A Victor of Salamis 15Book I · Mardonius the Persian
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 15
Book I · Mardonius the Persian
DavisEnglish
Off Andros the northern gale smote them. The ship had driven helplessly.
Off Tenos only the skill of Brasidas kept the Solon clear of the rocky shores.
As they raced past holy Delos the frightened passengers had vowed twelve oxen to Apollo if he saved them.
Near Naxos, Brasidas, after vainly trying to make a friendly haven, bade his sailors undergird the ship with heavy cables, for the timbers seemed starting. Finally he suffered his craft to drive,—hoping at least to find some islet with a sandy shore where he could beach her with safety.
The Solon, however, was near her doom. She was built on the Samian model, broad, flat, high in poop, low in prow,—excellent for cargo, but none too seaworthy. The foresail blew in tatters. The closely brailed mainsail shook the weakened mast. The sailors had dropped their quaint oaths, and began to pray—sure proof of danger. The dozen passengers seemed almost too panic-stricken to aid in flinging the cargo overboard. Several were raving.
“Hearken, Poseidon of Calauria,” howled a Peiræus merchant against the screeching blasts, “save from this peril and I vow thee and thy temple two mixing bowls of purest gold!”
“A great vow,” suggested a calmer comrade. “All your fortune can hardly pay it.”
“Hush,” spoke the other, in undertone, “don’t let the god overhear me; let me get safe to Mother Earth and Poseidon has not one obol. His power is only over the sea.”
A creaking from the mainmast told that it might fall at any moment. Passengers and crew redoubled their shouts to Poseidon and to Zeus of Ægina. A fat passenger staggered from his cabin, a huge money-bag bound to his belt,—as if gold were the safest spar to cling to in that boiling deep. Others, less frantic, gave commissions one to another, in case one perished and another escaped.
“You alone have no messages, pray no prayers, show no fear!” spoke a grave, elderly man to Glaucon, as both clutched the swaying bulwark.
“And wherefore?” came the bitter answer; “what is left me to fear? I desire no life hereafter. There can be no consciousness without sad memory.”
“You are very young to speak thus.”
“But not too young to have suffered.”
A wave dashed one of the steering rudders out of the grip of the sailor guiding it. The rush of water swept him overboard. The Solon lurched. The wind smote the straining mainsail, and the shivered mainmast tore from its stays and socket. Above the bawling of wind and water sounded the crash. The ship, with only a small sail upon the poop, blew about into the trough of the sea. A mountain of green water thundered over the prow, bearing away men and wreckage. The “governor,” Brasidas’s mate, flung away the last steering tiller.
“The Solon is dying, men,” he trumpeted through his hands. “To the boat! Save who can!”
The pinnace set in the waist was cleared away by frantic hands and axes. Ominous rumblings from the hold told how the undergirding could not keep back the water. The pinnace was dragged to the ship’s lee and launched in the comparative calm of the Solon’s broadside. Pitifully small was the boat for five and twenty. The sailors, desperate and selfish, leaped in first, and watched with jealous eyes the struggles of the passengers to follow. The noisy merchant slipped in the leap, and they heard him scream once as the wave swallowed him. Brasidas stood in the bow of the pinnace, clutching a sword to cut the last rope. The boat filled to the gunwales. The spray dashed into her. The sailors bailed with their caps. Another passenger leaped across, whereat the men yelled and drew their dirks.
“Three are left. Room for one more. The rest must swim!”
Glaucon stood on the poop. Was life still such a precious thing to some that they must clutch for it so desperately? He had even a painful amusement in watching the others. Of himself he thought little save to hope that under the boiling sea was rest and no return of memory. Then Brasidas called him.
“Quick! The others are Barbarians and you a Hellene. Your chance—leap!”
He did not stir. The “others”—two strangers in Oriental dress—were striving to enter the pinnace. The seamen thrust their dirks out to force them back.
“Full enough!” bawled the “governor.” “That fellow on the poop is mad. Cut the rope, or we are caught in the swirl.”
The elder Barbarian lifted his companion as if to fling him into the boat, but Brasidas’s sword cut the one cable. The wave flung the Solon and the pinnace asunder. With stolid resignation the Orientals retreated to the poop. The people in the pinnace rowed desperately to keep her out of the deadly trough of the billows, but Glaucon stood erect on the drifting wreck and his voice rang through the tumult of the sea.
“Tell them in Athens, and tell Hermione my wife, that Glaucon the Alcmæonid went down into the deep declaring his innocence and denouncing the vengeance of Athena on whosoever foully destroyed him!—”
Brasidas waved his sword in last farewell. Glaucon turned back to the wreck. The Solon had settled lower. Every wave washed across the waist. Nothing seemed to meet his gaze save the leaden sky, the leaden green water, the foam of the bounding storm-crests. He told himself the gods were good. Drowning was more merciful death than hemlock. Pelagos, the untainted sea, was a softer grave than the Barathrum. The memory of the fearful hour at Colonus, the vision of the face of Hermione, of all things else that he would fain forget—all these would pass. For what came after he cared nothing.
