An easterly wind had risen in the strait by Salamis. Out on deep waters, galley crews raised masts up from the hold and rigged sails. Others rowed, driving hard at the beaches, their long keels grinding trenches in the sand.

The hungry crowds on Salamis were not triumphant. A thin plume of smoke could still be seen over Athens and for most it meant the loss of everything. There could be no going home, because home had gone, along with the lives they had known before the invasion. They trooped on board even so, cramming themselves onto open decks, waiting miserably to be taken away.

Out at sea, Themistocles had summoned the strategoi with the black flag. There was no better word for the role, he thought. As on the battlefield at Marathon, Xanthippus and Cimon had both acted as good senior officers, commanding formations of ships. Neither had followed in blind obedience, Themistocles thought with pride. The Assembly of Athens raised thinkers, not slaves. The council of five hundred men began each monthly term with a solemn oath: to ‘advise according to the law, all that is best for the people of Athens’. That vow was a simple thing, even when the result was war and evacuation.

As Xanthippus and Cimon lashed their galleys to his and stepped on board, Themistocles could see wariness and suspicion, rather than congratulation. He stifled a yawn, feeling his jaw crack. There was still so much that needed to be done.

Another galley rowed close enough for rowers on both sides to grasp oars and heave them in. Themistocles was not surprised to see Eurybiades of Sparta. He gestured for him to come across, the man using the galley of Cimon like a bridge. Themistocles watched the Spartan do it with neat precision, though the swell made the ships rise and fall, grinding against one another. It was much the same with Spartans themselves, Themistocles thought. They roughened his skin.