The officers ranged themselves and saluted stiffly. Themistocles stood before them, his hands closed over the packet. [pg 394]The first time he started to speak his lips closed desperately. The silence grew awkward. Then the admiral gave his head a toss, and drew his form together as a runner before a race.
“Democrates is a traitor. Unless Athena shows us mercy, Hellas is lost.”
“Democrates is a traitor!”
The cry from the startled men rang through the ship. The rowers ceased their chant and their stroking. Themistocles beckoned angrily for silence.
“I did not call you down to wail and groan.” He never raised his voice; his calmness made him terrible. But now the questions broke loose as a flood.
“When? How? Declare.”
“Peace, men of Athens; you conquered the Persian at Salamis, conquer now yourselves. Harken to this cipher. Then to our task and prove our comrades did not die in vain.”
Yet despite him men wept on one another’s shoulders as became true Hellenes, whilst Themistocles, whose inexorable face never relaxed, rewound the papyrus on the cipher stick and read in hard voice the words of doom.
“This is the letter secreted on the Carthaginian. The hand is Democrates’s, the seals are his. Give ear.
“Democrates the Athenian to Tigranes, commander of the hosts of Xerxes on the coasts of Asia, greeting:—Understand, dear Persian, that Lycon and I as well as the other friends of the king among the Hellenes are prepared to bring all things to pass in a way right pleasing to your master. Even now I depart from Trœzene to join the army of the allied Hellenes in Bœotia, and, the gods helping, we cannot fail. Lycon and I will contrive to separate the Athenians and Spartans from their other allies, to force them to give battle, and at the crisis cause the divisions under our personal commands to retire, breaking the phalanx and making Mardonius’s victory certain.