weather among the Athenian fleet then besieging Naxos.[74] Fearing to be recognised, he called the master aside, told him who he was, and why he fled, and declared that if he were taken, he would charge him with having been bribed to favour his escape. To avoid this, it was only requisite to confine the sailors closely to the ship until the weather served them to be gone. The master consented, and instead of landing at night, as was usual with Grecian mariners, they lay a day and night tempest–tossed at sea; and at length arrived safely at Ephesus. Themistocles now reaped the benefit of his double–dealing. He kept himself concealed, however, at first, because the Persians had set a price of two hundred talents upon his head, until he received an answer to the following letter, which he wrote to Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, who had newly succeeded to his father’s throne: “I, Themistocles, am coming to thee, who of all the Grecians, as long as I was forced to resist thy father that invaded me, have done your house the most damage; yet the benefits I did him were more after once I with safety, he with danger, was to make retreat. And both a good turn is already due to me (writing here how he had forewarned him of the Grecians’ departure out of Salamis, and ascribing the not breaking of the bridge falsely to himself), and I now come prepared to do thee great services, being persecuted by the Grecians for thy friendship’s sake. But I desire to have a year’s respite, that I may declare unto thee the cause of my coming myself.”