whose feet were the countless
rowers arranged in three or five sets. Each of the larger galleys was
surrounded by smaller ones, from most of which darted dazzling flashes of
light, for they were crowded with armed men, and from the prows of the
strong boarding vessels the sunbeams glittered on the large shining metal
points whose office was to pierce the wooden sides of the foe. The gilded
statues in the prows of the large galleys shone and sparkled in the broad
radiance of the day-star, and flashes of light also came from the low
hills on the shore. Here Mark Antony's soldiers were stationed, and the
sunbeams reflected from the helmets, coats of mail, and lance-heads of
the infantry, and the armour of the horsemen quivered with dazzling
brilliancy in the hot air of the first day of an Egyptian August.

Amid this blazing, flashing, and sparkling in the morning air, so steeped
in warmth and radiance, the sounds of warlike preparations from the land
and fleet constantly grew louder. Barine, exhausted, had just sunk into a
chair which Dione, the fisherman's daughter, had placed in the shade of
the highest rock on the northwestern shore of the flat island, when a
crashing blast of the tuba suddenly echoed from all the galleys in the
Egyptian fleet, and the whole array of vessels filed past the Pharos at
the opening of the harbour into the open sea.

There the narrow ranks of the wooden giants separated and moved onward in
broader lines. This was done quietly and in the same faultless order as a
few days before, when a similar manoeuvre had been executed under the
eyes of Mark Antony.

The longing for combat seemed to urge them steadily forward.

The hostile fleet, lying motionless, awaited the attack. But the Egyptian
assailants had advanced majestically only a few ships lengths towards the
Roman foe when another signal rent the air. The women whose ears caught
the waves of sound said afterwards that it seemed like a cry of agony--it
had given the signal for a deed of unequalled treachery. The slaves,
criminals, and the basest of the mercenaries on the rowers' benches in
the hold had doubtless long listened intently for it, and, when it
finally came, the men on the upper benches raised their long oars and
held them aloft, which stopped the work of those below, and every galley
paused, pointing at the next with the wooden oars outstretched like
fingers, as if seized with horror. The celerity and faultless order with
which