truer with hand or eye. The ponderous blade turned, grazed the Athenian’s corselet, clattered on the deck. The Persian sprang back disarmed and powerless. At sight thereof the Phœnicians flung down their swords. True Orientals, in the fate of their chief they saw decreeing Destiny,—what use to resist it?
“Yield, my Lord, yield,” called Glaucon, in Persian, “the battle is against you, and no fault of yours. Save the lives of your men.”
Ariamenes gave a toss of his princely head, and with his left hand plucked the javelin from his shoulder.
“A prince of the Aryans knows how to die, but not how to yield,” he cast back, and before the Athenians guessed his intent he sprang upon the bulwark. There in the sight of his king he stood and bowed his head and with his left arm made the sign of adoration.