midnight
Darkness next , but the kindly wind failed not . Through the night no man on that trireme slumbered . Breeze or calm , he who had an obol 's weight of power spent it at the oars . Long after midnight Themistocles and Glaucon clambered the giddy cordage to the ship 's top above the swelling mainsail . On the narrow platform , with the stars above , the dim tracery of the wide sail , the still dimmer tracery of the long ship below , they seemed transported to another world . Far beneath by the glimmer of the lanterns they saw the rowers swaying at their toil . In the wake the phosphorous bubbles ran away , opalescent gleams springing upward , as if torches of Doris and her dancing Nereids .