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. He could not turn back. At the gray of morning with a few
servants he quitted Troezene, and hastened to join Aristeides and Pausanias
in Boeotia.

* * * * * * *

In the hold of the _Bozra_, where Hasdrubal had stowed his unwilling
passengers, there crept just enough sunlight to make darkness visible. The
gags had been removed from the prisoners, suffering them to eat, whereupon
Lampaxo had raised a truly prodigious outcry which must needs be silenced
by a vigorous anointing with Hasdrubal's whip of bullock's hide. Her
husband and Glaucon disdained to join a clamour which could never escape
the dreary cavern of the hold, and which only drew the hoots of their
unmagnanimous guardians. The Carthaginians had not misinterpreted
Glaucon's silence, however. They knew well they had a Titan in custody,
and did not even unlash his hands. His feet and Phormio's were tied
between two beams in lieu of stocks. 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. Phormio never
reviled his wife as the author of their calamity, and Lampaxo, with nigh
childish earnestness, would protest that surely Democrates knew not what
the sailors did when they bound her.

"So noble a patriot! An evil god bewitched him into letting these harpies
take us. Woe! woe! What misfortune!"

To which plaint the others only smiled horribly and ground their teeth.

Phormio as well as Glaucon had heard the avowal of Democrates on the night
of the seizure. There was no longer any doubt of the answer to the great
riddle. But disheartening, benumbing beyond all personal anguish was the
dread for Hellas. The sacrifice at Thermopylae vain. The glory of Salamis
vain. Hellas and Athens enslaved. The will of Xerxes and Mardonius
accomplished not because of their valour, but because of their enemies'
infamy.

"O gods, if indee