A Victor of Salamis. William Stearns Davis

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      It was a merry party such as often went down to the havens of Athens in the springtime and summer: a dozen gentlemen, old and young, for the most part married, and followed demurely by their wives with the latter’s maids, and many a stout Thracian slave tugging hampers of meat and drink. Laughter there was, admixed with wiser talk; friends walking by twos and threes, with Themistocles, as always, seeming to mingle with all and to surpass every one both in jests and in wisdom. So they fared down across the broad plain-land to the harbours, till the hill Munychia rose steep before them. A scramble over a rocky, ill-marked way led to the top; then before them broke a second view comparable almost to that from the Rock of Athena: at their feet lay the four blue havens of Athens, to the right Phaleron, closer at hand the land-locked bay of Munychia, beyond that Zea, beyond that still a broader sheet—Peiræus, the new war-harbour of Athens. They could look down on the brown roofs of the port-town, the forest of masts, the merchantman unloading lumber from the Euxine, the merchantman loading dried figs for Syria; but most of all on the numbers of long black hulls, some motionless on the placid harbour, some propped harmlessly on the shore. Hermione clouded as she saw them, and glanced away.

      “I do not love your new fleet, Themistocles,” she said, frowning at the handsome statesman; “I do not love anything that tells so clearly of war. It mars the beauty.”

      “Rather you should rejoice we have so fair a wooden wall against the Barbarian, dear lady,” answered he, quite at ease. “What can we do to hearten her, Democrates?”

      “Were I only Zeus,” rejoined the orator, who never was far from his best friend’s wife, “I would cast two thunderbolts, one to destroy Xerxes, the second to blast Themistocles’s armada—so would the Lady Hermione be satisfied.”

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      “I am sorry, then, you are not the Olympian,” said the woman, half smiling at the pleasantry. Cimon interrupted them. Some of the party had caught a sun-burned shepherd in among the rocks, a veritable Pan in his shaggy goat-skin. The bribe of two obols brought him out with his pipe. Four of the slave-boys fell to dancing. The party sat down upon the burnt grass—eating, drinking, wreathing poppy-crowns, and watching the nimble slaves and the ships that crawled like ants in the haven and bay below. Thus passed the noon, and as the sun dropped toward craggy Salamis across the strait, the men of the party wandered down to the ports and found boats to take them out upon the bay.

      The wind was a zephyr. The water spread blue and glassy. The sun was sinking as a ball of infinite light. Themistocles, Democrates, and Glaucon were in one skiff, the athlete at the oars. They glided past the scores of black triremes swinging lazily at anchor. Twice they pulled around the proudest of the fleet—the Nausicaä, the gift of Hermippus to the state, a princely gift even in days when every Athenian put his all at the public service. She would be Themistocles’s flag-ship. The young men noted her fine lines, her heavy side timbers, the covered decks, an innovation in Athenian men-of-war, and Themistocles put a loving hand on the keen bronze beak as they swung around the prow.

      “Here’s a tooth for the Persian king!” he was laughing, when a second skiff, rounding the trireme in an opposite direction, collided abruptly. A lurch, a few splinters was all the hurt, but as the boats parted Themistocles rose from his seat in the stern, staring curiously.

      “Barbarians, by Athena’s owls, the knave at the oars is a sleek Syrian, and his master and the boy from the East too. What business around our war-fleet? Row after them, Glaucon; we’ll question—”

      [pg 91]

      “Glaucon does no such folly,” spoke Democrates, instantly, from the bow; “if the harbour-watch doesn’t interfere with honest traders, what’s it to us?”

      “As you like it.” Themistocles resumed his seat. “Yet it would do no harm. Now they row to another trireme. With what falcon eyes the master of the trio examines it! Something uncanny, I repeat.”

      “To examine everything strange,” proclaimed Democrates, sententiously, “needs the life of a crow, who, they say, lives a thousand years, but I don’t see any black wings budding on Themistocles’s shoulders. Pull onward, Glaucon.”

      “Whither?” demanded the rower.

      “To Salamis,” ordered Themistocles. “Let us see the battle-place foretold by the oracle.”

      “To Salamis or clear to Crete,” rejoined Glaucon, setting his strength upon the oars and making the skiff bound, “if we can find water deep enough to drown those gloomy looks that have sat on Democrates’s brows of late.”

      “Not gloomy but serious,” said the young orator, with an attempt at lightness; “I have been preparing my oration against the contractor I’ve indicted for embezzling the public naval stores.”

      “Destroy the man!” cried the rower.

      “And yet I really pity him; he was under great temptation.”

      “No excuses; the man who robs the city in days like these is worse than he who betrays fortresses in most wars.”

      “I see you are a savage patriot, Glaucon,” said Themistocles, “despite your Adonis face. We are fairly upon the bay; our nearest eavesdroppers, yon fishermen, are a good five furlongs. Would you see something?” Glaucon rested on the oars, while the statesman fumbled in his breast. He drew out a papyrus sheet, which he passed to the rower, he in turn to Democrates.

      [pg 92]

      “Look well, then, for I think no Persian spies are here. A month long have I wrought on this bit of papyrus. All my wisdom flowed out of my pen when I spread the ink. In short here is the ordering of the ships of the allied Greeks when we meet Xerxes in battle. Leonidas and our other chiefs gave me the task when we met at Corinth. To-day it is complete. Read it, for it is precious. Xerxes would give twenty talents for this one leaf from Egypt.”

      The young men peered at the sheet curiously. The details and diagrams were few and easy to remember, the Athenian ships here, the Æginetan next, the Corinthian next, and so with the other allies. A few comments on the use of the light penteconters behind the heavy triremes. A few more comments on Xerxes’s probable naval tactics. Only the knowledge that Themistocles never committed himself in speech or writing without exhausting every expedient told the young men of the supreme importance of the paper. After due inspection the statesman replaced it in his breast.

      “You two have seen this,” he announced, seemingly proud of his handiwork; “Leonidas shall see this, then Xerxes, and after that—” he laughed, but not in jest—“men will remember Themistocles, son of Neocles!”

      The three lapsed into silence for a moment. The skiff was well out upon the sea. The shadows of the hills of Salamis and of Ægelaos, the opposing mountain of Attica, were spreading over them. Around the islet of Psyttaleia in the strait the brown fisher-boats were gliding. Beyond the strait opened the blue hill-girdled bay of Eleusis, now turning to fire in the evening sun. Everything was peaceful, silent, beautiful. Again Glaucon rested on his oars and let his eyes wander.

      “How true is the word of Thales the Sage,” he spoke; “ ‘the world is the fairest of all fair things, because it is the [pg 93]work of God.’ It cannot be that, here, between these purple hills and the glistening sea, there will come that battle beside which the strife of Achilles and Hector before Troy shall pass as nothing!”

      Themistocles shook his head.

      “We do not know; we are dice in the high gods’ dice-boxes.

      “ ‘Man all vainly shall scan the mind of the Prince of Olympus.’

      “We can say nothing wiser than that. We can but use our Attic mother wit, and trust the rest to destiny. Let us be satisfied if we hope that destiny is not blind.”

      They drifted many moments in silence.

      “The sun sinks lower,” spoke Democrates, at length; “so back again to the havens.”

      On