Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
A long “h-a!” went up from the benches. The race to save Hellas was begun. The chase had cost the Athenians dear. Before the Bozra had submitted to her fate, she had led the Nausicaä and her consort well down into the southern Ægean. A little more and they would have lifted the shaggy headlands of Crete. The route before the great trireme was a long one.
They had taken from the penteconter all her spare rowers, and to make the great ship bound over the steel-gray deep was children’s play. “We must save Hellas, and we can!” That was the thought of all from Themistocles to the meanest thranite. So at the beginning when the task seemed light and hands were strong. The breeze that had betrayed the Bozra ever sank lower. Presently it died altogether.
A long race it would be, but with the gale so light the chances were against the sea-mouse. Hasdrubal had no need to urge his crew to rig out the oars and tug furiously, if they wished to escape a Greek prison and a slave market. The whole crew, forty black-visaged, black-eyed creatures, were soon busy over the dozen great sweeps in a frantic attempt to force the Bozra beyond danger.
The last hope fled when they heard the rattling of the cables weighing anchor. Soon the soft slap of the water around the bow and the regular heaving motion told that the Bozra was under way. The sea-mouse creaked and groaned through all her timbers and her lading. The foul bilge-water made the hold stifling as a charnel-house. Lampaxo, Hib being absent, began to howl and moan. “O Queen Hera!
He had faced intolerable captivity, immediate death. Now around his eyes swam hot mist. He fell upon a sea chest, and for a little cared not for anything around, whilst down his cheeks would flow the tears. A hard chase. The rowers of the penteconter were well winded before they caught the Bozra.
The business of Hasdrubal with the Bozra at Trœzene appeared simple. The war had disturbed the Greek harvests. He had come accordingly with a cargo of African corn, and was taking a light return lading of olive oil and salt fish. But those who walked along the harbour front remarked that the Bozra was hardly a common merchantman.
The giant Hib took it upon himself to feed them bean porridge with a wooden spoon, making the dainty sweeter with tales of the parching heats of Africa and the life of a slave under Libyan task-masters. So one day, another, and another, while the Bozra rocked at anchor, and the prisoners knew that liberty lay two short cable lengths away, yet might have been in Atlantis for all it profited them.
Hiram smiled fulsomely and departed. An hour later the Bozra ran out on the light wind around the point of Calauria and into the sparkling sea to eastward. Democrates stood gazing after her until she was a dark speck on the horizon. The speck at last vanished. The strategus walked homeward. Glaucon was gone. The fateful packet binding Democrates irrevocably to the Persian cause was gone.
Even now he is coming, as he came of old from Bozra, treading down the people in his anger, and making them dumb in his fury; and their blood is sprinkled on his garments, and he hath stained all his raiment. For the day of vengeance is in his heart, and the year of his redeemed is come.
The Bozra, it has been said, headed not south but eastward. Hasdrubal’s commission was to fetch Samos, where the still formidable fleet of the Barbarian lay, and to put the precious packet from Democrates in the hands of Tigranes, Xerxes’s commander-in-chief on the coast of Asia Minor. But although speed had been enjoined, the voyage did not go prosperously.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking