t it was his duty to assist them, while there was
still a hope and a possibility of stopping the enemy's progress, while
Delphinium was still in process of fortification and unfinished, and
before the completion of a higher rampart which was being added to
protect the camp and fleet of their besiegers. Astyochus now saw that
the allies also wished it and prepared to go, in spite of his intention
to the contrary owing to the threat already referred to.

In the meantime news came from Caunus of the arrival of the twenty-seven
ships with the Lacedaemonian commissioners; and Astyochus, postponing
everything to the duty of convoying a fleet of that importance, in
order to be more able to command the sea, and to the safe conduct of the
Lacedaemonians sent as spies over his behaviour, at once gave up going
to Chios and set sail for Caunus. As he coasted along he landed at the
Meropid Cos and sacked the city, which was unfortified and had been
lately laid in ruins by an earthquake, by far the greatest in living
memory, and, as the inhabitants had fled to the mountains, overran the
country and made booty of all it contained, letting go, however, the
free men. From Cos arriving in the night at Cnidus he was constrained by
the representations of the Cnidians not to disembark the sailors, but to
sail as he was straight against the twenty Athenian vessels, which with
Charminus, one of the commanders at Samos, were on the watch for the
very twenty-seven ships from Peloponnese which Astyochus was himself
sailing to join; the Athenians in Samos having heard from Melos of their
approach, and Charminus being on the look-out off Syme, Chalce, Rhodes,
and Lycia, as he now heard that they were at Caunus.

Astyochus accordingly sailed as he was to Syme, before he was heard of,
in the hope of catching the enemy somewhere out at sea. Rain, however,
and foggy weather encountered him, and caused his ships to straggle
and get into disorder in the dark. In the morning his fleet had parted
company and was most of it still straggling round the island, and the
left wing only in sight of Charminus and the Athenians, who took it for
the squadron which they were watching for from Caunus, and hastily put
out against it with part only of their twenty vessels, and attacking
immediately sank three ships and disabled others, and had the advantage
in the action until the main body of the fleet unexpectedly hove in
sight, when they were surrounded on every sid