le-pins
answered them. Eurybiades had spoken. There was no treason. All now was in
the hand of the god.

* * * * * * *

Across the strait they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet
them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around
Xerxes encouraging their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive,
half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene
knew that. The keen Phoenicians, who had chafed at being kept from action
so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious
strokes. The grudges, the commercial rivalries between Greek and Sidonian,
were old. No Persian was hotter for Xerxes's cause than his Phoenician
vassals that day.

And as they charged, the foemen's lines seemed so dense, their ships so
tall, their power so vast, that involuntarily hesitancy came over the
Greeks. Their strokes slowed. The whole line lagged. Here an AEginetan
galley dropped behind, yonder a Corinthian navarch suffered his men to
back water. Even the _keleustes_ of the _Nausicaae_ slackened his beating
on the sounding-board. Eurybiades's ship had drifted behind to the line of
her sisters, as in defiance a towering Sidonian sprang ahead of the
Barbarian line of battle, twenty trumpets from her poop and foreship
asking, "Dare you meet me?" The Greek line became almost stationary. Some
ships were backing water. It was a moment which, suffered to slip
unchecked, leads to irreparable disaster. Then like a god sprang
Themistocles upon the capstan on his poop. He had torn off his helmet. The
crews of scores of triremes saw him. His voice was like Stentor's, the
herald whose call was strong as fifty common men.

In a lull amidst the howls of the Barbarians his call rang up and down the
flagging ships:--

"_O Sons of Hellas! save your land,_
_Your children save, your altars and your wives!_
_Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!_"

"Now dare and do, for ye have staked your all!"

Navarch shouted it to navarch. The cry went up and down the line of the
Hellenes, "loud as when billows lash the beetling crags." The trailing
oars beat again into the water, and even as the ships once more gained
way, Themistocles nodded to Ameinias, and he to the _keleustes_. The
master oarsman leaped from his seat and crashed his gavel down upon the
sounding-board.

"_Aru! Aru! Aru!_ Put it on, my men!"

The _Nausicaae_ answered w