A Victor of Salamis 36Book III · Moloch Betrays the Phœnician
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Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 36
Book III · Moloch Betrays the Phœnician
DavisEnglish
Even whilst the boat pulled out to the trader, Hiram suggested that since his superior’s “unfortunate scruples” forbade them to shed blood, at least they could disable the most dangerous captive by putting out his eyes. But Hasdrubal, thrifty Semite, would not hearken.
“Is not the fellow worth five hundred shekels in the Carthage market?—but who will give two for a blind dog?”
And once at the ship the prisoners were stowed in the hold so securely that even Hiram ceased to concern himself. In the morning some of the neighbours indeed wondered at Phormio’s closed door and the silence of the jangling voice of Lampaxo; but the fishmonger was after all an exile, and might have returned suddenly to Attica, now the Persians had retreated again to Bœotia, and before these surmises could change to misdoubting, the Bozra was bearing forth into the Ægean.
The business of Hasdrubal with the Bozra at Trœzene appeared simple. The war had disturbed the Greek harvests. He had come accordingly with a cargo of African corn, and was taking a light return lading of olive oil and salt fish. But those who walked along the harbour front remarked that the Bozra was hardly a common merchantman. She was a “sea-mouse,” long, shallow, and very fast under sail; she also carried again an unwontedly heavy crew. When Hasdrubal’s cargo seemed completed, he lingered a couple of days, alleging he was repairing a cable; then the third morning after his nocturnal adventure a cipher letter to Democrates sent the Carthaginian to sea. The letter went thus:—
“Lycon, in the camp of the Greeks in Bœotia, to Democrates in Trœzene, greeting:—The armies have now faced many days. The soothsayers declare that the aggressor is sure to be defeated, still there has been some skirmishing in which your Athenians slew Masistes, Mardonius’s chief of cavalry. This, however, is no great loss to us. Your presence with Aristeides is now urgently needed. Send Hasdrubal and Hiram at once to Asia with the papers we arranged in Corinth. Come yourself with speed to the army. Ten days and this merry dice-throwing is ended. Chaire!”
Democrates immediately after this gave Hiram a small packet of papyrus sheets rolled very tight, with the ominous injunction to “conceal carefully, weight it with lead, and fling it overboard if there is danger of capture.” At which Hiram bowed more elegantly than usual and answered, “Fear not; it shall be guarded as the priests guard the ark of Moloch, and when next your slave comes, it is to salute my Lord as the sovran of Athens.”
Hiram smiled fulsomely and departed. An hour later the Bozra ran out on the light wind around the point of Calauria and into the sparkling sea to eastward. Democrates stood gazing after her until she was a dark speck on the horizon.
The speck at last vanished. The strategus walked homeward. Glaucon was gone. The fateful packet binding Democrates irrevocably to the Persian cause was gone. He could not turn back. At the gray of morning with a few servants he quitted Trœzene, and hastened to join Aristeides and Pausanias in Bœotia.
In the hold of the Bozra, where Hasdrubal had stowed his unwilling passengers, there crept just enough sunlight to make darkness visible. The gags had been removed from the prisoners, suffering them to eat, whereupon Lampaxo had raised a truly prodigious outcry which must needs be silenced by a vigorous anointing with Hasdrubal’s whip of bullock’s hide. Her husband and Glaucon disdained to join a clamour which could never escape the dreary cavern of the hold, and which only drew the hoots of their unmagnanimous guardians. The Carthaginians had not misinterpreted Glaucon’s silence, however. They knew well they had a Titan in custody, and did not even unlash his hands. His feet and Phormio’s were tied between two beams in lieu of stocks. The giant Hib took it upon himself to feed them bean porridge with a wooden spoon, making the dainty sweeter with tales of the parching heats of Africa and the life of a slave under Libyan task-masters.
