ed. "Even from
afar they may know the galley of Black Magro. But which of all of them
will guess that we alone remain of all that goodly fleet which sailed
out with blare of trumpet and roll of drum but one short month ago?"

The patrician smiled bitterly. "If it were not for our great ancestors
and for our beloved country, the Queen of the Waters," said he, "I could
find it in my heart to be glad at this destruction which has come upon
this vain and feeble generation. You have spent your life upon the seas,
Magro. You do not know how it has been with us on the land. But I have
seen this canker grow upon us which now leads us to our death. I and
others have gone down into the market-place to plead with the people,
and been pelted with mud for our pains. Many a time have I pointed to
Rome, and said, 'Behold these people, who bear arms themselves, each man
for his own duty and pride. How can you who hide behind mercenaries hope
to stand against them?'--a hundred times I have said it."

"And had they no answer?" asked the Rover.

"Rome was far off and they could not see it, so to them it was nothing,"
the old man answered. "Some thought of trade, and some of votes, and
some of profits from the State, but none would see that the State
itself, the mother of all things, was sinking to her end. So might the
bees debate who should have wax or honey when the torch was blazing
which would bring to ashes the hive and all therein. 'Are we not rulers
of the sea?' 'Was not Hannibal a great man?' Such were their cries,
living ever in the past and blind to the future. Before that sun sets
there will be tearing of hair and rending of garments; but what will
that now avail us?"

"It is some sad comfort," said Magro, "to know that what Rome holds she
cannot keep."

"Why say you that? When we go down, she is supreme in all the world."

"For a time, and only for a time," Magro answered gravely. "Yet you will
smile, perchance, when I tell you how it is that I know it. There was a
wise woman who lived in that part of the Tin Islands which juts forth
into the sea, and from her lips I have heard many things, but not one
which has not come aright. Of the fall of our own country, and even of
this battle, from which we now return, she told me clearly. There is
much strange lore amongst these savage peoples in the west of the land
of Tin."

"What said she of Rome?"

"That she also would fall, even as we, weakened by her riches and her
fac