So for some moments he stood, clinging upon the poop, awaiting the end. But the end came slowly. The Solon was a stoutly timbered ship. Much of her lading had been cast overboard, but more remained and gave buoyancy to the wreckage. And as the Athenian awaited, almost impatiently, the final disaster, something called his eye away from the heaving sky-line. Human life was still about him. Wedged in a refuge, betwixt two capstans, the Orientals were sitting, awaiting doom like himself. But wonder of wonders,—he had not relaxed his hold on life too much to marvel,—the younger Barbarian was beyond all doubt a woman. She sat in her companion’s lap, lifting her white face to his, and Glaucon knew she was of wondrous beauty. They were talking together in some Eastern speech. Their arms were closely twined. It was plain they were passing the last love messages before entering the great mystery together. Of Glaucon they took no heed. And he at first was almost angered that strangers should intrude upon this last hour of life. But as he looked, as he saw the beauty of the woman, the sheen of her golden hair, the interchange of love by touch and word,—there came across his own spirit a most unlooked-for change. Suddenly the white-capped billows seemed pitiless and chill. The warm joy of life returned. Again memory surged back, but without its former pang. He saw again the vision of Athens, of Colonus, of Eleusis-by-the-Sea. He saw Hermione running through the throng to meet him the day he returned from the Isthmia. He heard the sweet wind singing over the old olives beside the cool Cephissus. Must these all pass forever? forever? Were life, friends, love, the light of the sun, eternally lost, and nothing left save the endless sleep in the unsunned caves of Oceanus? With one surge the desire to live, to bear hard things, to conquer them, returned. He dashed the water from his eyes. What he did next was more by instinct than by reason. He staggered across the reeling deck, approached the Barbarians, and seized the man by the arm.
“Would you live and not die? Up, then,—there is still a chance.”
The man gazed up blankly.
“We are in Mazda’s hands,” he answered in foreign accent. “It is manifestly his will that we should pass now the Chinvat bridge. We are helpless. Where is the pinnace?”
Glaucon dragged him roughly to his feet.
“I do not know your gods. Do not speak of their will to destroy us till the destruction falls. Do you love this woman?”
“Save her, let me twice perish.”
“Rouse yourself, then. One hope is left!”
“What hope?”
“A raft. We can cast a spar overboard. It will float us. You look strong,—aid me.”
The man rose and, thoroughly aroused, seconded the Athenian intelligently and promptly. The lurches of the merchantman told how close she was to her end. One of the seamen’s axes lay on the poop. Glaucon seized it. The foremast was gone and the mainmast, but the small boat-mast still stood, though its sail had blown to a thousand flapping streamers. Glaucon laid his axe at the foot of the spar. Two fierce strokes weakened so that the next lurch sent it crashing overboard. It swung in the mælstrom by its stays and the halyards of the sail. Tossing to and fro like a bubble, it was a fearful hope, but a louder rumbling from the hold warned how other hope had fled. The Barbarian recoiled as he looked on it.
“It can never float through this storm,” Glaucon heard him crying between the blasts, but the Athenian beckoned him onward.
“Leap!” commanded Glaucon; “spring as the mast rises on the next wave.”
“I cannot forsake her,” called back the man, pointing to the woman, who lay with flying hair between the capstans, helpless and piteous now that her lover was no longer near.
“I will provide for her. Leap!”
Glaucon lifted the woman in his arms. He took a manner of pride in showing the Barbarian his skill. The man looked at him once, saw he could be trusted, and took the leap. He landed in the water, but caught the sail-cloth drifting from the mast, climbed beside it, and sat astride. The Athenian sprang at the next favoring wave. His burden made the task hard, but his stadium training never stood in better stead. The cold water closed around him. The wave dragged down in its black abyss, but he struck boldly upward, was beside the friendly spar, and the Barbarian aided him to mount beside him, then cut the lashings to the Solon with the dagger that still dangled at his belt. The billows swept them away just as the wreck reared wildly, and bow foremost plunged into the deep. They bound the woman—she was hardly conscious now—into the little shelter formed by the junction of the broken sail-yard and the mast. The two men sat beside her, shielding her with their bodies from the beat of the spray. Speech was all but impossible. They were fain to close their eyes and pray to be delivered from the unceasing screaming of the wind, the howling of the waters. And so for hours....
Glaucon never knew how long they thus drifted. The Solon had been smitten very early in the morning. She had foundered perhaps at noon. It may have been shortly before sunset—though Helios never pierced the clouds that storm-racked day—when Glaucon knew that the Barbarian was speaking to him.
“Look!” The wind had lulled a little; the man could make himself heard. “What is it?”
Through the masses of gray spray and driving mist Glaucon gazed when the next long wave tossed them. A glimpse,—but the joys of Olympus seemed given with that sight; wind-swept, wave-beaten, rock-bound, that half-seen ridge of brown was land,—and land meant life, the life he had longed to fling away in the morning, the life he longed to keep that night. He shouted the discovery to his companion, who bowed his head, manifestly in prayer.
