to block up the entrances of the
harbour to prevent their being able to anchor inside it. For the island
of Sphacteria, stretching along in a line close in front of the harbour,
at once makes it safe and narrows its entrances, leaving a passage for
two ships on the side nearest Pylos and the Athenian fortifications, and
for eight or nine on that next the rest of the mainland: for the rest,
the island was entirely covered with wood, and without paths through
not being inhabited, and about one mile and five furlongs in length.
The inlets the Lacedaemonians meant to close with a line of ships placed
close together, with their prows turned towards the sea, and, meanwhile,
fearing that the enemy might make use of the island to operate against
them, carried over some heavy infantry thither, stationing others along
the coast. By this means the island and the continent would be alike
hostile to the Athenians, as they would be unable to land on either; and
the shore of Pylos itself outside the inlet towards the open sea having
no harbour, and, therefore, presenting no point which they could use as
a base to relieve their countrymen, they, the Lacedaemonians, without
sea-fight or risk would in all probability become masters of the place,
occupied as it had been on the spur of the moment, and unfurnished with
provisions. This being determined, they carried over to the island the
heavy infantry, drafted by lot from all the companies. Some others had
crossed over before in relief parties, but these last who were
left there were four hundred and twenty in number, with their Helot
attendants, commanded by Epitadas, son of Molobrus.

Meanwhile Demosthenes, seeing the Lacedaemonians about to attack him
by sea and land at once, himself was not idle. He drew up under the
fortification and enclosed in a stockade the galleys remaining to him of
those which had been left him, arming the sailors taken out of them with
poor shields made most of them of osier, it being impossible to procure
arms in such a desert place, and even these having been obtained from a
thirty-oared Messenian privateer and a boat belonging to some Messenians
who happened to have come to them. Among these Messenians were forty
heavy infantry, whom he made use of with the rest. Posting most of his
men, unarmed and armed, upon the best fortified and strong points of the
place towards the interior, with orders to repel any attack of the land
forces, he picked sixty heavy in