is dying, men," he trumpeted through his hands. "To the boat!
Save who can!"

The pinnace set in the waist was cleared away by frantic hands and axes.
Ominous rumblings from the hold told how the undergirding could not keep
back the water. The pinnace was dragged to the ship's lee and launched in
the comparative calm of the _Solon's_ broadside. Pitifully small was the
boat for five and twenty. The sailors, desperate and selfish, leaped in
first, and watched with jealous eyes the struggles of the passengers to
follow. The noisy merchant slipped in the leap, and they heard him scream
once as the wave swallowed him. Brasidas stood in the bow of the pinnace,
clutching a sword to cut the last rope. The boat filled to the gunwales.
The spray dashed into her. The sailors bailed with their caps. Another
passenger leaped across, whereat the men yelled and drew their dirks.

"Three are left. Room for one more. The rest must swim!"

Glaucon stood on the poop. Was life still such a precious thing to some
that they must clutch for it so desperately? He had even a painful
amusement in watching the others. Of himself he thought little save to
hope that under the boiling sea was rest and no return of memory. Then
Brasidas called him.

"Quick! The others are Barbarians and you a Hellene. Your chance--leap!"

He did not stir. The "others"--two strangers in Oriental dress--were
striving to enter the pinnace. The seamen thrust their dirks out to force
them back.

"Full enough!" bawled the "governor." "That fellow on the poop is mad. Cut
the rope, or we are caught in the swirl."

The elder Barbarian lifted his companion as if to fling him into the boat,
but Brasidas's sword cut the one cable. The wave flung the _Solon_ and the
pinnace asunder. With stolid resignation the Orientals retreated to the
poop. The people in the pinnace rowed desperately to keep her out of the
deadly trough of the billows, but Glaucon stood erect on the drifting
wreck and his voice rang through the tumult of the sea.

"Tell them in Athens, and tell Hermione my wife, that Glaucon the
Alcmaeonid went down into the deep declaring his innocence and denouncing
the vengeance of Athena on whosoever foully destroyed him!--"

Brasidas waved his sword in last farewell. Glaucon turned back to the
wreck. The _Solon_ had settled lower. Every wave washed across the waist.
Nothing seemed to meet his gaze save the leaden sky, the leaden green
water, the foam of the boundi