No sooner was the sentence revoked than in hot haste a ship was manned, and the crew was bidden to do its utmost to overtake the vessel which was carrying the sentence of doom to Mytilene. Already it was twenty-four hours since the ship had left Athens. Was it possible to carry the good news in time? The ambassadors promised large rewards to the oarsmen if they reached the city before the terrible sentence had been carried out. In their anxiety they provided barley, wine, oil for the crew. There was no lack of zeal on the part of the sailors. They rowed with all their strength, taking but scant rest, and eating the barley, which had been soaked in wine and oil and made into cakes, as they sat at their oars. They knew that on their speed depended the life or death of thousands. Swifter and swifter flashed the oars of the second ship. In the first vessel the sailors pulled slowly, for they were in no haste to deliver the dread tidings which they carried. And it was well that they had no heart for their task, for with every muscle strained to the utmost the crew of the second boat reached Mytilene only just in time. The death sentence had already reached Paches, and he was preparing to carry it out, when with a glad, triumphant shout the second boat swung into the harbour, and the Mytileneans were saved. But even so they paid heavily for their rebellion, for about thirty of their leading citizens were executed, their fleet was taken by the Athenians, and the walls of their city were destroyed. CHAPTER LXV BRASIDAS LOSES HIS SHIELD In 425 B.C., the seventh year of the war, an Athenian fleet of about forty ships, under an admiral named Eurymedon, was forced by stormy weather to seek shelter on the promontory of Pylos in Messenia. Pylos stood on the Bay of Pylos, which you now know as the Bay of Navarino. To give the men something to do until the storm allowed them to sail, Demosthenes, an officer on board one of the ships, bade them begin to build a fort. But it was not only to employ the men that he did this, but because he believed that Pylos would make a good fortress from which to attack the western shore of Peloponnesus. At first the men took little interest in the work, for they expected each day to leave Pylos. But as the storm continued, they began to work with a will, and soon a fortress that looked fit to defy an enemy was finished. It had not been easy work, for the men had no iron tools. They could not cut stones, but were forced to pick out those that fitted into each other. When mortar was needed they had to carry it on their backs, bending forward that it might not fall, and clasping their hands behind to help to keep it in place. At length the storm was over and the fleet sailed away, leaving Demosthenes with five ships to hold the new fortress. Now the entrance to the Bay of Pylos was almost blocked by a narrow, thickly wooded island called Sphacteria.