scored the first
success, swooping down with her squadron on a Greek galley that had
ventured to scout along the Persian front in the grey of the morning.
Attacked by the five the ship was taken, and the victors celebrated their
success by hanging the commander over the prow of his ship, cutting his
throat and letting his blood flow into the sea, an offering to the gods of
the deep. The cruel deed was something that inspired no particular sense of
horror in those days of heathen war. It was probably not on account of this
piece of barbarity, but out of their anger at being opposed by a woman, and
a Greek woman, that the allied leaders of Greece set a price on the head of
the Amazon queen; but no one ever succeeded in qualifying to claim it.

The Persians, hoping to gain an advantage from their superior numbers, now
detached a squadron which was to coast along the eastern shores of Euboea,
enter the strait at its southern end, and fall on the rear of the Greeks,
while the main body attacked them in front. Eurybiades and Themistocles had
early intelligence of this movement, but were not alarmed by it. Shortly
before sunset the Greeks bore down on the Persians, attacked them in the
narrow waters where their numbers could not tell, sank some thirty ships by
ramming them, and then drew off as the night came on.

It was a wild night. The Greeks had hardly regained their sheltered
anchorage when the wind rose, lightning played round the mountain crests on
either hand, the thunder rolled and the rain came down in torrents. The
main Persian fleet, in a less sheltered position, found it difficult to
avoid disaster, and the crews were horrified at seeing as the lightning lit
up the sea masses of debris and swollen corpses of drowned men drifting
amongst them as the currents brought the wreckage of the earlier storm
floating down from beyond Cape Sepias. The hundred ships detached to round
the south point of Euboea were still slowly making their way along its
rocky eastern coast. Caught in the midnight storm most of them drove ashore
and were dashed to pieces.

In the morning the sea was still rough, but the Greeks came out of the
strait, and, without committing themselves to a general action, fell upon
the nearest ships, the squadron of Cilicia, and sank and captured several
of them, retiring when the main fleet began to close upon them. On the
third day the sea was calm and the Persians tried to force the narrows by a
frontal at