The Dancing Girl of Gades

 

CHAPTER I

B.C. 54. OFF THE COAST OF BRITAIN.

ABOVE the silver bosom of the sea hung wisps of pearly mist, and through them gleamed the Vectis.^[1] Tros' great ship, the Liafail, swayed leisurely at anchor, her vermilion top-sides and her three spars mirrored in the lazy swell. Gulls circling around her cried of far horizons, drowning out the drone of voices from between decks where the oarsmen sprawled at ease.

On the poop lolled Sigurdsen, bronze-bearded son of Odin, with gray eyes that could see the wind and shoulders hefty from the swing of battle-ax and target; giant, capable of gloom more mystic than the darkness of a Baltic winter's night, but just now singing to himself of the slaying of Herald the son of Skram because, what with spring sunshine and a full crew, he felt almost at peace with himself.

On the bow, where the great gold serpent rose above the figurehead and flashed its bronze tongue like a living thing to every movement of the ship, sat Conops—Greek, undersized and uglier than knotted tree-roots, with a red cap pulled down over a sightless eye. He was whittling a stick the while he kept the anchor watch, with three Britons and three Spaniards eyeing every movement of the long knife, for he was crafty at the whittling. He sang of the Levant where green grapes ripened in the sun and red-lipped women waited at the quays for mariners.

A dozen Spaniards and a dozen Northmen lolled about the deck, trying to make conversation in a bastard Gaulish that was strange to all of them, but all the speech they had in common. Theirs was the air of seamen, to whom nothing on the sea was unexpected except idleness, and idleness the only luxury they knew. But they were well clothed in wool and leather, well fed and as plainly well pleased with their lot as they were capable and fierce. No stranger would have chosen them to pick a quarrel with just for the fun of asserting himself.

The upper deck was as clean and tidy as sand-scrubbing and strict discipline could make it. Ropes were coiled; the arrow engines were covered with pitch-soaked linen, 'paulin; neatly laid along both bulwarks were the blankets of the crew, and from below deck, mixed with the drone of voices, came the sound of scrubbing and the smell of lye. Whenever a man spat he did it overside or else spent two hours with sand, scrubbing-stone and bucket cleaning up the mess.

In the stateroom under the poop, against a solid table leaned Tros, the designer, builder, master of the ship. He wore his purple cloak for the occasion, and from his jeweled belt his long sword hung in a vermilion scabbard. Great, glowing amber eyes challenged destiny from under the band of gold that crossed his forehead, and his hair hung in heavy black coils to his shoulders, increasing his natural dignity. He had shaven himself in deference to British custom, and the crushing obstinacy of his jaw and chin, the oak-strength of his neck and the humorous, tolerant, masterful lines of mouth and nostril were exposed for whoso would to read. One would oppose him at one's own risk, but he looked likely to be generous in victory.

"We will see," he remarked, and the three words told his character.

A Druid, brown streaks in his white beard, robed in white and with the golden sickle of office in his girdle, leaned forward from a seat beside the door, mildly rebuking:

"You will see too much for anybody's good. You are like a bull that breaks the fences down. Because you have been told the world is round—"

Tros interrupted, laughing, showing strong white teeth:

"My father was taught such mysteries, but I took no oath of Samothrace as he did. What I know is knowledge from within myself. I will prove the world is round. I will sail around it."

"Let that be at your own risk," the Druid answered. "We have trusted you. In Britain you have built your ship with Britons' aid, of British oak and sheathed with British tin. Her sails and her ropes are of British flax. Your slaves, more than half of her crew, are all Britons whom the King Caswallon gave to you."

"The Lord Tros earned them," said Caswallon, gesturing with a blue-stained, white, enormous hand.

It irritated him especially just then to hear his friend Tros lectured, but Tros smiled and their eyes met. Those two understood each other far better, than either of them understood the Druid.

"We gave you pearls out of our treasure," said the Druid. "Those were for a purpose."

"Aye," Tros answered, leaning back against the table, squeezing the edge of it in both hands until knuckles and muscles stood out in knots. A sort of thrifty look was in his eyes now. "A man can not keep such a ship as mine on nothing. Wind blows us, but the men eat meat. There is more wear and tear to pay for than a landsman thinks. I will make a profit, but I will not forget to serve you in the making."

"Not if you turn aside to prove what you have no business to know," the Druid answered. "Whether the world is round or flat—and mark you, on that I am silent—your friends, to whom you are beholden, are in peril."

Caswallon snorted like a war-horse, but his wife Fflur laid a jeweled hand on him and, with her dark gray eyes, begged silence.

"When I forget my friends, may all the gods forget me," Tros said solemnly, frowning, not liking that his promise should be called in question. "I itch, I ache, I yearn to prove the world is round. But I know better than to fare forth on that quest and leave promises unkept behind me. Not while Cæsar is free to invade Britain will I reckon myself free to spread sail straight toward the setting sun. In Rome, as I have told you half a hundred times, are Cæsar's enemies, his friends and all the riff-raff who will take whichever side is uppermost. One way or another I will break the spokes of Cæsar's wheel before I set forth on my own adventure. And if I fail in Rome, I will come back to Britain and help you."

Fflur shook her head.

"You will never return," she remarked. "That is why I wish Orwic were not sailing with you."

Orwic laughed. He was Caswallon's nephew.

"Tros is like the northeast wind. I love him. I will go around the world with him," he said. "But I wish he had horses instead of a ship!"

HE TOOK up the peaked iron helmet he had laid on the table, turned it bottom upward and began to rock it like a boat.

Caswallon laughed.

"I bellyache enough on land without adventuring at sea! Fflur physics me about once a month when she thinks I am poisoned, and that is vomiting enough for any man."

Orwic spread his shoulders, filling out his smart blue tunic trimmed with fur.

"I overcame the vomiting last voyage when we took the Spaniards," he said. "I have been promoted. I am master of the ordnance. We can make three hits in five shots with the catapults, whether the ship rolls or not. I will make a sailor. Don't you think so, Tros?"

"Maybe," Tros answered.

Jaun Aksue shook his head. He was what the Britons called a Spaniard, though he and his fellow captives called themselves Eskualdenak.^[2] He had earned his seamanship on the Atlantic hunting whales, and the word Jaun, meaning nobleman, expressed exactly his opinion of himself. From the moment of making him prisoner along with two hundred and fifty compatriots, Tros had never once made the mistake of treating him as anything less than a free man from whom obedience was due, but who obeyed from choice.

"Wait until you have seen the sea!" said Jaun Aksue. "All you have played on yet is this streak of water between Gaul and Britain."

The Druid, watching opportunity, resumed the thread of his remarks, while Aksue and Orwic eyed each other, mutually critical.

"Lord Tros, how will you go to Ostia? Ostia lies leagues from Rome and you can not sail this ship up the Tiber, which is the Roman river. We Druids are informed concerning such things."

"Yes, and you are informed the world is round!" Tros retorted, grinning at him.

But the Druid held to his point.

"How will you go from Ostia to Rome? Will you dare to leave your ship at Ostia? What is to prevent your Northmen then from sailing away and leaving you?"

"I have seen ships anchored, with their oars and sails safely stowed ashore," Tros answered. "None other than myself and Sigurdsen can navigate, and I will take Sigurdsen to Rome with me."

"Then what can prevent the Romans from seizing your ship? They will charge you with piracy. Your father held a Roman license to sail anywhere he pleased; yet how many times have you told us that Cæsar charged him with piracy and flogged the crew to death simply because he disapproved of Cæsar's policy?"

"Zeus!" Tros exploded, spreading his shoulders and kicking his scabbard. "I cross bridges when I reach them."

"There is a bridge to Rome," the Druid answered. "It is Gades. Go first of all to Gades."

"I might," Tros answered. "I have a friend in Gades who owes me money. The place is a Roman port and dangerous, but the gods support a man who seizes danger by the snout."

"Now listen," said the Druid, "for you sail soon, and I would not delay you. You are a bold man and a cunning. Danger is only a challenge to your will. But now there will be dangers to the left and to the right, before you and behind."

"Pluto! Shall I set forth full of dreads and questions? Had I listened to the yawpings of disaster's friends I should never have set foot in Britain! I should never have sunk Cæsar's fleet, never have built my own ship, never have gathered a crew, never have found the stuff to make the hot stink for my catapults! Do you bid me go forth full of fear?"

