The wind, which had continued to blow hard on April 22, abated next day, and in the afternoon the transports bearing the covering force of the 29th Division began very slowly to move out from Mudros harbour. In that land-locked inlet, the water was now still, and singularly blue. “The black ships,” as the navy called the transports owing to their fresh coat of black paint, wound their way in and out among others still lying at anchor. They passed the battleships and cruisers of our own fleet; they passed the Anzac transports, which were to follow them next day; they passed the battleships and transports of the French contingents, and the five-funnelled Russian cruiser _Askold_, lying nearer the little islands which protect the entrance of the far-extended haven; and as they passed, the pellucid air which still illuminates the realms of ancient Greece rang with the cheers of races whose habitation the Greeks had not imagined. Perhaps it is in Greek history that we find the nearest parallel to such a scene of heroic joy, the preface to heroic disaster. For when the bright troops of Athenians started for the conquest of Sicily, we read that nearly the whole population of the city accompanied their five-mile march down the Piræus; that there, in sacred silence, libation to the gods was made; and issuing in line ahead from the harbour, the transport galleys raced, in pure exhilaration of heart, to the pointed island of Ægina, fifteen miles away, while far in the air bystanders heard the cries of invisible spirits, like the wailings of women upon the Phœnician shore lamenting the beauty of Adonis yearly wounded.[84] [Sidenote: THE FORCE LEAVING MUDROS]