The wind bore them rapidly. Glaucon, who knew the isles of the Ægean as became a Hellene, was certain they drove on Astypalæa, an isle subject to Persia, though one of the outermost Cyclades. The woman was in no state to realize their crisis. Only a hand laid on her bosom told that her heart still fluttered. She could not endure the surge and the suffocating spray much longer. The two men sat in silence, but their eyes went out hungrily toward the stretch of brown as it lifted above the wave crests. The last moments of the desperate voyage crept by like the pangs of Tantalus. Slowly they saw unfolding the fog-clothed mountains, a forest, scattered bits of white they knew were stuccoed houses; but while their eyes brought joy, their ears brought sadness. The booming of the surf upon an outlying ledge grew ever clearer. Almost ere they knew it the drifting mast was stayed with a shock. They saw two rocks swathed in dripping weed that crusted with knife-like barnacles, thrust their black heads out of the boiling water. And beyond—fifty paces away—the breakers raced up the sandy shore where waited refuge.
The spar wedged fast in the rocks. The waves beat over it pitilessly. He who stayed by it long had better have sunk with the Solon,—his would have been an easier death. Glaucon laid his mouth to the man’s ear.
“Swim through the surf. I will bear the woman safely.”
“Save her, and be you blessed forever. I die happy. I cannot swim.”
The moment was too terrible for Glaucon to feel amazed at this confession. To a Hellene swimming was second nature. He thought and spoke quickly.
“Climb on the higher rock. The wave does not cover it entirely. Dig your toes in the crevices. Cling to the seaweed. I will return for you.”
He never heard what the other cried back to him. He tore the woman clear of her lashings, threw his left arm about her, and fought his way through the surf. He could swim like a Delian, the best swimmers in Hellas; but the task was mighty even for the athlete. Twice the deadly undertow almost dragged him downward. Then the soft sand was oozing round his feet. He knew a knot of fisher folk were running to the beach, a dozen hands took his fainting burden from him. One instant he stood with the water rushing about his ankles, gasped and drew long breaths, then turned his face toward the sea.
“Are you crazed?” he heard voices clamouring—they seemed a great way off,—“a miracle that you lived through the surf once! Leave the other to fate. Phorcys has doomed him already.”
But Glaucon was past acting by reason now. His head seemed a ball of fire. Only his hands and feet responded mechanically to the dim impulse of his bewildered brain. Once more the battling through the surf, this time against it and threefold harder. Only the man whose strength had borne the giant Spartan down could have breasted the billows that came leaping to destroy him. He felt his powers were strained to the last notch. A little more and he knew he might roll helpless, but even so he struggled onward. Once again the two black rocks were springing out of the swollen water. He saw the Barbarian clinging desperately to the higher. Why was he risking his life for a man who was not a Hellene, who might be even a servant of the dreaded Xerxes? A strange moment for such questionings, and no time to answer! He clung to the seaweed beside the Barbarian for an instant, then through the gale cried to the other to place his hands upon his shoulders. The Oriental complied intelligently. For a third time Glaucon struggled across the raging flood. The passage seemed endless, and every receding breaker dragging down to the graves of Oceanus. The Athenian knew his power was failing, and doled it out as a miser, counting his strokes, taking deep gulps of air between each wave. Then, even while consciousness and strength seemed passing together, again beneath his feet were the shifting sands, again the voices encouraging, the hands outstretched, strange forms running down into the surf, strange faces all around him. They were bearing him and the Barbarian high upon the beach. They laid him on the hard, wet sand—never a bed more welcome. He was naked. His feet and hands bled from the tearing of stones and barnacles. His head was in fever glow. Dimly he knew the Barbarian was approaching him.
“Hellene, you have saved us. What is your name?”
The other barely raised his head. “In Athens, Glaucon the Alcmæonid, but now I am without name, without country.”
The Oriental answered by kneeling on the sands and touching his head upon them close to Glaucon’s feet.
“Henceforth, O Deliverer, you shall be neither nameless nor outcast. For you have saved me and her I love more than self. You have saved Artazostra, sister of Xerxes, and Mardonius, son of Gobryas, who is not the least of the Princes of Persia and Eran.”
“Mardonius—arch foe of Hellas!” Glaucon spoke the words in horror. Then reaction from all he had undergone robbed him of sense. They carried him to the fisher-village. That night he burned with fever and raved wildly. It was many days before he knew anything again.
Six days later a Byzantine corn-ship brought from Amorgos to Peiræus two survivors of the Solon,—the only ones to escape the swamping of the pinnace. Their story cleared up the mystery of the fate of “Glaucon the Traitor.” “The gods,” said every Agora wiseacre, “had rewarded the villain with their own hands.” The Babylonish carpet-seller and Hiram had vanished, despite all search, but everybody praised Democrates for saving the state from a fearful peril. As for Hermione, her father took her to Eleusis that she might be free from the hoots of the people. Themistocles went about his business very sorrowful. Cimon lost half his gayety. Democrates, too, appeared terribly worn. “How he loved his friend!” said every admirer. Beyond doubt for long Democrates was exceeding thoughtful. Perhaps a reason for this was that about a month after the going of Glaucon he learned from Sicinnus that Prince Mardonius was at length in Sardis,—and possibly Democrates knew on what vessel the carpet-seller had taken flight.