"Nay, but I bid you beware of risks."

Tros' amber eyes blazed proudly.

"I am the master of the biggest ship that ever sailed these seas! 'Beware of risks!' saith the Lord Druid. Half a thousand souls and all my fortune at the risk of wind and tide, reefs, shoals, gales on the Atlantic, every Roman on the seas my enemy, myself proscribed, three talents on my head, pirates, water and provisions to obtain in harbors that swarm with Cæsar's friends—'Be cautious!' saith the Lord Druid!"

"Be bold, Lord Tros!" said Fflur, her gray eyes watching his. She made a gesture to the Druid; but the Druid signed to her not to interfere.

"Trust Tros!" laughed Orwic. "I tell you he is bolder than the northeast wind!"

Tros struck a gong and glanced at the three water-clocks—bowls, floating in troughs of water set on gimbals—that sank to the bottom in four, twelve and twenty-four hours respectively. A Northman appeared in the doorway.

"Tide?" said Tros.

"Still making. Nearly at the ebb, my lord."

"Order the blankets stowed below. Wind?"

"Light breeze from the eastward."

"Mist?"

"All clear, my lord. Sven at the masthead says he can see the coast of Gaul."

"There," said Tros, "is the answer of the gods to all your doubts! A fair wind!"

He began to pace the stateroom floor, his hands behind him, kicking at his scabbard as he turned. The Druid watched him, alert for an opening into which to drive an admonition. Tros offered him none. The Druid had to resume the subject uninvited.

"Lord Tros, those Eskualdenak of yours are Cæsar's men. If they should be caught, they would be crucified—and you along with them. Yet unless you go to Gades first, it is impossible for you to go to Ostia and Rome. I tell you, in the midst of danger you shall find the keys of safety. But beware of black arts and of violence. There are some who seem untrustworthy, whom you may safely trust, and some who may be bought and some not."

"Rot me all riddles!" Tros answered irritably, but the Druid ignored the remark.

"Lord Tros, I could direct you to a man in Gades, who would give you information. But I see you are not open-minded. Nonetheless, you are a brave man and your heart is true to friendship, so I will do what may be done for you."

Tros bowed. He thought more of a Druid's blessing than of his material advice. To his mind the Druids had lost contact between spiritual thought and the action that a man must take with two feet on the ground.

He asked few favors of the unseen universe. He was proud of his own manhood and of the wonder-ship he had designed and built; proud of his own iron will to serve his chosen friends and do it handsomely; and he was almost proud of the crew "that was beginning to respond to discipline.

"IGO," he said, turning to Caswallon, for he felt the ship's changed motion as the anchor-cable slackened and the wind made her dance a little on the ebb.

The Druid, Caswallon and Fflur stood up to take their leave of him and Fflur's gray eyes were moist. Caswallon's face, normally good-humored and amused, wore a mask of stolidness to hide emotion that he scorned as womanly. Orwic looked bored, since that was his invariable refuge from the spurs of sentiment.

"I go," Tros repeated, and stood straight before them all, the light through the door on his face, and his lion's eyes glowing against it with the light that blazed up from within. He was minded they should have a bold friend and a brave sight to remember in the dark days coming, when their country should await invasion, and himself afar off. He was minded they should not believe it possible he would neglect to serve them to the last breath and the last ounce of his energy.

"It is thanks to you," he said, "that I have my ship that was my heart's desire, and I will not forget you. It may be I will never come again. I am no Druid, and I can not see, like Fflur, with the eyes of destiny. But know ye this: I am a friend in need as in prosperity. Ye may depend on me to worry Cæsar's rear until he turns away from Britain. But be ready for invasion, because Cæsar certainly intends to try a second time.

"If he invade, resist him to the last ditch, to the last fence, to the last yard of your realm. And though they tell you I am dead or have betrayed you—for Cæsar's favorite weapon is false rumor—know that I persist until the end in trying all means to weaken Cæsar from the rear. All means I will try, save only what a man may not do and retain his manhood. Truth I will tell to those who will believe it. I will lie, and craftily, to them who deal in lies. Fairly I will deal with honest men. So the gods shall aid me. But believe ye in your own star as well as in my friendship."

"Good-by!" Fflur said, choking, and embraced him.

Orwic turned away and strode out through the open door. He hated scenes, and his eyes were wet, which would not do at all. He was a British gentleman. Caswallon, muttering, "Ludd's blood!" swung Tros toward him by the arms and smote him on the breast a time or two.

"Tros, Tros!" he said, forcing a grin. "I would rather you would stay here and share Ludd's luck with us! It grieves me that you go."

"Friendship begets grief!" Tros answered, patting the tall, fair-haired chief between the shoulder-blades. "Grief eats courage, so beware of it. Caswallon, my friend, you and I were not born to mope like vultures over vain regrets. Friendship is a fire that tests both parties to it, so let you and me stand firmer, the more circumstances strain. It heartens me to know that you and Fflur have called me friend. I go forth proud of it!"

"Go then!" Caswallon answered, making his voice gruff lest it should tremble. "Ludd's luck go with you! And know this: Come what may—come rumor, and though all the world and Cæsar swear you have played us false, we will believe in you!"

"Tide!" That was Sigurdsen's voice from the poop. "Tide and a fair wind!"

There blew a whistle in between decks, where the captains of the oar-banks piped all rowers to the benches; then a clatter as the oar-blades rattled on the ports in readiness to slide out all together at the word.

"Haul short!" Sigurdsen again. And then a sing-song and a clanking at the capstan.

Tros led the way on deck, his eye aloft to where the clewed-up purple sails were fluttering and Northmen lay along the yards to shake them loose. He turned his back on Orwic, because Fflur wept on the young man's shoulder, and he knew what agonies of shame and nervousness that scene imposed on a British aristocrat. Orwic's funny little peaked helmet had been pushed over one eye, and he was biting his mustache. Caswallon laughed, which brought a curse to Orwic's lips, but Tros leaned overside and shouted at the crew of fishermen who were bringing alongside the barge on which the Druid, Caswallon and Fflur were to go ashore.

"Easy! Easy, you lubbers! If you scrape my paint— Out fenders there!" Tros had spent a small fortune on sulfur and quicksilver to make the ship's sides splendid with vermilion.

There had to be more embracing before Fflur went overside, because the British had a sort of ritual of parting, and it broke down all restraint. Caswallon, though he had mocked at Orwic's misery, let tears stream down his face, not trying to prevent them, unashamed. But Tros, for the sake of the crew that was watching him, preserved his air of grandeur to the end.

He stood the whole deck crew at quarters and saluted with a burst of trumpets and a roll of drums as Fflur and Caswallon went down the ladder, then turned to face the Druid, for the Druid waited.

There grew a silence on the deck and up aloft. The Druid, with his eyes on Tros, drew out the golden sickle from his girdle. He was mild-eyed, but the eyes were bright with fasting and with having contemplated stars and mysteries.

"In the midst of danger thou shalt find the keys of safety," he repeated. "Win Rome in Gades!"

Then the sickle, flashing in the sunlight, moved in mystic circles over Tros' head, severing whatever threads of hidden influence might bind him to the sources of disaster. Upturned, it received, as does the new moon, affluence and wisdom; reversed, it outpoured blessings on his head. Point first, it touched his breast above the heart, invoking honesty and courage; presently it passed in ritual of weaving movements before eyes, ears, nose, lips, hands and feet, arousing all resourcefulness, then tapped each shoulder to confer the final quality of knighthood. Then the Druid spoke:

"Offspring of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and the Nameless, be thyself! Go forth accoutred. As a sun's ray, go thou forth! Be a light amid the darkness! Be a land among the waters! Be a friend among the friendless, and a serpent!^[3] Be a strength amid the weakness! Be a man amid the elements! Whereso thy foot shall tread, be justice done! Whatso thy tongue shall speak, be truth unveiled! Be strong! Be of the gods who give and guide and not of them who snare and take away! That voice within thee, judge thee! Be thy hand the servant of thy soul!"

Blessing ship and crew with arms upraised, lips moving to the said-to-be-forgotten Word, the Druid turned and went, all keeping silence until, like some white-haired pilot of the years, he had descended to the waiting barge.

"Up anchor!" Tros roared. Then, and as the clanking capstan brought the cable in, "Make sail there! Sheet her home!"