So one day, another, and another, while the Bozra rocked at anchor, and the prisoners knew that liberty lay two short cable lengths away, yet might have been in Atlantis for all it profited them. Phormio never reviled his wife as the author of their calamity, and Lampaxo, with nigh childish earnestness, would protest that surely Democrates knew not what the sailors did when they bound her.
“So noble a patriot! An evil god bewitched him into letting these harpies take us. Woe! woe! What misfortune!”
To which plaint the others only smiled horribly and ground their teeth.
Phormio as well as Glaucon had heard the avowal of Democrates on the night of the seizure. There was no longer any doubt of the answer to the great riddle. But disheartening, benumbing beyond all personal anguish was the dread for Hellas. The sacrifice at Thermopylæ vain. The glory of Salamis vain. Hellas and Athens enslaved. The will of Xerxes and Mardonius accomplished not because of their valour, but because of their enemies’ infamy.
“O gods, if indeed there be gods!” Glaucon was greatly doubting that at last; “if ye have any power, if justice, truth, and honour weigh against iniquity, put that power forth, or never claim the prayers and sacrifice of men again.”
Glaucon was past dreading for himself. He prayed that Hermione might be spared a long life of tears, and that Artemis might slay her quickly by her silent arrows. To follow his thoughts in all their dark mazes were profitless. Suffice it that the night which had brooded over his soul from the hour he fled from Colonus was never so dark as now. He was too despairing even to curse.
The last hope fled when they heard the rattling of the cables weighing anchor. Soon the soft slap of the water around the bow and the regular heaving motion told that the Bozra was under way. The sea-mouse creaked and groaned through all her timbers and her lading. The foul bilge-water made the hold stifling as a charnel-house. Lampaxo, Hib being absent, began to howl and moan.
“O Queen Hera! O Queen Hera, I die for a breath of air—I, the most patriotic woman in Athens!”
“Silence, goodwife,” muttered Phormio, twisting desperately on the filthy straw under him. “Have I not enough to fret about without the addition of your pipings?” And he muttered underbreath the old saw of Hesiod:—
“He who doth a woman trust,
Doth trust a den of thieves.”
“Silence below there, you squealing sow,” ordered Hib, from the hatchway. “Must I tan your hide again?”
Lampaxo subsided. Phormio tugged vainly at his feet in the stocks. Glaucon said nothing. A terrible hope had come to him. If he could not speedily die, at least he would soon go mad, and that would rescue him from his most terrible enemy—himself.
The Bozra, it has been said, headed not south but eastward. Hasdrubal’s commission was to fetch Samos, where the still formidable fleet of the Barbarian lay, and to put the precious packet from Democrates in the hands of Tigranes, Xerxes’s commander-in-chief on the coast of Asia Minor. But although speed had been enjoined, the voyage did not go prosperously. Off Belbina the wind deserted them altogether, and Hasdrubal had been compelled to force his craft along by sweeps,—ponderous oars, worked by three men,—but his progress at best was slow. Off Cythnos the breeze had again arisen, but it was the Eurus from the southeast, worse than useless; the Bozra had been obliged to ride at anchor off the island for two days. Then another calm; and at last, “because,” said Hasdrubal piously, “he had vowed two black lambs to the Wind God,” the breeze came clear and cool from the north, which, if not wholly favourable, enabled the merchantman to plough onward. It was the fifth day, finally, after quitting Trœzene, that the headlands of Naxos came in sight at dawn, and the master began to take comfort. The fleet of the Greeks—a fisherboat had told him—was swinging inactive at Delos well to the north and westward, and he could fairly consider himself in waters dominated by the king.
“A fortunate voyage,” the master was boasting to Hiram, as he sat at breakfast in the stern-cabin above a platter of boiled dolphin; “two talents from the Persians for acting as their messenger; a thousand drachmæ profit on the corn; a hundred from Master Democrates in return for our little service, not to mention the profit on the return cargo, and last but not least the three slaves.”
“Yes, the three slaves. I had almost forgotten about them.”
