The Persian fleet sailed from the roadstead of Phalerum during that same night. How far the crews were demoralized by the defeat of the previous day is shown by the fact that there was something of a panic as the white cliffs of Sunium glimmered through the darkness in the moonlight and were mistaken for the sails of hostile Greek warships menacing the line of retreat. The Persians stood far out to sea to avoid these imaginary enemies. When the day broke Themistocles and Eurybiades could hardly credit the report that all the ships of Asia had disappeared from their anchorage of the evening before. The Athenian admiral urged immediate pursuit, the Spartan general hesitated and at last gave a reluctant consent. The fleet sailed as far as the island of Andros, but found no trace of the enemy. In vain Themistocles urged that it should go further, and if it failed to find the enemy's fleet, at least show itself in the harbours of Asia and try to rouse Ionia to revolt. Eurybiades declared that enough had been accomplished, and refused to risk a voyage across the Archipelago in the late autumn. So the victorious fleet returned to Salamis, and thence the various contingents dispersed to be laid up for the winter in sheltered harbours and on level beaches, where a stockade could be erected and a guard left to protect the ships till the fine weather of next spring allowed them to be launched again. When Xerxes reached the Hellespont with his army, after having lost heavily by disease and famine in his weary march through Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, he found that the long bridge with which he had linked together Europe and Asia had been swept away by a storm. But the remnant of his fleet was there waiting to ferry across the strait what was left of his army, now diminished by many hundreds of thousands. The next year witnessed the destruction both of the army left under Mardonius in northern Greece and of the remainder of the Persian fleet that had fought at Salamis. Pausanias, with a hundred thousand Greeks, routed the Persian army at Platæa. A fleet of 110 triremes, under the admirals Leotychides and Xantippus, sailed across the Archipelago in search of the Persian fleet. They found it in the waters of Samos, but the enemy retired towards the mainland without giving battle. The Asiatics were disheartened and divided. The Ionians were suspected of disaffection. The Phoenicians were anxious only to return in safety to their own country and resume their peaceful trading, and as soon as they were out of sight of the Greeks, they deserted the Persian fleet, and sailed southwards, bound for Tyre and Sidon.