The purple sails spread fluttering and bellied as the ship swung slowly on the tide before the light breeze. On the poop Tros raised his baton. Drums and cymbals crashed. The oars went out in three long banks on either side. Cymbals again for the "ready" and then crash of brass and alternating drum-beat as the water boiled alongside and the great ship leaped ahead, her serpent's tongue a-flicker in the sun,

"I am a man! I live! I laugh!" Tros told himself as he eyed those purple sails and turned to wave his hand toward the barge that danced amid the gulls along the white wake far astern.

CHAPTER II

OFF GADES.^[1]

HOW TO put into a port controlled by Romans, with part of his crew composed of two hundred and fifty deserters from Cæsar's army, and without falling foul of Cæsar's letters of proscription was a problem that Tros left to the gods to clear up for him, although he already had a hint of the solution in his mind. Meanwhile, there was work a-plenty—head winds and off-shore winds, flat calms with a heavy ground-swell that made the bucking rowers grunt, and squally weather in which whales played all around the ship, nearly causing a mutiny because he would not let Jaun Aksue and his Eskualdenak turn aside to hunt them.

"Thus we kill whales. With a spear we slay them. It is easy. We will slay two. You may tow them into Gades, making haste because the sharks will follow, eating at their undersides. The dead whales float, I promise you, and they are worth much money. Romans buy the meat; the traders buy the bone; the Spaniards buy the skin for sandals, shields, mule-harness—"

"Let live," Tros answered. "I hunt bigger fish."

"Aye, but you pay us nothing. Give us a chance to turn the whale meat into money, that we may drink in Gades. I tell you. Lord Tros, we haven't tasted red wine since the sour, thin stuff that Cæsar fed to us. We Eskualdenak are noblemen, who like to get drunk now and then."

But one of the things that Tros had learned in many foreign ports was the difference between a crew mad drunk on its own earned money, and the same crew equally drunk on its master's bounty.

"You shall drink at my expense in Gades," he remarked, and the tawny-haired soldier of fortune swaggered forward where he discussed with his companions the pros and cons of taking the ship away from Tros and hunting whales until she was full of the bone and blubber.

But Tros could smell the breath of mutiny as wolf smells men afar off, and sent Orwic to them to pretend to sympathize and to be very friendly. Orwic, a soldier of fortune, too, soon won his way into their confidence. It was he, in the forward deck-house—when the waves were heaving the ship's stern sky-high, burying her serpent in a welter of green, and there were three men at the helm—who made the proposal that they should give Tros one chance to show them a short cut to fortune; whereafter, if he failed them, they would do exactly as they pleased.

To that they agreed, and swore to it on the blade of a sword, served out to Aksue long ago by Cæsar's chief armorer—a silly little Roman sword, as all agreed, but good enough to swear on. Besides, it was the only weapon Tros had let them keep.

"So now you know," said Orwic, reporting to Tros on the poop.

And for three days and three nights Tros turned that situation over in his mind, while waves, tide, current and the wind fought him a blind battle for the mastery. No sight of sun, no stars nor moon, noticing to gauge direction by except the shrieking wind and—now and then when he dared it—thunder of the surf against high cliffs.

But he only approached the lee shore once or twice until he saw a headland that he recognized, and that was after he had left the dreaded rocks and isles of Finis Terrae^[2] far astern.

And for all th t he had only sighted landmarks twice, Tros hove the ship to within sight of Gades Bay in the late afternoon of the eleventh day out from Vectis, sending three men to the mastheads to keep watch for Roman ships and covering the serpent's head with 'paulin lest the setting sun should glitter on its gold-leaf and attract attention from the shore. He knew his ship was notched against the western sky, but her vermilion top-sides merged into the sunset splurge, and it was possible her masts might not be seen if none was actually watching for them.

Seated at the table in the stateroom by the whale-oil lantern-light he clipped a piece of parchment from a roll, mixed gum with sepia from cuttlefish, chewed the point of a pen to his liking and sent for Orwic.

"Ludd love me, Tros, but the land smells good!" said Orwic, making himself easy on Tros' bunk. "We Britons are not fish. I hate the sea."

"Can you speak the Roman tongue?" Tros asked him.

"You know I can't. When I was a boy I learned a few words from a Roman trader who was cast up on the beach. But he was killed soon afterwards for taking liberties with women. Even in the battle on the beach last year I couldn't remember a word of it. I wanted to yell the wrong commands to Cæsar's men and confuse them until our chariots could ride them down and—"

Tros interrupted with a gesture, leaning forward with an elbow on the table.

"But Gaulish? Can you speak that with a Gaulish accent?"

"Near enough. You know as well as I do that we Britons speak the same tongue as the Gauls. What ails you, Tros? Your eyes look like a madman's? Are you ship-sick?"

It was excitement that made Tros' eyes gleam in the swaying, dim oil light. He grinned, showing wonderful teeth.

"Do you dare—" his voice was hoarse with the strain of bellowing his orders to the crew and from the long vigil through the storm—"do you dare, Orwic, to go ashore tonight in Gades with Conops to guide you and none else to deliver a letter at the house of a friend of mine?"

Orwic barked delightedly.

"Friend Tros, I would dare to swim from here to Gades, just for the feel of good earth underfoot!"

"This is a worse risk than a swim," said Tros, clenching his fist for emphasis. "Fail of your errand, boy, there is a low hill behind Gades, just outside the city wall, where cross-roads meet. The hill bristles with dead trees that bear ill-smelling fruit. The Romans flog a man before they crucify him, flog him until his intestines hang and—"

"Rot me talk of failure!" Orwic answered. "Tell me what shall be if I succeed."

Tros' eyes blazed recognition of a spirit he admired, but he had his own way of admonishing lieutenants.

"Success," he said, "might mean that Britain will be saved from Cæsar. But the odds against you, tchutt! I must go myself. I need a cautious man."

"Ludd's belly! Tros, you shall not! Listen to me! Who has better right than I to run a risk for my friends in Britain?"

ORWIC was up on his feet, leaning across the table, his flushed face in the lantern light. He looked as handsome as Apollo.

"Some man," Tros said, "who will realize the danger and take care. No hot-head can succeed on this adventure."

"Tros, I blow cold! I am as crafty as a fox! I forswear horsemanship! I never rode a horse! I never drove a chariot! I am a tortoise! Burn me this great creaking lumber-wain of a tin-bellied boat, and set me only on dry land! I am a paragon of caution! Dumb I am, if you but say the word, a lurker in the shadows, a rap-a-door-and-run man! Tros, there is none aboard this ship who can do the business half as well!"

Tros knew it, but he kept the knowledge to himself. For instance, the forever faithful Conops, if sent ashore alone, might not be trusted not to use his knife. He had made up his mind, but he let Orwic do all the persuading.

"I need a modest man. The gods love modesty," he said with the air of a money-lender refusing to do business.

"I am modesty itself!" said Orwic.

"You!" Tros leaned back in his oaken chair and laughed. "You are so immodest that you think the gods will change the sea to suit your whim! But three nights gone I heard you praying that the storm might cease, instead of praising the sea's splendor and returning thanks for guts enough to ride it out!"

"It was the Northmen prayed," said Orwic.

"Aye. But who bade them? Who paid them? Who gave Skram, the skald,^[3] a gold-piece for his pains? I saw you."

"Tros, you see too much. Our British gods are of field and river, whereas these Northmen are sailors and their gods are—"

"Cripples!" Tros exploded. "Rot me such a god as likes to see good seamen on their knees! There are gods in Gades, Orwic, but they'll go their own gait, and it's for the man who does my work tonight to suit their whimsies, not they his."

"Well, it is I who go. I will be whimsical," said Orwic. "The gods shall like me very well indeed."

He stooped and scooped up sand out of the box that was kept in readiness to put out fire, and heaped six handfuls of the wet stuff on the table. Then he smoothed it out.

"So, draw me Gades. Show me the house I must find."

"Conops knows the house," said Tros, but he drew, none the less, with his forefinger, beginning with a circle for the city wall, then marking the five gates and making dots to represent the forum, the temple of Venus and the gladiators' barracks, with a veritable maze of streets between. "This is the governor's house. Avoid it as you would death! Now, from the western gate due eastward, do you see? Then this way, to the right, to a point about midway along the street. Turn your back to the west, and forward. The house of Simon the Jew stands nearly at the apex of a triangle that has for base the street between the forum and the gladiators' school.