“You see, my dear Hiram,” quoth the master, betwixt two unwontedly huge mouthfuls, “you see what folly it was of you to suggest putting out that handsome fellow’s eyes. I am strongly thinking of selling him not to Carthage, but to Babylon. I know a trader at Ephesus who makes a specialty of handsome youths. The satrap Artabozares has commissioned him to find as many good-looking out-runners as possible. Also for his harem—if this Glaucon were only a eunuch—”
Hiram, breaking a large disk of bread, was smiling very suggestively before making reply, when a sailor shouted at the hatch:—
“Ships, master! Ships with oars!”
“In what quarter?” Hasdrubal sprang up, letting the dishes clatter.
“From Myconus. They come up fast. Hib at the masthead counts eleven triremes.”
“Baal preserve us!” The master at once clambered on deck. “The Greek fleet may be quitting Delos. We must pray for wind.”
It was a gray, hazy day after a dozen bright ones. The northerly breeze seemed falling. The water spread out a sombre lead colour. The heights of Naxos were in sight to starboard, but none too clearly. Much more interesting to Hasdrubal was the line of dots spreading on the horizon to northwest. Despite the distance his keen eyes could catch the rise and fall of the oar banks—war-ships, not traders. Hib was right, and Hasdrubal’s face grew longer. No triremes save the Greeks could be bearing thither, and a merchantman, even from nominally neutral Carthage, caught headed for the king’s coasts in those days of blazing war was nothing if not fair prize. The master’s decision was prompt.
“They are far off. Put the ship before the wind.”
The sea-mouse was fleet indeed for a trader, but unlike a trireme must count on her canvas for her speed. With a piping breeze she could mock pursuit. In a calm she was fearfully handicapped. However, for a moment Hasdrubal congratulated himself he could slip away unnoticed. The distance was very great. Then his dark lips cursed.
“Moloch consume me! If I see aright, we are chased.”
Two vessels, in fact, seemed turning away from the rest. They were heading straight after the Bozra. A long race it would be, but with the gale so light the chances were against the sea-mouse. Hasdrubal had no need to urge his crew to rig out the oars and tug furiously, if they wished to escape a Greek prison and a slave market.
The whole crew, forty black-visaged, black-eyed creatures, were soon busy over the dozen great sweeps in a frantic attempt to force the Bozra beyond danger. Panting, yelling, blaspheming, for a while they seemed holding their own, but the master watched with sinking heart the waning breeze. At the end of an hour their pursuers could be distinguished,—a tall trireme behind, but closer, pulling more rapidly, a penteconter, a slim scouting galley working fifty oars in a single bank.
Hasdrubal began to shout desperately: “Wind, Baal, wind! Fill the sails, and seven he-goats await thy altar in Carthage!”
Either the god found the bribe too small or lacked the power to accept it. The breeze did not stiffen. The sailors strove like demons at the sweeps, but almost imperceptibly the gap betwixt them and the war-ships was narrowing.
Hiram, who had been rowing, now left his post to approach the master.
“What of the captives? Crucifixion waits us all if they are found on the ship and tell their story. Kill them at once and fling the bodies overboard.”
Hasdrubal shook his head.
“Not yet. Still a good chance. I’ll not cast five hundred bright shekels to the fish till harder pressed. The breeze may strengthen.” Then he redoubled his shout. “Wind, Baal, wind!”
But a little later the gap betwixt the sea-mouse and the penteconter had so dwindled that even the master’s inborn thrift began to yield to prudence.
“Hark you, Hib,” he cried from the helm. “Take Adherbal and Lars the Etruscan. It’s a good ten furlongs to that cursed galley still, but we must have those prisoners ready on deck. Over they go if the chase gets a bit closer.”
The giant Libyan hastened to comply, while all the crew joined in the captain’s howl, “Wind, Baal, wind!” and cried reckless vows, while they scanned the fateful stretch of gray-green water behind the stern, whereon liberty if not life depended.
