[Pg 50] About an hour after midnight the harbor was alarmed by the cry that the ship from Cos had parted from her moorings. Hippocles had taken advantage of a temporary increase in the force of the wind to cut his cables, and to drift toward the Athenian part of the harbor. Nobody was able to answer the cry for help, even if it had not been purposely raised too late. The Skylark had run the blockade, and Conon knew that he was to be relieved. [Pg 51] [Pg 51] CHAPTER VI. ARGINUSÆ. At Athens, meanwhile, the relieving fleet was being fitted out with a feverish energy such as had never been witnessed within the memory of man. Nine years before, indeed, preparations on a larger scale, if cost and magnificence are to be taken into account, had been made for the disastrous expedition against Syracuse; but there was all the difference in the world between the temper of the city at the one time and at the other. Athens was at the height of her strength and her wealth when she sent out her armament, splendid, so to speak, with silver and gold, against Syracuse. It was a mighty effort, but she did it, one may almost say, out of the superfluity of her strength. Now she was sadly reduced in population and in revenue; she was struggling not for conquest but for life; she was making her last effort, and spending on it her last talent, her last man. To find a juster parallel it would have been necessary to go back a life-time, to the day when the Athenians gave up their homes and the temples of their gods to the Persian invaders, falling back on their last defences, the “wooden walls” of their ships. Many men had heard from father or grandfather, it was just possible that one or two tottering veterans may have seen with their own eyes, how on that[Pg 52] day a band of youths, the very flower of the Athenian aristocracy, headed by Cimon, the son of Miltiades, had marched with a gay alacrity through the weeping multitude, to hang up their bridles in the temple of Athene. For the time the goddess needed not horsemen but seamen, and they gave her the service that she asked for. Now the same sight was seen again. Again the knights, the well-born and wealthy citizens of Athens, dedicated their bridles to the patron goddess, and went to serve as mariners on board the fleet. Every ship that could float was hastily repaired and equipped. Old hulks that had been lying in dock since the palmy days when the veteran Phormion[20] led the fleet of Athens to certain victory, were launched again and manned. In this way the almost unprecedented number[21] of one hundred and
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