"It is a house built half of timber, half of mud, smeared with a yellow plaster that will make it look like stone by night. Simon is a rich Jew with the privilege of armed slaves—quite a few of them. There will be dozens of dogs in the street and the Gades dogs are bad, I warn you. There used to hang a lantern on a chain from the front of Simon's house to the wall opposite. The citizenry have used that chain a time or two to hang night prowlers. None can approach the house unseen because the lamp has several wicks and casts a bright light."

"I will walk up brazenly," said Orwic.

"And you will find the brassiest-faced Jews in Europe ready for you! They live in the narrow streets near-by and look to Simon to protect them with his influence. They'll swarm out with stones in their hands at the first bleat from Simon's slaves. But there's worse than they. The city is patrolled by armed slaves who belong to the municipium.^[4] The place is ten times better policed than Rome, and there's a law against being out at night without being able to prove lawful business. It is no light task I set you. I think I had better leave you here and go myself."

"Tros, I tell you, I go! I will be safe enough in a Roman costume. They will take me for some gallant pursuing a love affair."

"In the Jews' quarter? I think not," said Tros. "A man can buy a Jewess in the open market almost anywhere where slaves are sold, but no man in his senses goes philandering near a ghetto after dark! The Jews can fight! And if you beat on Simon's door, his slaves will rush out and cudgel you."

"Conops shall beat the door," said Orwic. "While the slaves beat Conops, I will slip into the house."

"Cockerel! I wouldn't lose Conops for his weight in money!"

"Very well. I can wait until dawn outside the house and—"

"No. By morning Simon must have visited my ship. Now listen. Try to forget you are Caswallon's nephew and a prince of Britain. Only remember you are charged with secret business. If you try to show how smart you are, the gods will raise a wall of circumstance around you that will test your wits to the extremity. Go modestly, and they will modify the odds. Bear that in mind. Now, muck me this sand away—so. To the floor with it. Let that Jaun Spaniard clean it up. The rascal rots with laziness. Now, I will write the letter."

He spoke as one who contemplated making magic, and for a while, for the sake of exercising Orwic's patience, he sat listening to the murmur of the short waves overside. Then he wrote swiftly, using Greek, pausing line by line to read aloud and construe it to Orwic:

"Tros, the Samothracian to Simon, son of Tobias, the Jew of Alexandria, in Gades, greeting.

"Be the bearer as a son to you. He is Orwic, son of Orwic, a prince of Britain, nephew to the king who rules the Trinobantes and the Cantii, my true friend. Speak him freely.

"Knowing I have done you service in the past, whereby we both made profit, and aware you are a man of true heart and long memory, whose zeal for great emprises is in no wise dulled by the success that has attended many efforts in the past, I urge that you should come to me with all speed, secretly, tonight, for conference concerning matters that may profit both of us.

"Lord Orwic will attend you and convey you by the shortest way in safety to my ship.

"This is my true word. So fail not.

"Tros of Samothrace."

He sanded the letter and passed it to Orwic, who frowned at the thick Greek characters which he could read like any other educated Briton, though the Greek tongue puzzled him,

"Will he realize you are in danger? Will he understand you need help? Why not tell him so?" Orwic objected.

"Because I know Simon, son of Tobias!" Tros answered. "If he thought I needed help, he wouldn't come until he had driven a hard bargain first by daylight. But if he thinks there is a stroke of business I can put his way he will come in a hurry to learn the details of it."

"Better not tell him anything about your plans then?"

"Tell him all you know of them!" Tros answered dryly and left the stateroom to watch provisions being weighed out to the galley for the evening meal.

CHAPTER THREE

VISITORS

THE MINUTE the sun dipped below the skyline Tros ordered, "Out oars!" and, taking full advantage of the tide, dropped anchor in pitch darkness almost within hail of a spit of land that jutted into the mouth of Gades Bay. The moisture-laden Virazon, the sea-breeze that blows all night long between spring and autumn had not yet broken the dead calm. There was a stench of rotting seaweed from the shore, a croon of short waves on a sandy beach and, except that, silence.

There was no moon yet, but the starlight shone with milky whiteness that revealed the ghost-white city several miles away, rising tier on tier on a peninsula that was almost an island. About half a mile from where he had anchored a beacon-light flared in an iron basket, and in the distance, to the northward of the city, was a parallelogram of crimson fires that marked the outline of a Roman camp.

By lantern light in the after deck-house, with the ports well shrouded, Tros watched Conops get into the costume of a Greek slave.

"Now remember to act slavish!" he instructed. "Little man, much rests on you this night! To the Lord Orwic be fussily obsequious. See that he treads in no ordure near the gate. Watch that none touches him. Carry a stick to drive the dogs away from him, and use it at the least excuse. Talk Greek to him^[1] no matter that he doesn't understand. To the gate custodians be insolent. If they ask your master's name and business, tell them they may have it and a whipping in the bargain tomorrow morning for their impudence. In a pinch use Simon's name, but not if you can help it, because if they learn you are visiting Simon it might occur to them to extort a bribe from Simon by holding you both in the guardhouse until he comes."

"Trust me, master! I know Gades. There is a place outside the city wall where dancing girls are kept before they ship them for the Asia trade. Too bad we haven't scent of jasmine to make our clothes smell of an afternoon's adventure! Never mind. I'll manage it."

Then Orwic came, jingling a purse of gold and silver coins that Tros had given him, bending to admire the fashion of a Roman pallium and tunic, loot from Cæsar's bireme that Tros had captured a year ago.

"Walk not like a horseman!" Tros protested. "A Roman noble walks with a stride that measures out the leagues. Come, try it on the deck."

Tros strode for him and Orwic imitated. Conops ran in front, pretending to drive dogs away and pointing to guide his feet from pools of filth.

"Go. Go now with the gods in mind," said Tros and turned to give orders to Sigurdsen, who had manned and lowered the long-boat and was waiting to go overside.

"You, who were a king, so do, that if others had obeyed you formerly as you obey me now, you would be a king this day! Your weapons are for a last resort. Be silent, crafty, cunning, cautious—" he emphasized each word with his fist on the Northman's breast—"run rather than resist. If questioned, make no answer. Put one man ashore to follow the Lord Orwic and Conops as far as the city gate. Let him watch from a safe distance and bring word to you when they have passed in. Come back to the ship with the information, taking care to keep the oars well muffled."

Then one last word to Orwic.

"Cover your long hair with your pallium. One gold-piece to the captain of the gate guard. One piece of silver to each of the others. No more, or you'll merely whet their appetites. Ludd's luck!"

The muffled oar-beats thumped away into the dark, and silence fell. The whole crew was aware of mysteries impending. Aloft, the Northmen and some of the Eskualdenak leaned out of the rigging, watching the long-boat until its shape was lost in gloom. There began then a murmur of talking between decks, where the weary rowers sprawled. Jaun Aksue, leader of the Eskualdenak, trespassed on the poop without asking for permission and leaned over the rail beside Tros confidently, as if they two were equals.

"Secrecy!" he remarked grinning, and turned his back to the rail to fill his lungs with the first breath of the night wind that began to make the ship swing slowly at her anchor.

Tros swallowed resentment.

"Caution your men to be silent," he said and turned away.

But Aksue laid a strong hand on his arm.

"My men crave wine and shore leave—money. You wouldn't let us kill the whales. We have been eleven days at sea. The Gades girls are famous and the red wine is the best in all Spain."

Tros had hard work to suppress his instinct to knock the man down, but friction with the Eskualdenak just then would have ruined the vague plan he had in mind.

"I saved you men from Cæsar and from the Britons," he answered. "If you're caught in Gades, you'll be crucified,"

"Maybe. But you have friends ashore, or you wouldn't be here," said Aksue. "You can give us shore leave if you want to. You can say we're your slaves. We'll act the part, then nobody can interfere with us. We needn't go into the city. There are taverns outside the wall and lots of women. All we demand is a day ashore and some money to spend. Promise that, and we'll keep as quiet as mice 'till morning. Otherwise, I won't answer for what my men will do."

Tros found it easy enough now to tolerate the impudence. That those proud Eskualdenak were willing to act the part of slaves solved more than half of the problem that had racked his brain for days and nights on end. He nodded.

"You shall go ashore."

"And money?"

"I will arrange it. Go and warn your men that if there's any noise tonight, no shore leave!"

