how to fight."

With these words, the party passed the gateway, and came upon the
mole, with the bay before them beautiful in the morning light.
To the veteran sailor the plash of the waves was like a greeting.
He drew a long breath, as if the perfume of the water were sweeter
than that of the nard, and held his hand aloft.

"My gifts were at Praeneste, not Antium--and see! Wind from
the west. Thanks, O Fortune, my mother!" he said, earnestly.

The friends all repeated the exclamation, and the slaves waved
their torches.

"She comes--yonder!" he continued, pointing to a galley outside
the mole. "What need has a sailor for other mistress? Is your
Lucrece more graceful, my Caius?"

He gazed at the coming ship, and justified his pride. A white
sail was bent to the low mast, and the oars dipped, arose,
poised a moment, then dipped again, with wing-like action,
and in perfect time.

"Yes, spare the gods," he said, soberly, his eyes fixed upon the
vessel. "They send us opportunities. Ours the fault if we fail.
And as for the Greeks, you forget, O my Lentulus, the pirates I
am going to punish are Greeks. One victory over them is of more
account than a hundred over the Africans."

"Then thy way is to the Aegean?"

The sailor's eyes were full of his ship.

"What grace, what freedom! A bird hath not less care for the
fretting of the waves. See!" he said, but almost immediately
added, "Thy pardon, my Lentulus. I am going to the Aegean;
and as my departure is so near, I will tell the occasion--only
keep it under the rose. I would not that you abuse the duumvir
when next you meet him. He is my friend. The trade between Greece
and Alexandria, as ye may have heard, is hardly inferior to that
between Alexandria and Rome. The people in that part of the world
forgot to celebrate the Cerealia, and Triptolemus paid them with
a harvest not worth the gathering. At all events, the trade is so
grown that it will not brook interruption a day. Ye may also have
heard of the Chersonesan pirates, nested up in the Euxine; none
bolder, by the Bacchae! Yesterday word came to Rome that, with a
fleet, they had rowed down the Bosphorus, sunk the galleys off
Byzantium and Chalcedon, swept the Propontis, and, still unsated,
burst through into the Aegean. The corn-merchants who have ships
in the East Mediterranean are frightened. They had audience with
the Emperor himself, and from Ravenna there go to-day a hundred
galleys, and from Misenum"--