“They shall not.”
“Blessings, blessings,—can I escape to-night?”
“Yes,” but Themistocles’s tone made the prisoner’s blood run chill. He cowered helplessly. The admiral stood, his own fine face covered with a mingling of pity, contempt, pain.
“Democrates, hearken,”—his voice was hard as flint. “We have seized your camp chest, found the key to your ciphers, and know all your correspondence with Lycon. We have discovered your fearful power of forgery. Hermes the Trickster gave it you for your own destruction. We have [pg 441]brought Hiram hither from the ship. This night he has ridden the ‘Little Horse.’[17] He has howled out everything. We have seized Bias and heard his story. There is nothing to conceal. From the beginning of your peculation of the public money, till the moment when, the prisoners say, you were in Mardonius’s camp, all is known to us. You need not confess. There is nothing worth confessing.”
“I am glad,”—great beads were on the prisoner’s brow,—“but you do not realize the temptation. Have you never yourself been betwixt Scylla and Charybdis? Have I not vowed every false step should be the last? I fought against Lycon. I fought against Mardonius. They were too strong. Athena knoweth I did not crave the tyranny of Athens! It was not that which drove me to betray Hellas.”
“I believe you. But why did you not trust me at the first?”
“I hardly understand.”
“When first your need of money drove you to crime, why did you not come to me? You knew I loved you. You knew I looked on you as my political son and heir in the great work of making Athens the light of Hellas. I would have given you the gold,—yes, fifty talents.”
“Ai, ai, if I had only dared! I thought of it. I was afraid.”
“Right.” Themistocles’s lip was curling. “You are more coward than knave or traitor. Phobos, Black Fear, has been your leading god, not Hermes. And now—”