he ladder in the companionway,
Themistocles turned on the outlaw, it seemed, fiercely.

"Tell your story."

Glaucon told it: the encounter on the hillside at Troezene, the seizure in
Phormio's house, the coming of Democrates and his boasts over the
captives, the voyage and the pursuing. The son of Neocles never hastened
the recital, though once or twice he widened it by an incisive question.
At the end he demanded:--

"And does Phormio confirm all this?"

"All. Question him."

"Humph! He's a truthful man in everything save the price of fish. Now let
us open the packet."

Themistocles was exceeding deliberate. He drew his dagger and pried the
wrapper open without breaking the seals or tearing the papyrus. He turned
the strips of paper carefully one by one, opened a casket, and drew thence
a written sheet which he compared painfully with those before him.

"The same hand," his remark in undertone.

He was so calm that a stranger would have thought him engaged with routine
business. Many of the sheets he simply lifted, glanced at, laid down
again. They did not seem to interest. So through half the roll, but the
outlaw, watching patiently, at last saw he eyebrows of the son of Neocles
pressing ever closer,--sign that the inscrutable brain was at its fateful
work.

At last he uttered one word, "Cipher."

A sheet lay before him covered with broken words and phrases--seemingly
without meaning--but the admiral knew the secret of the Spartan _scytale_,
the "cipher wood." Forth from his casket came a number of rounded sticks
of varying lengths. On one after another he wound the sheet spirally until
at the fifth trial the scattered words came together. He read with ease.
Then Themistocles's brows grew closer than before. He muttered softly in
his beard. But still he said nothing aloud. He read the cipher sheet
through once, twice; it seemed thrice. Other sheets he fingered
delicately, as though he feared the touch of venom. All without haste, but
at the end, when Themistocles arose from his seat, the outlaw trembled.
Many things he had seen, but never a face so changed. The admiral was
neither flushed nor pale. But ten years seemed added to those lines above
his eyes. His cheeks were hollowed. Was it fancy that put the gray into
his beard and hair? Slowly he rose; slowly he ordered the marine on guard
outside the cabin to summon Simonides, Cimon, and all the officers of the
flag-ship. They trooped hither and filled the