Or you can organize and vote. This is still a democracy.
It's an important distinction.
As it happened, the next day the assembly changed its mind, and sent off another galley rescinding the order. The second galley was indeed able to overtake the first in time. Thucydides attributed this to deliberate slowness by the captain of the first.
"Democracy" is a family of types of government, of which the absolute democracy many imagine in one form. A representative democracy is another.