For an hour after that Tros paced the poop anxiously, his ears alert for the approach of shipping, for there might be Roman guard-ships on the prowl, and he had given hostages to fortune. Orwic and Conops were friends. He could not put to sea and desert them. Unless or until they returned he must stay where he was.

At the end of an hour he heard splashing, and thought it was dolphins or porpoises. Then, staring into the darkness, he was nearly sure he saw the outline of a boat.

"Sigurdsen!" he shouted, but there was no answer, and he remembered it was much too soon to expect Sigurdsen in the long-boat.

BUT the splashing continued, and presently he saw two human heads within a few feet of the ship's side. A voice that he thought was a woman's cried out to him in Greek to throw a rope. He went himself and lowered the rope ladder, ordering the deck-watch to the other bulwark. A man and a woman climbed up like wet shadows and stood dripping in the dark in front of him. The woman wore nothing but a Greek chlamys, with the wreck of a wreath of flowers tangled in her wet hair; the man had on a Roman tunic, that clung and revealed a lithe, athletic figure. They were nearly of a size, and in the dark they looked like children up to mischief.

"Tros!" said the woman, and Tros nearly jumped out of his skin.

Had he been recognized before he had set foot in Gades?

Gesturing with a jerk of the head and arm, he led the way toward the stateroom, where he might learn the worst without the deck-watch hearing it.

At the door he paused and let them pass in ahead of him. For a minute he stood, making sure that the deck-watch were not near enough for eavesdropping, wondering how many of them had seen the swimmers come aboard. When he entered the state-room the girl had already clothed herself in his own best purple cloak, that had been hanging on the rail between the bunk and bulkhead.

"Tros!" she said. "Tros of Samothrace!" And she laughed at him.

She seemed no whit worse for her swim, although the man was squatting on the floor and looked exhausted. She curtsied with a rhythm of bare legs. There was no fear in her eyes, nor even challenge, but a confidence expressed in laughter and a gesture of disarming comradeship.

"Lord Tros," she began again.

"I am not Tros," he answered sullenly.

He was afraid. Of all the difficulties in the world he dreaded most a complication with a woman.

"Oh yes, you are!" she answered. "Horatius Verres saw your ship at sunset notched against the sky. He recognized it instantly. He was in hiding on the roof of Pkauchios' ergastulum^[2] He is a runaway from Gaul. I am Chloe, the dancer, Pkauchios' slave. I am the favorite of Gades," she added, as if she were not particularly proud of it but simply stating fact.

"What do you want with me?" Tros asked her sullenly. That the girl's ivory-white skin shone golden in the whale-oil lantern light, and that her face was like a cameo against the shadow, only deepened his mistrust. He retired two paces from her and stood with his back against the door.

"Only what I can get!" she answered, and sat on Tros' bunk, arranging his pillows behind her, covering her bare knees with his blanket "I could tell Balbus, the governor, who you are, but I won't if you will bargain fairly."

Tros glanced at the man on the floor, who was slapping his head to get the water from his ears.

"As prisoners—" he suggested.

Chloe interrupted, laughing.

"I am a slave who owns slaves. My women know where I am. I have two men-slaves waiting on the beach."

"Who is this fellow?" Tros asked.

"I told you. Horatius Verres. He had a little difficulty with the Romans and had to run away from Gaul. If what he said is true, he lost his heart to a girl whom Cæsar coveted—some young matron, I suppose, or Cæsar wouldn't have looked twice at her. Some one, to earn Cæsar's favor, accused poor Horatius Verres of accepting bribes so that Cæsar might send him to Rome in fetters and keep the young woman for himself. But she found out the plot in time and warned him. So he slew the informer and tried to escape to Britain in one of four biremes that Cæsar was sending along with some Eskualdenak to invade that country.

"Somebody—" she looked merrily at Tros—"attacked those biremes, destroyed three of them, and captured a lot of the Eskualdenak. The fourth bireme escaped to Gaul with Horatius Verres still on board, but he swam away before they reached port and escaped a second time overland. He reached Gades in a dreadful state, but I could see he was a pretty boy under all the rags and whiskers, so I hid and saved him from Balbus' labor gang, because he had told me his real name and an interesting story. I hid him on the roof of my master's ergastulum, and later, when he was rested, I sent him to Simon the Jew, thinking Simon might do something for him, because Simon owes me money and can't pay."

"Can't pay? You say Simon can't pay what he owes you?"

She nodded.

"So you know Simon? Well, he has lent nearly all his money to Cæsar and Balbus, who pay back only when it suits them."

"Go on," said Tros, his fingers clutching at his sword-hilt.

He could not have asked a greater favor from the gods than that Simon should be short of money at the moment; but he was afraid of this woman, and still more afraid lest she should realize it.

"Simon was shocked and virtuous," she continued. "He would have informed Balbus if I hadn't reminded him of a few little things I know about himself. He agreed to say nothing, but he was afraid to do anything, so Horatius Verres had to return to his hiding place. I was asleep this afternoon when he sighted your ship from the roof of the ergastulum, but he called to me through the window of my cottage in Pkauchios' garden and said he would be safe if he could reach your ship, so I came with him to help him pass the gate guards, and then came out here for the fun of it. I wanted to see Tros the Samothracian."

"And are you satisfied?" Tros asked her.

He knew the reputation of the Gades dancing girls—intrigue, well educated villainy, greed, ulterior motives. He was sure that this one would not have dared to visit him unless convinced of her own safety. Perhaps she knew Orwic and Conops were ashore and was counting on them as hostages to prevent her from being carried off to sea before daylight.

She looked at him long and steadily, then nodded with a little uplift of her Grecian nose and a droop of the eyelids that suggested confidence in her own skill to read character.

"Why did you come to Gades?" she asked. "Balbus, the governor knows you are a pirate. I have heard him talk of it."

"I came to see Simon," Tros answered, and watched her to judge the effect.

BY HER face, by her manner, by the sudden, puzzled frown with a hint of speculation underlying it, he judged that she did not know about his having sent two messengers ashore. And her next words confirmed the guess.

"Simon has much less influence than my master Pkauchios, who is an astrologer whom all men fear. If you will hide Horatius Verres on your ship, I will speak for you to Pkauchios. He is almost the only man who dares to go to Balbus at any hour of the night. He could make Balbus afraid to interfere with you by talking about the stars and portents and all that nonsense. Then, what do you want to do? You know—" she looked at him keenly and impudently—"you can buy me. I have much influence in Gades."

"How much are you worth?" Tros asked her.

"My value in the market? Two hundred thousand sesterces!^[3] You don't believe it? Pkauchios had to pay the tax on that amount. He entered me on the list at much less, but the Roman who had farmed the taxes from Balbus ordered me sold at auction, so Pkauchios had to admit the higher value or else lose me to the highest bidder and pay a tax on the sale in the bargain. But I did not mean you should buy me. I meant you can buy my influence."

But in a world full of uncertainties, if there was one thing sure, it was that buying dancing women's influence was as unthrifty a proceeding as to throw the money overboard. The only end to it would be the bottom of the thrower's purse. Tros stared at Horatius Verres.

"How did you obtain her influence?" he asked. "Did you pay for it?"

The man smiled and troubled himself to rise before he answered.

"Money?" he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. He had all the gestures of a well bred man, and he was handsome in a dark way, although his eyes were rather close together. "I had no money. I made love to her. Who wouldn't? She thought it a merry jest at first. But I convinced her by threatening to yield myself to Balbus if she wouldn't believe my heart is hers."

"Oh, I wasn't convinced, but he is a pretty liar," Chloe interrupted. "So I decided to help him and get rid of him," she added with a swift glance at the Roman, who was watching Tros.

But Tros saw the glance and placed his own interpretation on it.

"I will keep you on my ship," he said to Verres. "And I won't enslave you, but I won't trust you until I know you better."^[4]

Verres bowed acknowledgment.

"I am grateful," he said, smiling again with a peculiar boyish up-twist of the mouth.

Tros was about to speak again, but the deck-watch shouted, and a man came running to the stateroom door—pounded on it.

"Sigurdsen comes!"

Tros either had to go on deck or else summon Sigurdsen into the cabin. He did not want the deck crew in his confidence. He signed to Chloe and Verres to hide themselves in the dark corner, where his clothes hung between bunk and bulkhead, not wishing, either, to discuss his visitors with Sigurdsen, preferring to keep information to himself until the time came to make use of it. As he would have to talk to Sigurdsen in Gaulish there was a chance that Chloe, at any rate, might not understand the conversation. He would keep the Roman on the ship, so that it did not matter whether he should understand or not.

