urden 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 passed 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
passed by the Pons Sublicius, and skirted the Aventine. Stones and
billets of wood began to whistle past their ears,--the missiles of the
on-rushing multitude. 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 passed; 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 ashore 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 multitude 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 creakin