hus 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 _Nausicaae_, 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--"

"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 publ