The trireme, pulling only one of her banks, was dropping behind, her navarch leaving the tiring chase to the penteconter, but the latter hung on doggedly.
“Curse those war-ships with their long oars and heavy crews,” growled Hib, reappearing above the hatch with the prisoners. “The penteconter’s only nine furlongs off.”
He had been obliged to release the captives from the stocks, but Hib had taken the precaution to place on the formidable athlete a pair of leg irons joined by a shackle. Not merely were Glaucon’s arms pinioned by a stout cord, but the great Libyan was gripping them tightly. Lars and Adherbal conducted the other prisoners, whose feet, however, were not bound. For a moment the three captives stood blinking at the unfamiliar light, unconscious of the situation and their extremity, whilst Hasdrubal for the fortieth time measured the distance. The wind had strengthened a little. Let it strengthen a trifle more and the Bozra would hold her own. Still her people were nearly spent with their toiling, and the keen beak and large complement of the man-of-war made resistance madness if she once came alongside.
“Have ready sand-bags,” ordered Hasdrubal, “to tie to these wretches’ feet. Set them by the boat mast, so the sail can hide our pretty deed from the penteconter. Have ready an axe. We’ll bide a little longer, though, before we say ‘farewell’ to our passengers. The gods may help yet.”
Hib and his fellows were marching the prisoners to the poop, when the sight of the war-ship told Phormio all the story. No gag now hindered his tongue.
“Oh, dragons from Carthage, are you going to murder us?” he began in tones more indignant than terrified.
“No, save as Heaven enjoins it!” quoth the master, clapping his hands to urge on the rowing stroke. “Pray, then, your Æolus, Hellene, to stiffen the breeze.”
“Pray, then, to Pluto, whelps,” bawled the undaunted fishmonger, “to give you a snug berth in Orcus. Ha! but it’s a merry thought of you and all your pretty lads stretched on crosses and waiting for the crows.”
But a violent screech came from Lampaxo, who had just comprehended the fate awaiting.
“Ai! ai! save me, fellow-Hellenes!” she bawled toward the penteconter, “a citizeness of Athens, the most patriotic woman in the city, slaughtered by Barbarians—”
“Silence the squealing sow!” roared Hasdrubal. “They’ll hear her on the war-ship. Aft with her and overboard at once.”
But as they dragged Lampaxo on the poop, her outcry rose to a tempest till Lars the Etruscan clapped his hand upon her mouth. Her screaming stilled, but his own outcry more than replaced it. In a twinkling the virago’s hard teeth closed over his fingers. Two ran from the oars to him. But the woman, conscious that she fought for life or death, held fast. Curses, blows, even a dagger pried betwixt her lips—all bootless. She seemed as a thing possessed. And all the time the Etruscan howled in mortal agony.
The thin dagger, bent too hard, snapped betwixt her teeth. Lars’s clamour could surely be heard on the penteconter. Again the breeze was falling.
They seized the fury’s throat, and pressed it till she turned black, but the grip of her jaw only tightened.
“Attatai! attatai!” groaned the victim, “forbear. Don’t throttle her. Her teeth are iron. They are biting through the bone. If you strangle her, they will never relax. Attatai! attatai!”
“Nip him tight, little wife,” called Phormio, for once regarding his spouse with supreme satisfaction. “It’s a dainty morsel you have in your mouth. Chew it well!”
Lampaxo’s attackers paused an instant, uncertain how to release the Etruscan. To their threats of torture the woman was deaf as the mainmast, and still the Etruscan screamed.
Glaucon had stood perfectly passive during all this grim by-play. Once Phormio saw his fellow-captive’s face twist into a smile, but in the excitement of the moment the fishmonger as well as the Carthaginians almost forgot the Isthmionices, and Hib relaxed his grip and guard. Lars’s finger was streaming red, when Hasdrubal threw away the steering-paddle in a rage.
“Silence her forever! The axe, Hib. Split her skull open!”
