The great eyes carved on the prow of the good ship _Eros_ seemed to start with expectation and impatience as it breasted the smooth sea. By Kos and Knidos they scudded on. They saw the Spartan ships that had been left in Rhodes harbour still lying there, as at last with full swing they turned up north-easterly to Kaunos before the sun had set. But for all this haste, when they reached the port the Persian satrap and his Spartan monitors had been there and were gone. They got in water and what provisions were required, and left again at daybreak, the sea still smooth as glass. Not a breath of wind came to fill the sails, and though a hundred times that day Alkibiades reminded himself that Tissaphernes and the Spartans were as much delayed by the incidents of weather as he was, it was difficult to console himself with that thought. He wanted to go fast and faster, to keep pace with his anxious mind. ‘Are we gaining on them?’ he said to Antiochos, his pilot. Antiochos did not know. No one knew. They only knew that the Persian state ship was the swiftest one the Viceroy had, and that the Spartans were not likely to have chosen slow ones for their present purpose. Phaselis was the next port Tissaphernes must make for on his journey to Aspendos. ‘When could they reach Phaselis? Can anyone see Phaselis? Were there three triremes anywhere ahead?’ ‘No; only land on the left-hand side, no triremes.’ He called to the master of the rowers to redouble the vigour and the quickness of their strokes. But the poor sweating rowers had all day been toiling their very hardest at the oars. No Persian slaves on the state trireme, for all the whips of all the masters, could ever row like these men. ‘We must be gaining on them.’ On and on they went, due east now, right through the Lykian on to the Pamphylian Sea, for many slowly-passing hours that seemed interminable. Now they turned up northerly, past the point Hieron, past the small island of Kambrousa. ‘How much further to Phaselis now? A hundred stades?’ ‘More than that.’ ‘What is that rock, those two distant rocks? Are they not rocks jutting out from the sea, with a thin line on each side of them? If the Spartans shall have made the weary Tissaphernes leave Phaselis before we get there, and we are kept long in watering, they will be at Aspendos before us after all, and what of the Persian fleet then? Perhaps we may be yet in time to stop their leaving.’ The two high rocks grew higher out of the water, more distinct. An old sailor whom the general called up to his side knew them. ‘Yes, that is Phaselis.’ ‘Can anyone see three triremes there?’ ‘No, not yet. There are some specks about.’ Antiochos went aloft again. ‘They look long; they must be ships. They cannot be common fishing-boats; too big.’ ‘Are they triremes?’ ‘Perhaps they are.’ The old sailor was standing near the pilot, shading his eyes with his hand. “Are they triremes?’ ‘Yes, they are.’ ‘Which way are they looking?’