CHAPTER THREE

VISITORS

THE MINUTE the sun dipped below the skyline Tros ordered, "Out oars!" and, taking full advantage of the tide, dropped anchor in pitch darkness almost within hail of a spit of land that jutted into the mouth of Gades Bay. The moisture-laden Virazon, the sea-breeze that blows all night long between spring and autumn had not yet broken the dead calm. There was a stench of rotting seaweed from the shore, a croon of short waves on a sandy beach and, except that, silence.

There was no moon yet, but the starlight shone with milky whiteness that revealed the ghost-white city several miles away, rising tier on tier on a peninsula that was almost an island. About half a mile from where he had anchored a beacon-light flared in an iron basket, and in the distance, to the northward of the city, was a parallelogram of crimson fires that marked the outline of a Roman camp.

By lantern light in the after deck-house, with the ports well shrouded, Tros watched Conops get into the costume of a Greek slave.

"Now remember to act slavish!" he instructed. "Little man, much rests on you this night! To the Lord Orwic be fussily obsequious. See that he treads in no ordure near the gate. Watch that none touches him. Carry a stick to drive the dogs away from him, and use it at the least excuse. Talk Greek to him^[1] no matter that he doesn't understand. To the gate custodians be insolent. If they ask your master's name and business, tell them they may have it and a whipping in the bargain tomorrow morning for their impudence. In a pinch use Simon's name, but not if you can help it, because if they learn you are visiting Simon it might occur to them to extort a bribe from Simon by holding you both in the guardhouse until he comes."

"Trust me, master! I know Gades. There is a place outside the city wall where dancing girls are kept before they ship them for the Asia trade. Too bad we haven't scent of jasmine to make our clothes smell of an afternoon's adventure! Never mind. I'll manage it."

Then Orwic came, jingling a purse of gold and silver coins that Tros had given him, bending to admire the fashion of a Roman pallium and tunic, loot from Cæsar's bireme that Tros had captured a year ago.

"Walk not like a horseman!" Tros protested. "A Roman noble walks with a stride that measures out the leagues. Come, try it on the deck."

Tros strode for him and Orwic imitated. Conops ran in front, pretending to drive dogs away and pointing to guide his feet from pools of filth.

"Go. Go now with the gods in mind," said Tros and turned to give orders to Sigurdsen, who had manned and lowered the long-boat and was waiting to go overside.

"You, who were a king, so do, that if others had obeyed you formerly as you obey me now, you would be a king this day! Your weapons are for a last resort. Be silent, crafty, cunning, cautious—" he emphasized each word with his fist on the Northman's breast—"run rather than resist. If questioned, make no answer. Put one man ashore to follow the Lord Orwic and Conops as far as the city gate. Let him watch from a safe distance and bring word to you when they have passed in. Come back to the ship with the information, taking care to keep the oars well muffled."

Then one last word to Orwic.

"Cover your long hair with your pallium. One gold-piece to the captain of the gate guard. One piece of silver to each of the others. No more, or you'll merely whet their appetites. Ludd's luck!"

The muffled oar-beats thumped away into the dark, and silence fell. The whole crew was aware of mysteries impending. Aloft, the Northmen and some of the Eskualdenak leaned out of the rigging, watching the long-boat until its shape was lost in gloom. There began then a murmur of talking between decks, where the weary rowers sprawled. Jaun Aksue, leader of the Eskualdenak, trespassed on the poop without asking for permission and leaned over the rail beside Tros confidently, as if they two were equals.

"Secrecy!" he remarked grinning, and turned his back to the rail to fill his lungs with the first breath of the night wind that began to make the ship swing slowly at her anchor.

Tros swallowed resentment.

"Caution your men to be silent," he said and turned away.

But Aksue laid a strong hand on his arm.

"My men crave wine and shore leave—money. You wouldn't let us kill the whales. We have been eleven days at sea. The Gades girls are famous and the red wine is the best in all Spain."

Tros had hard work to suppress his instinct to knock the man down, but friction with the Eskualdenak just then would have ruined the vague plan he had in mind.

"I saved you men from Cæsar and from the Britons," he answered. "If you're caught in Gades, you'll be crucified,"

"Maybe. But you have friends ashore, or you wouldn't be here," said Aksue. "You can give us shore leave if you want to. You can say we're your slaves. We'll act the part, then nobody can interfere with us. We needn't go into the city. There are taverns outside the wall and lots of women. All we demand is a day ashore and some money to spend. Promise that, and we'll keep as quiet as mice 'till morning. Otherwise, I won't answer for what my men will do."

Tros found it easy enough now to tolerate the impudence. That those proud Eskualdenak were willing to act the part of slaves solved more than half of the problem that had racked his brain for days and nights on end. He nodded.

"You shall go ashore."

"And money?"

"I will arrange it. Go and warn your men that if there's any noise tonight, no shore leave!"

For an hour after that Tros paced the poop anxiously, his ears alert for the approach of shipping, for there might be Roman guard-ships on the prowl, and he had given hostages to fortune. Orwic and Conops were friends. He could not put to sea and desert them. Unless or until they returned he must stay where he was.

At the end of an hour he heard splashing, and thought it was dolphins or porpoises. Then, staring into the darkness, he was nearly sure he saw the outline of a boat.

"Sigurdsen!" he shouted, but there was no answer, and he remembered it was much too soon to expect Sigurdsen in the long-boat.

BUT the splashing continued, and presently he saw two human heads within a few feet of the ship's side. A voice that he thought was a woman's cried out to him in Greek to throw a rope. He went himself and lowered the rope ladder, ordering the deck-watch to the other bulwark. A man and a woman climbed up like wet shadows and stood dripping in the dark in front of him. The woman wore nothing but a Greek chlamys, with the wreck of a wreath of flowers tangled in her wet hair; the man had on a Roman tunic, that clung and revealed a lithe, athletic figure. They were nearly of a size, and in the dark they looked like children up to mischief.

"Tros!" said the woman, and Tros nearly jumped out of his skin.

Had he been recognized before he had set foot in Gades?

Gesturing with a jerk of the head and arm, he led the way toward the stateroom, where he might learn the worst without the deck-watch hearing it.

At the door he paused and let them pass in ahead of him. For a minute he stood, making sure that the deck-watch were not near enough for eavesdropping, wondering how many of them had seen the swimmers come aboard. When he entered the state-room the girl had already clothed herself in his own best purple cloak, that had been hanging on the rail between the bunk and bulkhead.

"Tros!" she said. "Tros of Samothrace!" And she laughed at him.

She seemed no whit worse for her swim, although the man was squatting on the floor and looked exhausted. She curtsied with a rhythm of bare legs. There was no fear in her eyes, nor even challenge, but a confidence expressed in laughter and a gesture of disarming comradeship.

"Lord Tros," she began again.

"I am not Tros," he answered sullenly.

He was afraid. Of all the difficulties in the world he dreaded most a complication with a woman.

"Oh yes, you are!" she answered. "Horatius Verres saw your ship at sunset notched against the sky. He recognized it instantly. He was in hiding on the roof of Pkauchios' ergastulum^[2] He is a runaway from Gaul. I am Chloe, the dancer, Pkauchios' slave. I am the favorite of Gades," she added, as if she were not particularly proud of it but simply stating fact.

"What do you want with me?" Tros asked her sullenly. That the girl's ivory-white skin shone golden in the whale-oil lantern light, and that her face was like a cameo against the shadow, only deepened his mistrust. He retired two paces from her and stood with his back against the door.

"Only what I can get!" she answered, and sat on Tros' bunk, arranging his pillows behind her, covering her bare knees with his blanket "I could tell Balbus, the governor, who you are, but I won't if you will bargain fairly."

Tros glanced at the man on the floor, who was slapping his head to get the water from his ears.

"As prisoners—" he suggested.

Chloe interrupted, laughing.

"I am a slave who owns slaves. My women know where I am. I have two men-slaves waiting on the beach."

"Who is this fellow?" Tros asked.

