Part 44 (2/2)
”Guide me by the straightest way,” commanded the sea rover.
”Where?” was Agias's question.
”To the wharves. The yacht is the only safe place for the lady. There I will teach her how I can honour a friend of s.e.xtus Drusus.”
Agias felt that it was no time for expostulation. A Vestal Virgin take refuge on a pirate s.h.i.+p! But it was a matter of life and death now, and there was no time for forming another plan. Once let the mob overtake them, and the lives of all three were not worth a sesterce.
Agias found it necessary to keep himself collected while he ran, or he would lose the way in the maze of streets. The yacht was moored far below the Pons Sublicius, and the whole way was full of peril. It was no use to turn off into alleys and by-paths; to do so at night meant to be involved in a labyrinth as deadly for them as that of the Cretan Minos. The mob was on their heels, howling, raging. The people were beginning to wake in their houses along the streets. Men bawled ”Stop thief!” from the windows, imagining there had been a robbery. Once two or three figures actually swung out into the way before them, but at a stray glint of lantern light falling on Demetrius's naked long sword, they vanished in the gloom. But still the mob pressed on, ever gaining accessions, ever howling the more fiercely. Agias realized that the weight of his burden was beginning to tell on even the iron frame of his cousin. The pursuers and pursued were drawing closer together. The mob was ever reenforced by relays; the handicap on Demetrius was too great. They had pa.s.sed down the Vicus Tuscus, flown past the dark shadow of the lower end of the Circus Maximus. At the Porta Trigemina the unguarded portal had stood open; there was none to stop them. They pa.s.sed by the Pons Sublicius, and skirted the Aventine. Stones and billets of wood began to whistle past their ears,--the missiles of the on-rus.h.i.+ng mult.i.tude. At last the wharves! Out in the darkness stood the huge bulk of a Spanish lumberman; but there was no refuge there.
The grain wharves and the oil wharves were pa.s.sed; the sniff of the mackerel fisher, the faint odour from the great Alexandrian merchantman loaded with the spices of India, were come and gone. A stone struck Agias in the shoulder, he felt numb in one arm, to drag his feet was a burden; the flight with the Caesarians to the Janiculum had not been like to this,--death at the naked sword had been at least in store then, and now to be plucked in pieces by a mob! Another stone brushed forward his hair and dashed, not against Demetrius ahead, but against his burden. There was--Agias could hear--a low moan; but at the same instant the fleeing pirate uttered a whistle so loud, so piercing, that the foremost pursuers came to a momentary stand, in half-defined fright, In an instant there came an answering whistle from the wharf just ahead. In a twinkling half a dozen torches had flashed out all over a small vessel, now barely visible in the night, at one of the mooring rings. There was a strange jargon of voices calling in some Oriental tongue; and Demetrius, as he ran, answered them in a like language. Then over Agias's head and into the thick press of the mob behind, something--arrows no doubt--flew whistling; and there were groans and cries of pain. And Agias found uncouth, bearded men helping or rather casting him over the side of the vessel.
The yacht was alive with men: some were bounding ash.o.r.e to loose the hawsers, others were lifting ponderous oars, still more were shooting fast and cruelly in the direction of the mob, while its luckless leaders struggled to turn in flight, and the mult.i.tude behind, ignorant of the slaughter, was forcing them on to death. Above the clamour, the howls of the mob, the shouts of the sailors, the grating of oars, and the creaking of cables, rang the voice of Demetrius; and at his word a dozen ready hands put each command into action. The narrow, easy-moving yacht caught the current; a long tier of white oars glinted in the torchlight, smote the water, and the yacht bounded away, while a parting flight of arrows left misery and death upon the quay.
Agias, sorely bewildered, clambered on to the little p.o.o.p. His cousin stood grasping one of the steering paddles; the ruddy lantern light gleamed on the pirate's frame and face, and made him the perfect personification of a sea-king; he was some grandly stern Poseidon, the ”Storm-gatherer” and the ”Earth-shaker.” When he spoke to Agias, it was in the tone of a despot to a subject.
”The lady is below. Go to her. You are to care for her until I rejoin my fleet. Tell her my sister shall not be more honoured than she, nor otherwise treated. When I am aboard my flag-s.h.i.+p, she shall have proper maids and attendance. Go!”
Agias obeyed, saying nothing. He found Fabia lying on a rude pallet, with a small bale of purple silk thrust under her head for a pillow.
She stared at him with wild, frightened eyes, then round the little cabin, which, while bereft of all but the most necessary comforts, was decorated with bejeweled armour, golden lamps, costly Indian tapestries and ivory--the trophies of half a score of voyages.
”Agias,” she faintly whispered, ”tell me what has happened since I awoke from my sleep and found Gabinius's ruffians about me. By whatsoever G.o.d you reverence most, speak truly!”
Agias fell on his knees, kissed the hem of her robe, kissed her hands.
Then he told her all,--as well as his own sorely confused wits would admit. Fabia heard him through to the end, then laid her face between her hands.
”Would that--would that they had murdered me as they wished! It would be all over now,” she agonized. ”I have no wish again to see the light. Whether they believe me innocent or guilty of the charge is little; I can never be happy again.”
”And why not, dear lady?” cried Agias.
”Don't ask me! I do not know. I do not know anything! Leave me! It is not fit that you should see me crying like a child. Leave me! Leave me!”
And thus conjured, Agias went up to the p.o.o.p once more.
The yacht was flying down the current under her powerful oarage.
Demetrius was still standing with his hands fixed on the steering paddle; his gaze was drifting along in the plas.h.i.+ng water. The shadowy outlines of the great city had vanished; the yacht was well on her way down the river to Ostia. Save for the need to avoid a belated merchantman anch.o.r.ed in midstream for the night, there was little requiring the master's skill. Agias told his cousin how Fabia had sent him away.
”_A!_ Poor lady!” replied the pirate, ”perhaps she was the Vestal I saw a few days since, and envied her, to see the consuls' lictors lowering their rods to her, and all the people making way before her; she, protected by the whole might of this terrible Roman people, and honoured by them all; and I, a poor outlaw, ma.s.sing gold whereof I have no need, slaying men when I would be their friend, with only an open sea and a few planks for native land. And now, see how the Fates bring her down so low, that at my hands she receives hospitality, nay, life!”
”You did not seem so very loath to shed blood to-night,” commented Agias, dryly.
”No, by Zeus!” was his frank answer. ”It is easy to send men over the Styx after having been Charon's subst.i.tute for so many years. But the trade was not pleasant to learn, and, bless the G.o.ds, you may not have to be apprenticed to it.”
”Then you will not take me with you in your rover's life?” asked Agias, half-disappointedly.
”Apollo forbid! I will take you and the lady to some place where she can be safe until she may return vindicated, and where you can earn an honest livelihood, marry a wife of station, in accordance with the means which I shall give you, dwell peaceably, and be happy.”
”But I cannot accept your present,” protested the younger Greek.
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