He saw upon the sky-line the dim tracery of the Athenian headlands “like a shield laid on the misty deep.” Again men were springing from the oars, laughing, weeping, embracing, whilst under the clear, unflagging wind the Nausicaä sped up the narrowing strait betwixt Eubœa and the mainland. Dawn glowed at last, unveiling the brown Attic shoreline with Pentelicus the marble-fretted and all his darker peers.
Hour by hour they ran onward. They skirted the long low coast of Eubœa to the starboard. They saw Marathon and its plain of fair memories stretching to port, and now the strait grew closer yet, and it needed all the governor’s skill at the steering-oars to keep the Nausicaä from the threatening rocks. Marathon was behind at last. The trireme rounded the last promontory; the bay grew wider; the prow was set more to westward. Every man—the faintest—struggled back to his oar if he had left it—this was the last hundred stadia to Oropus, and after that the Nausicaä might do no more. Once again the keleustes piped, and his note was swift and feverish. The blades shot faster, faster, as the trireme raced down the sandy shore of the Attic “Diacria.” Once in the strait they saw a brown-sailed fisherboat, and the helm swerved enough to bring her within hail. The fishermen stared at the flying trireme and her straining, wide-eyed men.
“Has there been a battle?” cried Ameinias.
“Not yet. We are from Styra on Eubœa; we expect the news daily. The armies are almost together.”
“And where are they?”
“Near to Platæa.”
That was all. The war-ship left the fishermen rocking in her wake, but again Themistocles drew his eyebrows close together, while Glaucon tightened the buckle on his belt. Platæa,—the name meant that the courier must traverse the breadth of Bœotia, and with the armies face to face how long would Zeus hold back the battle? How long indeed, with Democrates and Lycon intent on bringing battle to pass? The ship was more than ever silent as she rushed on the last stretch of her course. More men fell at the oars with blood upon their faces. The supernumeraries tossed them aside like logs of wood, and leaped upon their benches. Themistocles had vanished with Simonides in the cabin; all knew their work,—preparing letters to Aristeides and Pausanias to warn of the bitter truth. Then the haven at last: the white-stuccoed houses of Oropus clustering down upon the shore, the little mole, a few doltish peasants by the landing gaping at the great trireme. No others greeted them, for the terror of Mardonius’s Tartar raiders had driven all but the poorest to some safe shelter. The oars slipped from numb fingers; the anchor plunged into the green water; the mainsail rattled down the mast. Men sat on the benches motionless, gulping down the clear air. They had done their part. The rest lay in the hands of the gods, and in the speed of him who two days since they had called “Glaucon the Traitor.” The messenger came from the cabin, half stripped, on his head a felt skullcap, on his feet high hunter’s boots laced up to the knees. He had never shone in more noble beauty. The crew watched Themistocles place a papyrus [pg 408]roll in Glaucon’s belt, and press his mouth to the messenger’s ear in parting admonition. Glaucon gave his right hand to Themistocles, his left to Simonides. Fifty men were ready to man the pinnace to take him ashore. On the beach the Nausicaä’s people saw him stand an instant, as he turned his face upward to the “dawn-facing” gods of Hellas, praying for strength and swiftness.
“Apollo speed you!” called two hundred after him. He answered from the beach with a wave of his beautiful arms. A moment later he was hid behind a clump of olives. The Nausicaä’s people knew the ordeal before him, but many a man said Glaucon had the easier task. He could run till life failed him. They now could only fold their hands and wait.
* * * * * * *
It was long past noon when Glaucon left the desolate village of Oropus behind him. The day was hot, but after the manner of Greece not sultry, and the brisk breeze was stirring on the hill slopes. Over the distant mountains hung a tint of deep violet. It was early in Bœdromion.[14] The fields—where indeed the Barbarian cavalry men had not deliberately burned them—were seared brown by the long dry summer. Here and there great black crows were picking, and a red fox would whisk out of a thicket and go with long bounds across the unharvested fields to some safer refuge. Glaucon knew his route. Three hundred and sixty stadia lay before him, and those not over the well-beaten course in the gymnasium, but by rocky goat trails and by-paths that made his task no easier. He started off slowly. He was too good an athlete to waste his speed by one fierce burst at the outset. At first his road was no bad one, for he skirted the willow-hung Asopus, the boundary stream be[pg 409]twixt Attica and Bœotia. But he feared to keep too long upon this highway to Tanagra, and of the dangers of the road he soon met grim warnings.