war, floating fortresses,
moving onward like dragons with a thousand legs 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 fin