But here a seaman interrupted, staring blankly.
“Kyrie, here’s a strange prize. Five men lie dead on the deck. The planks are bloody. In the cabin are two men and a woman. All three seem mad. They are Greeks. They keep us out, and bawl, ‘The navarch! show us the navarch, or Hellas is lost.’ And one of them—as true as that I sucked my mother’s milk—is Phormio—”
“Phormio the fishmonger,”—Cimon dropped his steering oar,—“on a Carthaginian ship? You’re mad yourself, man.”
“See with your own eyes, captain. They’ll yield to none save you. The prisoners are howling that one of these men is a giant.”
For the active son of Miltiades to leap from bulwark to bulwark took an instant. Only when he showed himself did the three in the cabin scramble up the ladder, covered with [pg 389]blood, the red lines of the fetters marked into wrist and ankle. Lampaxo had thrown her dress over her head and was screaming still, despite assurances. The third Hellene’s face was hid under a tangle of hair. But Cimon knew the fishmonger. Many a morning had he haggled with him merrily for a fine mackerel or tunny, and the navarch recoiled in horror at his fellow-citizen’s plight.
“Infernal gods! You a prisoner here? Where is this cursed vessel from?”
“From Trœzene,” gasped the refugee; “if you love Athens and Hellas—”
He turned just in time to fling an arm about Hiram, who—carelessly guarded—was gliding down the hatchway.
“Seize that viper, bind, torture; he knows all. Make him tell or Hellas is lost!”
“Control yourself, friend,” adjured Cimon, sorely perplexed, while Hiram struggled and began tugging out a crooked knife, before two brawny seamen nipped him fast and disarmed.