nd hammer, building up wooden
barriers before the gates of the old citadel.

Everywhere else the city and the country round were soon deserted. The
people streamed down to the shore and were ferried over to Salamis, where
huts of straw and branches rose up in wide extended camps to shelter the
crowds that could find no place in the island villages. In every wood on
either shore trees were being felled. In every creek shipwrights were busy
night and day building new ships or refitting old. To every Greek seaport
messages had been sent, begging them to send to the Straits of Salamis as
many ships, oarsmen, and fighting men as they could muster.

Slowly the Persian army moved southward through Thessaly. A handful of
Spartans, under Leonidas, had been sent forward to delay the Persian
advance. They held the Pass of Thermopylae, between the eastern shoulder of
Mount AEta and the sea. It was a hopeless position. To fight there at all
with such an insignificant force was a mistake. But the Government of
Sparta, slaves to tradition, could not grasp the idea of the plans proposed
by the great Athenian. They were half persuaded to recall Leonidas, but
hesitated to act until it was too late. The Spartan chief and his few
hundred warriors died at their post in self-sacrificing obedience to the
letter of their orders. The Persians poured over the Pass and inundated the
plains of Attica. The few Athenians who had persisted in defending the
Acropolis of Athens made only a brief resistance against overwhelming
numbers. They were all put to the sword and their fellow-countrymen in the
island of Salamis saw far off the pall of smoke that hung over their city,
where temples and houses alike were sacked and set on fire by the victors.

The winds and waves had already been fighting for the Greeks. The Persian
war fleet of 1200 great ships had coasted southwards by the shores of
Thessaly till they neared the group of islands off the northern point of
Euboea. Their scouts reported a Greek fleet to be lying in the channel
between the large island and the mainland. Night was coming on, and the
Persians anchored in eight long lines off Cape Sepias. As the sun rose
there came one of those sudden gales from the eastward that are still the
terror of small craft in the Archipelago. A modern sailor would try to beat
out to seaward and get as far as possible from the dangerous shore, but
these old-world seamen dreaded the open sea. They tried to ride