"I told you. Horatius Verres. He had a little difficulty with the Romans and had to run away from Gaul. If what he said is true, he lost his heart to a girl whom Cæsar coveted—some young matron, I suppose, or Cæsar wouldn't have looked twice at her. Some one, to earn Cæsar's favor, accused poor Horatius Verres of accepting bribes so that Cæsar might send him to Rome in fetters and keep the young woman for himself. But she found out the plot in time and warned him. So he slew the informer and tried to escape to Britain in one of four biremes that Cæsar was sending along with some Eskualdenak to invade that country.

"Somebody—" she looked merrily at Tros—"attacked those biremes, destroyed three of them, and captured a lot of the Eskualdenak. The fourth bireme escaped to Gaul with Horatius Verres still on board, but he swam away before they reached port and escaped a second time overland. He reached Gades in a dreadful state, but I could see he was a pretty boy under all the rags and whiskers, so I hid and saved him from Balbus' labor gang, because he had told me his real name and an interesting story. I hid him on the roof of my master's ergastulum, and later, when he was rested, I sent him to Simon the Jew, thinking Simon might do something for him, because Simon owes me money and can't pay."

"Can't pay? You say Simon can't pay what he owes you?"

She nodded.

"So you know Simon? Well, he has lent nearly all his money to Cæsar and Balbus, who pay back only when it suits them."

"Go on," said Tros, his fingers clutching at his sword-hilt.

He could not have asked a greater favor from the gods than that Simon should be short of money at the moment; but he was afraid of this woman, and still more afraid lest she should realize it.

"Simon was shocked and virtuous," she continued. "He would have informed Balbus if I hadn't reminded him of a few little things I know about himself. He agreed to say nothing, but he was afraid to do anything, so Horatius Verres had to return to his hiding place. I was asleep this afternoon when he sighted your ship from the roof of the ergastulum, but he called to me through the window of my cottage in Pkauchios' garden and said he would be safe if he could reach your ship, so I came with him to help him pass the gate guards, and then came out here for the fun of it. I wanted to see Tros the Samothracian."

"And are you satisfied?" Tros asked her.

He knew the reputation of the Gades dancing girls—intrigue, well educated villainy, greed, ulterior motives. He was sure that this one would not have dared to visit him unless convinced of her own safety. Perhaps she knew Orwic and Conops were ashore and was counting on them as hostages to prevent her from being carried off to sea before daylight.

She looked at him long and steadily, then nodded with a little uplift of her Grecian nose and a droop of the eyelids that suggested confidence in her own skill to read character.

"Why did you come to Gades?" she asked. "Balbus, the governor knows you are a pirate. I have heard him talk of it."

"I came to see Simon," Tros answered, and watched her to judge the effect.

BY HER face, by her manner, by the sudden, puzzled frown with a hint of speculation underlying it, he judged that she did not know about his having sent two messengers ashore. And her next words confirmed the guess.

"Simon has much less influence than my master Pkauchios, who is an astrologer whom all men fear. If you will hide Horatius Verres on your ship, I will speak for you to Pkauchios. He is almost the only man who dares to go to Balbus at any hour of the night. He could make Balbus afraid to interfere with you by talking about the stars and portents and all that nonsense. Then, what do you want to do? You know—" she looked at him keenly and impudently—"you can buy me. I have much influence in Gades."

"How much are you worth?" Tros asked her.

"My value in the market? Two hundred thousand sesterces!^[3] You don't believe it? Pkauchios had to pay the tax on that amount. He entered me on the list at much less, but the Roman who had farmed the taxes from Balbus ordered me sold at auction, so Pkauchios had to admit the higher value or else lose me to the highest bidder and pay a tax on the sale in the bargain. But I did not mean you should buy me. I meant you can buy my influence."

But in a world full of uncertainties, if there was one thing sure, it was that buying dancing women's influence was as unthrifty a proceeding as to throw the money overboard. The only end to it would be the bottom of the thrower's purse. Tros stared at Horatius Verres.

"How did you obtain her influence?" he asked. "Did you pay for it?"

The man smiled and troubled himself to rise before he answered.

"Money?" he asked with a shrug of his shoulders. He had all the gestures of a well bred man, and he was handsome in a dark way, although his eyes were rather close together. "I had no money. I made love to her. Who wouldn't? She thought it a merry jest at first. But I convinced her by threatening to yield myself to Balbus if she wouldn't believe my heart is hers."

"Oh, I wasn't convinced, but he is a pretty liar," Chloe interrupted. "So I decided to help him and get rid of him," she added with a swift glance at the Roman, who was watching Tros.

But Tros saw the glance and placed his own interpretation on it.

"I will keep you on my ship," he said to Verres. "And I won't enslave you, but I won't trust you until I know you better."^[4]

Verres bowed acknowledgment.

"I am grateful," he said, smiling again with a peculiar boyish up-twist of the mouth.

Tros was about to speak again, but the deck-watch shouted, and a man came running to the stateroom door—pounded on it.

"Sigurdsen comes!"

Tros either had to go on deck or else summon Sigurdsen into the cabin. He did not want the deck crew in his confidence. He signed to Chloe and Verres to hide themselves in the dark corner, where his clothes hung between bunk and bulkhead, not wishing, either, to discuss his visitors with Sigurdsen, preferring to keep information to himself until the time came to make use of it. As he would have to talk to Sigurdsen in Gaulish there was a chance that Chloe, at any rate, might not understand the conversation. He would keep the Roman on the ship, so that it did not matter whether he should understand or not.

CHAPTER IV

GADES BY NIGHT

ORWIC jumped on to the seaweed-littered beach, slipped on a heap of the slimy stuff and sprawled among the scampering crabs, where Conops helped him to his feet.

"A bad omen, Lord Orwic. A bad omen!"

But the Britons were not addicted to the vice of reading omens in every accident.

"Go back in the boat, if you're afraid," Orwic answered. So Conops started to lead the way on the five-mile walk toward the city across a dark, ill-smelling wilderness of sand and scrub where anything might happen. And Sigurdsen sent Skram, the skald to follow them.

They found a road after a while, with a stinking ditch on either side of it, and before long saw the lights of the drinking booths, brothels and slaughter yards outside the wall, where there was neither day nor night but one long pandemonium of vice and lawlessness. And soon after that the first of the scavenger dogs, prowling in search of stray goats or forgotten offal, winded them and started a yelp that brought the pack.

Thereafter, they had to fight their way with knife and stick, not daring to gather stones lest the ferocious brutes should snatch that opportunity to rush them while they stooped. But the noise called no attention from the slums, where a dog-fight in the dark was nothing new, and when Skram, judging he was close enough to the gate, lay down to watch, the dogs devoted all their efforts to attacking him, leaving Orwic and Conops free to approach the gate with a semblance of Roman dignity. There Conops took command.

There was a foot-gate in the midst of one side of the double, iron-strapped wooden one that had been closed at sunset; and in the midst of the small gate was a grilled opening that the guard could look through, and above that a lantern on an iron bracket.

Long before they came into the lantern light Conops began talking fussily in Greek.

"This way, master! That way! Mind the muck there! Dionysus! But the wine those rascals sell has madness in it! Master, master, try to walk straight!" Any one who understood Greek could not help but know a Roman gentleman was coming from an evening's entertainment.

"There, master, give me your purse and lean against the wall while I call the gate guard!"

Conops set his ugly face against the grill and whistled.

"Quick!" he commanded. "My master is drunk, and ill-tempered because he has been robbed."

"Who is he?" a voice asked through the grill.

"None of your business! Be quick, unless the lot of you want to be whipped in the morning!"

"Was he robbed of his purse?"

"Dionysus! No. What do you take me for? I keep his purse."

"Well, you know what it costs. One gold piece from each of you to the man on duty, and then the officer—he makes his own terms."

"Fool!" Conops roared at him. "Open! If you knew who waits you'd tremble in your mongrel skin!"

The guard vanished. A moment later Conops heard him reporting through the guard-house window to his officer, and he made haste to improve the passing moment.

"Master, master!" he yelled. "Don't beat me! I'm doing my best! Order those blackguards in the guard-house beaten for daring to keep you waiting. Ow! Ow! Master, that hurts!"

The captain of the guard came—a Numidian, as coal-black as the shadows, rolling the whites of his eyes in an effort to see through the grill, his breath reeking of garlic.

"Who?" he demanded.

"You'll pay smartly for it if I have to tell you!" Conops answered. "Hurry up now! Two gold pieces for you to hold your tongue and shut your eyes. Some silver for your men. My master's drunk. I pity you, if you keep him waiting!"

