Bravely thus for a while, but at last Themistocles, watching from the poop with eyes that nothing evaded, saw how here and there the dip of the blades was weakening, here and there a breast was heaving rapidly, a mouth was panting for air.
“The relief,” he ordered. And the spare rowers ran gladly to the places of those who seemed the weariest. Only a partial respite. Fifty supernumeraries were a poor stop-gap for the one hundred and seventy. Only the weakest could be relieved, and even those wept and pled to continue at the benches a little longer. The thunderous threat of Ameinias, that he who refused a proffered relief must stand all day by the mast with an iron anchor on his shoulder, alone sufficed to make the malcontents give place. Yet after a little while the singing died. Breath was too precious to waste. It was mockery to troll of “Æolus’s winds” whilst the sea was one motionless mirror of gray. The monotonous “beat,” “beat” of the keleustes’s hammer, and the creaking of the oars in their leathered holes alone broke the stillness that reigned through the length of the trireme. The penteconter and her prize had long since faded below the horizon. With almost wistful eyes men watched the islets as they glided past one after another, Thera now, then Ios, and presently the greater Paros and Naxos lay before them. They relieved oars whenever possible. The supernumeraries needed no urging after their scanty rest to spring to the place of him who was fainting, but hardly any man spoke a word.
The first time the relief went in Glaucon had stepped forward.
“I am strong. I am able to pull an oar,” he had cried almost angrily when Themistocles laid his hand upon him, but the admiral would have none of it.
“You shall not. Sooner will I go on to the bench myself. You have been through the gates of Tartarus these last days, and need all your strength. Are you not the Isthmionices,—the swiftest runner in Hellas?”
Then Glaucon had stepped back and said no more. He knew now for what Themistocles reserved him,—that after the Nausicaä made land he must run, as never man ran before across wide Bœotia to bear the tidings to Pausanias.
They were betwixt Paros and Naxos at last. Wine and barley cakes soaked in oil were passed among the men at the oars. They ate without leaving the benches. And still the sea spread out glassy, motionless, and the pennon hung limp on the mainmast. The keleustes slowed his beatings, but the men did not obey him. No whipped cattle were they, such as rowed the triremes of Phœnicia, but freemen born, sons of Athens, who called it joy to die for her in time of need. Therefore despite the keleustes’s beats, despite Themistocles’s command, the rowing might not slacken. And the black wave around the Nausicaä’s bow sang its monotonous music.
But Themistocles ever turned his face eastward, until men thought he was awaiting some foe in chase, and presently—just as a rower among the zygites fell back with the blood gushing from mouth and nostrils—the admiral pointed his finger toward the sky-line of the morning.
“Look! Athena is with us!”
And for the first time in hours those panting, straining men let the hot oar butts slip from their hands, even trail [pg 403]in the darkling water, whilst they rose, looked, and blessed their gods.