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But the Athenians, in respect of the greatness of their present loss, never thought upon asking leave to take up their dead or wreck, but fell immediately to consultation how to be gone the same night.
And Demosthenes, coming unto Nicias, delivered his opinion for going once again aboard and forcing the passage, if it were possible, betimes the next morning, saying that their galleys which were yet remaining and serviceable were more than those of the enemy; for the Athenians had yet left them about sixty, and the Syracusians under fifty.
But when Nicias approved the advice and would have manned out the galleys, the mariners refused to go aboard, as being not only dejected with their defeat, but also without opinion of ever having the upperhand any more. Whereupon they now resolved all to make their retreat by land.
But Hermocrates of Syracuse, suspecting their purpose, and apprehending it as a matter dangerous that so great an army, going away by land and sitting down in some part or other of Sicily, should there renew the war, repaired unto the magistrates and admonished them that it was not fit, through negligence, to suffer the enemy in the night time to go their ways (alleging what he thought best to the purpose), but that all the Syracusians and their confederates should go out and fortify in their way and prepossess all the narrow passages with a guard.