the glance of his eye, with a few quick words, he chased the terrors from
the strategi and archons that crowded up around him.

"Why distressed? Have we not held the Barbarians back nobly at Artemisium?
Will we not soon sweep his power from the seas in fair battle?"

With almost a conqueror's train he swept up to the city. A last assembly
filled the Pnyx. Themistocles had never been more hopeful, more eloquent.
With one voice men voted never to bend the knee to the king. If the gods
forbade them to win back their own dear country, they would go together to
Italy, to found a new and better Athens far from the Persian's power. And
at Themistocles's motion they voted to recall all the political exiles,
especially Themistocles's own great enemy Aristeides the Just, banished by
the son of Neocles only a few years before. The assembly dispersed--not
weeping but with cheers. Already it was time to be quitting the city.
Couriers told how the Tartar horsemen were burning the villages beyond
Parnes. The magistrates and admirals went to the house of Athena. The last
incense smoked before the image. The bucklers hanging on the temple wall
were taken down by Cimon and the other young patricians. The statue was
reverently lifted, wound in fine linen, and borne swiftly to the fleet.

"Come, _makaira_!" called Hermippus, entering his house to summon his
daughter. Hermione sent a last glance around the disordered aula; her
mother called to the bevy of pallid, whimpering maids. Cleopis was bearing
Phoenix, but Hermione took him from her. Only his own mother should bear
him now. They went through the thinning Agora and took one hard look at
each familiar building and temple. When they should return to them, the
inscrutable god kept hid. So to Peiraeus,--and to the rapid pinnaces which
bore them across the narrow sea to Salamis, where for the moment at least
was peace.

All that day the boats were bearing the people, and late into the night,
until the task was accomplished, the like whereof is not found in history.
No Athenian who willed was left to the power of Xerxes. One brain and
voice planned and directed all. Leonidas, Ajax of the Hellenes, had been
taken. Themistocles, their Odysseus, valiant as Ajax and gifted with the
craft of the immortals, remained. Could that craft and that valour turn
back the might of even the god-king of the Aryans?

CHAPTER XXV

THE ACROP