In vain the hapless shepherd of the people attempted to drive on. The apparitors were frightened and hung back; and without their help it was impossible to force the horses through the mass of tossing arms and beards in front. The matter was evidently growing serious.
“The bitterest ruffians in all Nitria, your Excellency,” whispered one of the guards, with a pale face; “and two hundred of them at the least. The very same set, I will be sworn, who nearly murdered Dioscuros.”
“If you will not allow me to proceed, my holy brethren,” said Orestes, trying to look collected, “perhaps it will not be contrary to the canons of the Church if I turn back. Leave the horses’ heads alone. Why, in God’s name, what do you want?”
“Do you fancy we have forgotten Hieracas?” cried a voice from the rear; and at that name, yell upon yell arose, till the mob, gaining courage from its own noise, burst out into open threats. “Revenge for the blessed martyr Hieracas!” “Revenge for the wrongs of the Church!” “Down with the friend of Heathens, Jews, and Barbarians!” “Down with the favourite of Hypatia!” “Tyrant!” “Butcher!” And the last epithet so smote the delicate fancy of the crowd, that a general cry arose of “Kill the butcher!” and one furious monk attempted to clamber into the chariot. An apparitor tore him down, and was dragged to the ground in his turn. The monks closed in. The guards, finding the enemy number ten to their one, threw down their weapons in a panic, and vanished; and in another minute the hopes of Hypatia and the gods would have been lost forever, and Alexandria robbed of the blessing of being ruled by the most finished gentleman south of the Mediterranean, had it not been for unexpected succour; of which it will be time enough, considering who and what is in danger, to speak in a future chapter.
XVII
A Stray Gleam
The last blue headland of Sardinia was fading fast on the northwest horizon, and a steady breeze bore before it innumerable ships, the wrecks of Heraclian’s armament, plunging and tossing impatiently in their desperate homeward race toward the coast of Africa. Far and wide, under a sky of cloudless blue, the white sails glittered on the glittering sea, as gaily now, above their loads of shame and disappointment, terror and pain, as when, but one short month before, they bore with them only wild hopes and gallant daring. Who can calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight? … And yet it was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of the tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the unnumbered throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of the West. Her time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his vision, by agony after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned doom. Tyrannising it luxuriously over all nations, she had sat upon the mystic beast—building her power on the brute animal appetites of her dupes and slaves: but she had duped herself even more than them. She was finding out by bitter lessons that it was “to the beast,” and not to her, that her vassal kings of the earth had been giving their power and strength; and the ferocity and lust which she had pampered so cunningly in them, had become her curse and her destruction. … Drunk with the blood of the saints; blinded by her own conceit and jealousy to the fact that she had been crushing and extirpating out of her empire for centuries past all which was noble, purifying, regenerative, divine, she sat impotent and doting, the prey of every fresh adventurer, the slave of her own slaves. … “And the kings of the earth, who had sinned with her, hated the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and devoured her flesh, and burned her with fire. For God had put into their hearts to fulfil His will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be fulfilled. …” Everywhere sensuality, division, hatred, treachery, cruelty, uncertainty, terror; the vials of God’s wrath poured out. “Where was to be the end of it all?” asked every man of his neighbour, generation after generation; and received for answer only, “It is better to die than to live.”
And yet in one ship out of that sad fleet, there was peace; peace amid shame and terror; amid the groans of the wounded, and the sighs of the starving; amid all but blank despair. The great triremes and quinqueremes rushed onward past the lagging transports, careless, in the mad race for safety, that they were leaving the greater number of their comrades defenceless in the rear of the flight; but from one little fishing-craft alone no base entreaties, no bitter execrations greeted the passing flash and roll of their mighty oars. One after another, day by day, they came rushing up out of the northern offing, each like a huge hundred-footed dragon, panting and quivering, as if with terror, at every loud pulse of its oars, hurling the wild water right and left with the mighty share of its beak, while from the bows some gorgon or chimaera, elephant or boar, stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast of Africa, as if it, too, like the human beings which it carried, was dead to every care but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one after another; and off the poop
