cording to his luxurious taste,--stanchions cased in bronze
hammered work, heavy rugs from Carthage, lamps swinging from chains of
precious Corinthian brass. Behind a tripod stood an image of Aphrodite of
Fair Counsel, the admiral's favourite deity. By force of habit now he
crossed the cabin, took the golden box, and shook a few grains of
frankincense upon the tripod.

"Attend, O queen," he said mechanically, "and be thou propitious to all my
prayers."

He knew the words meant nothing. The puff of night air from the port-hole
carried the fragrance from the room. The image wore its unchanging,
meaningless smile, and Themistocles smiled too, albeit bitterly.

"So this is the end. A losing fight, cowardice, slavery--no, I shall not
live to see that last."

He looked from the port-hole. He could see the lights of the Barbarian
fleet clearly. He took long breaths of the clear brine.

"So the tragedy ends--worse than Phrynicus's poorest, when they pelted his
chorus from the orchestra with date-stones. And yet--and yet--"

He never formulated what came next even in his own mind.

"_Eu!_" he cried, springing back with part of his old lightness, "I have
borne a brave front before it all. I have looked the Cyclops in the face,
even when he glowered the fiercest. But it all will pass. I presume
Thersytes the caitiff and Agamemnon the king have the same sleep and the
same dreams in Orchus. And a few years more or a few less in a man's life
make little matter. But it would be sweeter to go out thinking 'I have
triumphed' than 'I have failed, and all the things I loved fail with me.'
And Athens--"

Again he stopped. When he resumed his monologue, it was in a different
key.

"There are many things I cannot understand. They cannot unlock the riddles
at Delphi, no seer can read them in the omens of birds. Why was Glaucon
blasted? Was he a traitor? What was the truth concerning his treason?
Since his going I have lost half my faith in mortal men."

Once more his thoughts wandered.

"How they trust me, my followers of Athens! Is it not better to be a
leader of one city of freemen than a Xerxes, master of a hundred million
slaves? How they greeted me, as if I were Apollo the Saviour, when I
returned to Peiraeus! And must it be written by the chroniclers thereafter,
'About this time Themistocles, son of Neocles, aroused the Athenians to
hopeless resistance and drew on them utter destruction'? O Father Zeus,
must men say _that_?