Part 18 (1/2)
”But tell me the story,” said the young man.
”Well, it happened in this way. My master had gone up to see Pharnabazus, the Satrap, who had promised to aid him on his way up to Susa to see the Great King. There were six of us with him; his secretary, myself and four slaves. There was Timandra, also, whom he used to call his wife; but his real wife was an Athenian lady, Hipparete, I have heard say.”
”Yes,” interrupted Callias, ”I knew her; a cousin of my own; a most unhappy marriage. But go on.”
”Well, Pharnabazus received him most hospitably. There was no good house in the village, so we had three cottages. Alcibiades had one; the secretary and I another, and the slaves, a third. Every day the satrap sent a handsome supply of provisions for us; dishes and wine from his own table for my master, and for us all that we could want for ourselves. I never fared better in my life. And my master had long talks with him and seemed in excellent spirits. Everything was going on as well as possible. Then there came a change. I never could find out whether my master had heard anything to make him suspicious. If he had, he certainly told the secretary nothing about it. But he was very much depressed. First he sent Timandra away. She was very unwilling to go, poor lady, for she did love my master very much, though, as I say, she was not really his wife. But my master insisted on it, so she went away to stay with some friends. After that his spirits grew worse and worse.
He used to tell his secretary the dreams he had. Once he dreamt he was dressed in Timandra's clothes, and that she was putting rouge and powder on his face. At another time he seemed to see himself laid on a funeral pyre and the people standing round ready to set it on fire. The very night after he had that dream we were awakened by a tremendous uproar; the secretary and I got up and looked out. The master's cottage, which was about a stadium[58] away from ours was on fire, and there were a number of Persians, about fifty or sixty, standing round it, shouting out and cursing him. The next moment we saw the door of the cottage open, and the master ran out with a cloak round his head, to keep himself from being choked by the smoke, and with a sword in his hand. As soon as he was clear of the burning cottage he threw down the cloak and rushed straight at the nearest Persian. The man turned and ran. There was not one of them that dared stand for a moment. But they shot at him with arrows. They had fastened the gates of the enclosure in which the cottages stood, you must understand, so that he could not escape. In fact he was climbing over one of them when he was killed.”
”And you; what did you do?”
”Ah! sir,” cried the man, ”we were helpless, we had not a sword between us. We hid ourselves, and the next morning took our master's body and carried it to Timandra. She made a great funeral, spending upon it, poor thing, nearly every drachma she had. When we had seen the last of my dear master, the secretary said that he had friends at Tarsus, and set out to go there. I thought that I had best make my way to Smyrna. Thanks to your goodness, I shall now be able to get there, but I was very nearly dying of starvation. But what, if I may ask, are you thinking of doing?”
”That I can't tell,” replied the Athenian; ”as I told you, I was on my way to Alcibiades.”
”Well, sir, I can tell you this,” rejoined the stranger, ”no friends of my master's will be safe here. Pharnabazus, I feel sure, had no great love for him, notwithstanding all his politeness; as for the Spartans, they hated him; and I did hear that the people who are now in power at Athens had sent to say that peace could not last unless he were put out of the way. Yes, sir, if anyone recognizes that you are my master's friend, you are a dead man.”
”Why,” said Callias, ”I have made no secret of it. In Smyrna I spoke about him to the people with whom I was staying. No one said a word against him.”
”Very likely not,” replied the man, ”for they thought that he was alive, and no one liked to have my master for an enemy. He had a wonderful way of making friends to have the upper hand and contriving that his adversaries should have the worst of it. But now that he is dead you will find things very different.”
”What is to be done?” asked the young Athenian.
”Can you trust your guide?”
”I know nothing of the man. I simply hired him because I was told that he was a fairly honest fellow, knew the country very well, and would not run away if a robber made his appearance.”
”Well, then get rid of him.”
”But how?”
”Tell him that you have a headache, and that you will come on after him when you have rested a little and the sun is not so hot, and that he had better go on, get quarters at the next stage and have everything ready for you when you shall arrive. As soon as he is gone, get back as fast as you can to Smyrna. The news will hardly have reached that place yet, indeed we may be sure that it has not, or you would have heard of it before you started. Go down to the docks, and take your pa.s.sage in any s.h.i.+p that you can find ready to start. Even if it is going to Athens never mind; you will be able to leave it on the way. Anyhow, get out of Asia at any risk.”
”And you?”
”Oh, no one will care about me. I am a very insignificant person. But, as a matter of fact, I shall try to get to Syracuse. I was born there.”
”Syracuse will do as well for me as any other place. Why not come with me if it can be managed? I was able to do you a little service, and you have done me a great one. Let us go together.”
The plan was carried out with the greatest success. Callias made the best of his way to Smyrna, and left his horse at an inn, not, of course, the one from which he had started. As he had plenty of money for immediate wants, besides letters of credit from Hippocles, he thought it safer not to attempt to sell the animal. He then provided himself with different clothes, purchasing at the same time a suit for his new acquaintance. These he ordered to be sent to a small house of entertainment near the docks which they had arranged should be the place of meeting. Shortly before sunset the man appeared. Meanwhile Callias had arranged for a pa.s.sage for himself and his servant in a s.h.i.+p bound for Corinth. They would not venture into Corinth itself, but would transfer themselves at the port of Cenchreae into some s.h.i.+p bound for Sicily.
Before the morning of the next day the two were on their way westward.
Everything went well. At Cenchreae they found a Syracusan merchantman just about to start, s.h.i.+pped on board her and after a prosperous voyage found themselves in the chief city of Sicily.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] A stadium was nearly a furlong; to be exact, 202 yards.
CHAPTER XX.
DIONYSIUS.
It was with no common emotion that the young Athenian entered the great harbor of Syracuse. It was here that the really fatal blow had been struck from which his country had never recovered. She had struggled gallantly on for nearly ten years after she had lost the most magnificent armament that she had ever sent forth, but the wound had been mortal. Thenceforward she had been as a man of whose life-blood a half had been drained away. Callias had read, shortly before leaving Athens for the last time, the magnificent pa.s.sage, then recently published, in which the great historian of Athens had described the decisive battle in the harbor.[59] The sight of the place now enabled him to realize it to himself in the most vivid way. He seemed to see the hostile fleets crowded together in a way for which there was no precedent, two hundred war galleys in a s.p.a.ce so narrow that manoeuvre was impossible, and nothing availed but sheer fighting and hard blows; while the sh.o.r.es seemed alive again as they had been on that eventful day with a crowd of eager spectators, the armies of the two contending powers, who looked on with pa.s.sionate cries and gestures at such a spectacle as human eyes had scarcely witnessed before, a mighty war-game in which their own liberties and lives were the stake. The heights that ran above the harbor were scarcely less significant. There, its remains still visible, had been the Athenian line of investment. If only a few yards more had been completed, the young man thought to himself, the whole course of history might have been changed.[60] Not far away was the spot where the st.u.r.dy infantry of Thebes had withstood the fiery shock of his own countrymen, and so, not for the first time, wrested from them the empire that seemed almost within their grasp.[61]