nsom. My patron is not here to protect or rescue me. I have nothing
to plunder. _Mu! mu!_ set me free, most noble pirate! Oh! most
excellent prince, what have I done, that you should bear a grudge
against me?"

"Get up, fellow," snapped Demetrius; "I'm not one of those
crocodile-headed Egyptian gods that they grovel before in the Nile
country. My cousin Agias here says he knows you. Now answer--are you a
Greek?"

"I am an Athenian born."

"Don't you think I can smell your Doric accent by that broad alpha?
You are a Sicilian, I'll be bound!"

Phaon made a motion of sorrowful assent.

"_Phui!_" continued Demetrius, "tell me, Agias, is this the creature
that tried to murder Quintus Drusus?"

Agias nodded.

"A fit minister for such a man as I imagine the son of Lucius Domitius
to be. Eurybiades, take off that fellow's bands; he is not worth one
stroke of the sword."

"The captain will not spare the knave!" remonstrated the sanguinary
lieutenant.

"What I have said, I have said," retorted the other; then, when
Phaon's arms hung free, "See, on the strength of our fellowship in our
both being Greeks, I have set you at large!"

Phaon again sank to his knees to proffer thanks.

"Hold!" cried Demetrius, with a menacing gesture. "Don't waste your
gratitude. Greek you pretend to be, more the shame! Such as you it is
that have brought Hellas under the heel of the oppressor; such as you
have made the word of a Hellene almost valueless in the Roman courts,
so that juries have to be warned to consider us all liars; such as you
have dragged down into the pit many an honest man; ay, myself too!"

Phaon left off his thanks and began again to supplicate.

"Stop whining, hound!" roared Demetrius; "haven't I said you are free?
Free, but on one condition!"

"Anything, anything, my lord," professed the freedman, "money,
service--"

"On this condition," and a broad, wicked smile over-spread the face of
the pirate, "that you quit this ship instantly!"

"Gladly, gladly, merciful sir!" commenced Phaon again; "where is the
boat?"

"Wretch!" shouted the other, "what did I say about a boat?
Depart--depart into the sea! Swim ashore, if the load on your legs be
not too heavy. Seize him and see that he sinks,"--this last to
Eurybiades and the seamen.

Phaon's terror choked his utterance; he turned livid with mortal
fright. He pleaded for life; life on the terms most degrading, most
painful, most joyless--life, life and that onl