The axe lay at the Libyan’s feet. One instant, only one, betook his hands from the athlete’s wrists to seize the weapon, but in that instant the yell from all the crew drowned even the howls of Lars. Had any watched, they might have seen all the muscles in the Alcmæonid’s glorious body contract, might have seen the fire spring from his eyes as he put forth a godlike might. Heracles and Athena Polias had been with him when he threw his strength upon the bands that held his arms. The crushing of Lycon down had been no feat like this. In a twinkling the cords about his wrists were snapped. He swung his free hands in the air.
“Athens!” he shouted, whilst the crew stood spellbound. “Hermione! Glaucon is still Glaucon!”
Hib had grasped the axe, but he never knew what smote him once behind the ear and sent him rolling lifeless against the bulwark. In an instant his bright weapon was swinging high above the athlete’s head. Glaucon stood terrible as Achilles before the cowering Trojans.
“Woe! woe! he is Melkarth. We are lost men!” groaned the crew.
“At him, fools!” bawled Hasdrubal, first to recover wits, “his feet are still shackled.”
But whilst the master called to them, the axe dashed down upon the fetters, and one great stroke smote the coupling-link in twain. The Athenian stood a moment looking right and left, the axe dancing as a toy in his grasp, and a smile on his face inviting, “Prove me.”
A javelin singing from the hand of Adherbal flew at him. An imperceptible bending of the body, a red streak on Glaucon’s naked side, and it dug into the deck. Yet whilst it quivered, was out again and hurled through the Carthaginian’s breast and shoulders. He fell in a heap beside the Libyan.
Another howl from the sailors.
“Not Melkarth, but Baal the Dragon-Slayer. We are lost. Who can contend with him?”
“Cowards!” thundered Hasdrubal, whipping the sword from his thigh, “do you not know these three sniff our true business? If they live when the penteconter comes, it’s not prison but Sheol that’s waiting. Their lives or ours. One rush and we have this madman down!”
But their terrible adversary gave the master no time to gather his myrmidons. One stroke of the axe had already released Phormio, who clutched the arms of his wife.
“The cabin!” the ready-witted fishmonger commanded, and Lampaxo, scarce knowing what she did, released her ungentle hold on Lars and suffered her husband to drag her down the ladder. Glaucon went last; no man loving death enough to come within reach of the axe. Hasdrubal saw his victims escaping under his eyes and groaned.
“There is only one hatchway. We must force it. Darts, belaying-pins, ballast stones—fling anything down. It’s for life or death!”
“The penteconter is four furlongs away!” shrieked a sailor, growing gray under his dark skin.
“And Democrates’s despatches are hid in the cabin,” added Hiram, chattering. “If they do not go overboard, our deaths will be terrible.”
“Hear, King Moloch!” called Hasdrubal, lifting his swarthy arms to heaven, then striking them with his sword till the blood gushed down, “suffer us to escape this calamity and I vow thee even my daughter Tibaït,—a child in her tenth year,—she shall die in thy holy furnace a sacrifice.”
“Hear, Baal! Hear, Moloch!” chorussed the crew; and gathering courage from necessity seized boat-hooks, oars, dirks, and all other handy weapons for their attack.
But below the released prisoners had not been idle. Never—Glaucon knew it—had his brain been clearer, his invention more fertile than now, and Phormio was not too old to cease to be a valiant helper. The cabin was small. A few spears and swords stood in the rack about the mast. The athlete bolted the sliding hatch-cover, and tore down the weapons.
“Release your wife,” he ordered Phormio; “yonder sea chest is strong. Drag it over to bar the hatch-ladder. Work as Titans if you hope for another sun.”
“Ai, ai, ai!” screeched Lampaxo, who had released Lars’s fingers only to resume her din, “we all perish. They are hewing the hatch-cover with their axes. Hera preserve us! The wood splinters. We die.”
“We have no time to die,” called the athlete, “but only to save Hellas.”
