It was coming, the strong kind Eurus out of the south and east. They could see the black ripple springing over the glassy sea; they could hear the singing of the cordage; they could catch the sweet sniff of the brine. Admiral and rower lifted their hands together at this manifest favour of heaven.
“Poseidon is with us! Athena is with us! Æolus is with us! We can save Hellas!”
Soon the sun burst forth above the mist. All the wide ocean floor was adance with sparkling wavelets. No need of Ameinias’s lusty call to bend again the sails. The smaller canvas on the foremast and great spread on the mainmast were bellying to the piping gale. A fair wind, but no storm. The oars were but helpers now,—men laughed, hugged one another as boys, wept as girls, and let the benignant wind gods labour for them. Delos the Holy they passed, and Tenos, and soon the heights of Andros lifted, as the ship with its lading of fate flew over the island-strewn sea. At last, just as the day was leaving them, they saw Helios going down into the fire-tinged waves in a parting burst of glory. Darkness next, but the kindly wind failed not. Through the night no man on that trireme slumbered. Breeze or calm, he who had an obol’s weight of power spent it at the oars.
Long after midnight Themistocles and Glaucon clambered the giddy cordage to the ship’s top above the swelling mainsail. On the narrow platform, with the stars above, the dim tracery of the wide sail, the still dimmer tracery of the long ship below, they seemed transported to another world. Far beneath by the glimmer of the lanterns they saw the rowers swaying at their toil. In the wake the phosphorous bubbles ran away, opalescent gleams springing upward, as if torches of Doris and her dancing Nereids. So much had [pg 404]admiral and outlaw lived through this day they had thought little of themselves. Now calmer thought returned. Glaucon could tell of many things he had heard and thought, of the conversation overheard the morning before Salamis, of what Phormio had related during the weary captivity in the hold of the Bozra. Themistocles pondered long. Yet for Glaucon when standing even on that calm pinnacle the trireme must creep over the deep too slowly.
“O give me wings, Father Zeus,” was his prayer; “yes, the wings of Icarus. Let me fly but once to confound the traitor and deliver thy Hellas,—after that, like Icarus let me fall. I am content to die.”
But Themistocles pressed close against his side. “Ask for no wings,”—in the admiral’s voice was a tremor not there when he sped confidence through the crew,—“if it be destined we save Hellas, it is destined; if we are to die, we die. ‘No man of woman born, coward or brave, can shun the fate assigned.’ Hector said that to Andromache, and the Trojan was right. But we shall save Hellas. Zeus and Athena are great gods. They did not give us glory at Salamis to make that glory tenfold vain. We shall save Hellas. Yet I have fear—”
“Of what, then?”
“Fear that Themistocles will be too merciful to be just. Ah! pity me.”
“I understand—Democrates.”
“I pray he may escape to the Persians, or that Ares may slay him in fair battle. If not—”