Demosthenes, seeing the Lacedaemonians about to attack him both by sea and land at once, made his own preparations also; and having drawn up under the fortifications the triremes he had remaining from those that had been left him, he enclosed them in a stockade, and armed the crews taken out of them with shields of an inferior kind, and in most cases made of osiers. For it was not possible in so lonely a place to provide themselves with arms; but even these they had got from a thirty-oared privateer and skiff belonging to some Messenians, who happened to have come to them. Of these Messenians there were also about forty heavy-armed, whose services he used with the rest.