A dozen blows beat the frail hatch-cover to splinters. A dark face with grinning teeth showed itself. A heavy ballast stone grazed the athlete’s shoulder, but the intruder fell back with a gurgling in his throat, his hands clutching the empty air. Glaucon had sent a heavy spear clean through him.
More ballast stones, but the Titanic Alcmæonid had torn a mattress from a bunk, and held it as effective shield. By main force the others dragged the chest across to the hatchway, making the entrance doubly narrow. Vainly Hasdrubal stormed at his men to rush down boldly. They barely dared to fling stones and darts, so fast their adversary sped them back, and to the mark.
“A god! a god! We fight against Heaven!” bleated the seamen.
Their groans were answered by the screechings of Lampaxo through the port-hole and the taunts of Phormio.
“Sing, sing, pretty Pisinoë, sweetest of the sirens,” tossed the fishmonger, playing his part at Glaucon’s side; “lure that dear penteconter a little nearer. And you, brave, gentle sirs, don’t try ‘to flay a skinned dog’ by thrusting down here. Your hands are just itching for the nails, I warrant!”
Hasdrubal redoubled his vows to Moloch. In place of his daughter he substituted his son, though the lad was fourteen years old and the darling of his parents. But the god was not tempted even now. The attack on the cabin had called the sailors from the oars. The penteconter consequently had gained fast upon them. The trireme behind was manning her other banks and drawing down apace. Hiram cast a hopeless glance toward her.
“I know those ‘eyes’—those red hawse-holes—the Nausicaä. Come what may, Themistocles must not read the packet in the cabin. There is one chance.”
He approached the splintered hatchway and outstretched his hands—weaponless.
“Ah, good and gracious Master Glaucon, and your honest friends, your gods of Hellas are very great and have delivered us, your poor slaves, into your hands. Your friends approach. We will resist no longer. Come on deck; and when the ship is taken, entreat the navarch to be merciful and generous.”
“Bah!” spat Phormio, “you write your promises in water, or better in oil, black-scaled viper. We know what time of day it is with us, and what for you.”
Hiram saw Glaucon’s hand rise with a javelin, and shrank shivering.
“They won’t hearken. All’s lost,” he whimpered, his smile becoming ghastly.
“Another rush, men!” pleaded Hasdrubal.
“Lead the charge yourself, master!” retorted the seamen, sullenly.
The captain, swinging a cutlass, leaped down the bloodstained hatch. One moment the desperate fury of his attack carried Glaucon backward. The two fought—sword against axe—in doubtful combat.
“Follow! follow!” called Hasdrubal, dashing Phormio aside with the flat of his blade. “I have him at last!” But just as Hiram was leading down a dozen more, the athlete’s axe swept past the sword, and fell like a millstone on the master’s skull. He never screamed as he crashed upon the planks.
This was enough. The seamen were at the end of their valour. If they must die, they must die. What use resisting destiny?
Slowly, slowly the moments crept for the three in the cabin. Even Lampaxo grew still. They heard Hiram pleading frantically, vainly, for another attempt, and raving strange things about Democrates, Lycon, and the Persian. Then behind the Bozra sounded the rushing of foam around a ram, the bumping of fifty oars plying on the thole-pins. Into their sight shot the penteconter, the brass glistening on her prow, the white blades leaping in rhythm. Marines in armour stood on the forecastle. A few arrows pattered on the plankings of the Bozra. Her abject crew obeyed the demand to surrender. Their helmsman pushed over the steering-paddle, and flung himself upon the deck. The sea-mouse went up into the wind. The grappling-irons rattled over the bulwark. Glaucon heard the Phœnicians whining, “Mercy! mercy!” as they embraced the boarders’ feet, then the prōreus, in hearty Attic, calling, “Secure the prisoners and rummage the prize!”
Glaucon had suffered many things of late. He had faced intolerable captivity, immediate death. Now around his eyes swam hot mist. He fell upon a sea chest, and for a little cared not for anything around, whilst down his cheeks would flow the tears.
