why did the gods ever
drive me to this? My men are but children to exult as they do; as boys
love to tear the thatch from the roof of a useless hovel, in sheer
wantonness. I cannot restrain them."

At this instant a seaman rushed up in breathless haste.

"_Eleleu!_ Captain, the soldiers are on us. There must have been a
cohort in Cumae."

Whereat the voice of Demetrius rang above the shouts of the plunderers
and the crash and roar of the conflagration, like a trumpet:--

"Arms, men! Gather the spoil and back to the ships! Back for your
lives!"

Already the cohort of Pompeian troops, that had not yet evacuated
Cumae, was coming up on the double-quick, easily guided by the burning
buildings which made the vicinity bright as day. The pirates ran like
cats out of the blazing villas, bounded over terraces and walls, and
gathered near the landing-place by the Lentulan villa. The soldiers
were already on them. For a moment it seemed as though the cohort was
about to drive the whole swarm of the marauders over the sea-wall, and
make them pay dear for their night's diversion. But the masterly
energy of Demetrius turned the scale. With barely a score of men
behind him, he charged the nearest century so impetuously that it
broke like water before him; and when sheer numbers had swept his
little group back, the other pirates had rallied on the very brink of
tie sea-wall, and returned to the charge.

Never was battle waged more desperately. The pirates knew that to be
driven back meant to fall over a high embankment into water so shallow
as to give little safety in a dive; capture implied crucifixion. Their
only hope was to hold their own while their boats took them off to the
ships in small detachments. The conflagration made the narrow
battle-field as bright as day. The soldiers were brave, and for new
recruits moderately disciplined. The pirates could hardly bear up
under the crushing discharge of darts, and the steady onset of the
maniples. Up and down the contest raged, swaying to and fro like the
waves of the sea. Again and again the pirates were driven so near to
the brink of the seawall that one or two would fall, dashed to instant
death on the submerged rocks below. Demetrius was everywhere at once,
as it were, precisely when he was most needed, always exposing
himself, always aggressive. Even while he himself fought for dear
life, Agias admired as never before the intelligently ordered
puissance of his cousin.

T