Where most of Xerxes european invasion fleet ended up after being defeated and scattered by the Athenean and Ionean navy. Lots of surging currents around the island.
I imagined being an exhausted persian galley slave, as our barque burst its shell against the jagged rocks. Chained to the oar as the timbers around me started to shatter and split with the foaming blue surging in.. grasping my last breath as the tyrene wallowed ever deeper.
Lungs burning as I watch my fellow oarsmen scream the last terrified oxygen bubbles from their wide open jaws.
Probably a Greek prisoner, maybe even from Skiathos in the first place.
Reminded me of T.S.Eliot. From the Wasteland.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
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