A great key jangled on a ring. The lock squealed. Conops threw his arm around Orwic, whose face was smothered in the fold of his pallium.

"Act very drunk!" he whispered, and hustled him through the narrow opening.

On the far side he pushed him into the darkest shadow, where dim rays from a lantern showed the broad blue border of a Roman tunic and the sandaled legs below it, but nothing else. There was a chink of money. The Numidian signed to half a dozen men to retire into the guard-house.

"Remind him when he's sober that I let him in without a fuss," he said grinning. "Who is he?"

Conops laid a hand on the black man's shoulder and leaned toward him as if to whisper, then apparently thought better of it.

"No," he said, "mind your own business. That's wisest. I'll remind him you were civil."

"All right. Don't forget now! I'll remember you, you one-eyed Greek! If I see you and ask a favor some time—"

But Conops was gone, his left arm around Orwic and his right hand closed on something that, it seemed, he valued—possibly the purse. The captain of the gate guard may have thought so.

"Act drunk—drunk—drunker than that!" he whispered. "Strike a blow at me!"

It was too early for the streets to be deserted and the danger was of meeting Romans or some citizen who might imagine he recongized the drunken man and speak to him for the fun of it. But the street was crooked and the upper stories of the houses leaned out overhead until they almost met, creating a tunnel of gloom into which the yellow fight from doors and windows streamed at intervals. The moment they were out of sight of the guard-house Conops advised a change of tactics.

"Now sober! Now walk swiftly, as if we had serious business. Stride, man! Stride out! Remember you're a Roman!"

But the spirit of adventure was in Orwic's veins. It was the first time he had seen a foreign city. Men who stood in doorways, house-fronts, litters of the wealthy merchants borne on the shoulders of slaves—all was new to him and stirred his curiosity. Above all, as they threaded through the maze of narrow streets, the glimpse through certain open doors attracted him. For Gades had not yet been zoned, as Rome was, more or less, and as Lunden did not need to be. There were cavernous, whitewashed cellars visible from mid-street, in which women danced to the jingling strains of strings and castanets.

Naked-bellied women ran from one door, seizing Orwic, trying to drag him in to drink and witness Gadean indecency. One pulled away the pallium that hid the lower portion of his face and Conops struck at her too late; she glimpsed the long, fair hair that fell to the Briton's shoulders, screamed of it, tried to tug the pallium again.

"Haie, girls! A barbarian! A rich barbarian! Let's teach him."

THE owner of the place came out, a bull-necked Syrian who tried to keep Conops at bay while the slave-women struggled to hustle their quarry down steps into the cellar whence the din of music and the reek of wine emerged. The scuffle drew attention from a guard of the municipium, street corner lurking, watching for a chance to blackmail somebody. He came on the run and, wise in all the short cuts to extortion, picked on Conops as a slave worth money, worth redeeming from the lock-up.

Too quick for him, Conops stepped into the light that streamed from the cellar doorway, showed him something in the palm of a secretive hand. Whatever it was, the Syrian saw it, too, and drove the women down the cellar steps. The guard of the municipium strolled away, the Syrian grew laughingly apologetic. Conops led up-street in haste and around three corners before he paused and let Orwic come abreast.

"What did you show him?" Orwic, :asked.

"Oh, only a bronze badge I stole from that fool Numidian at the gate."

They reached the wide street running crosswise of the city—wide, that was, for Gades, where there was no wheeled traffic because of the house-fronts that jutted out promiscuously and the arches and bottle-necked passages—passed a temple of Venus, rawly new, of imported Sicilian marble, where Orwic's British eyes stared scandalized at the enormous figure of the naked goddess colored in flesh tints and bathed in the flickering light of torches,^[1] and turned due eastward, up an alley between high, blind walls where the air smelt stale and filthy and there was not room for two men to pass without squeezing.

There, in the stinking dark, men slept who had to be stepped over carefully. Some swore when awakened and followed with drawn knives, so that Conops walked backward, his own long knife-blade tapping on the wall to give the night-pads warning he was armed.

And there were high doors in the walls, set in dark and unexpected corners, where men lurked who stepped out suddenly and blocked the way, demanding an alms with no humility. Conops slipped under Orwic's arm and trounced one of them with the handle of his knife, whereafter Orwic called a halt for consultation.

"Tros recommended caution," he remarked. "We can not fight all the thieves in Gades. Yet if we fee one rascal he will call his gang to murder us for the purse. We would be better off in the cellar where the women were; they might have taken our money without killing us, or so it seems to me. Pick me up that rascal. Has he breath left? Can he speak? So. Offer him silver to lead us to the house of Simon and keep other rogues at bay."

So, for a while they went preceded by a man in rags who announced in low growls to fellow-prowlers of the Gades underworld that these were privileged night-passengers who had paid their footing, and none offered to molest them after that, except one leper, who demanded to be paid to keep his filthy sores at a distance. He was of the aristocracy of beggardom and bound by no guild restrictions.

And so into the ghetto, where another sort of night life teemed in crowded alleyways. Iron-barred windows and a reek of pickled fish; sharp voices raised in argument; song, pitched in minor melancholy with an undertone of triumph; secrecy suggested by the eye-holed shutters; ugliness; no open doors, yet doors that did open secretively as soon as they had passed, to afford a glimpse of the unwelcome strangers.

At the end of a few turns the beggar-guide professed to have lost himself, demanded his money and decamped. Orwic remembered the plan Tros drew in sand on the cabin table, but could not see that it faintly resembled any of these winding alleys. Conops, sailor by profession, had the bearings in his head, but could make nothing of the maze confronting them.

"Let us return to the temple of Venus and start again," he suggested. "There used to be an alley that ran nearly straight from there to Simon's house."

But Orwic plunged forward at random toward a corner where a dim lamp burned in an iron bracket. Conops warned him they were followed and struck the blade of his long knife against a door-post, but Orwic turned and stuck his foot into a door that had opened just sufficiently to give a view of him. Conops who knew Gades ghetto's reputation, tried to pull him back.

"Caution!" he urged.

But Orwic was already inside. There was a leather screen, and Conops could not see him. He had to follow, and the door slammed at his back. The screen masked the end of a short, narrow passage that turned into a room, where there were voices and a dim light. Conops used up a few seconds lunging in the darkness with his knife to find out who and where the man was who had slammed the door. Then he groped for the door, but failed to find the lock, his fingers running up and down smooth wood. He could hardly even find the crack between door and frame.

"Oimoi! Olola! Tros was mad to send a Briton!"

Some one chuckled in the darkness. He lunged with his knife at the sound, but hit nothing, then decided to try the passage and the voices and the light. But first he knocked the screen down, being a Greek strategist. A clear line of retreat, even toward a locked door, seemed better than nothing.

He found Orwic in a room whose walls were higher than its length or breadth. Somewhere in the darkness overhead there was a gallery that creaked, suggesting people up there listening, but tie one dim lamp was below the gallery, its flickering light thrown downward by a battered bronze reflector. There was a smell of oil, spice, leather and tallow, but nothing in the room except a leather-covered table and two stools. Orwic leaned against the table. An old Jew sat facing him on one of the stools, his knees under the table and his back against the wall. The Jew wore the robes of his race and a dirty cloth cap, beneath which the oily ringlets coiled on either side of bright black eyes. He was scratching his curled beard as he contemplated Orwic.

"SIMON!" said Orwic. "Simon! Simon!"

The Jew glanced at Conops, who stood sidewise in the door, tapping his knife against the post and swaying himself to see into the shadows.

"Is he drunk?" he asked, speaking Greek. "My name isn't Simon."

"Simon, son of Tobias of Alexandria," said Conops. "Where is his house? We seek him."

"Every one in Gades knows the house of Simon, son of Tobias of Alexandria," the old Jew answered. "Why do you break into my house?"

Conops showed him the bronze badge, stolen from the captain of the gate guard, but that had no effect whatever.

"Such a thing will get you into trouble," said the Jew. "You have no right to it. That belongs to a captain of the slaves of the municipium."

Conops began to be thoroughly frightened. The stealthy sounds in gallery and passage and the confident curiosity of the old Jew assured him he was in a tight place.

"Master, let's go!" he urged in Gaulish.

But Orwic could see no danger, and the Jew smiled, his lower lip protruding as he laid a lean hand on the table.

"A Gaul? Ah! And a Greek slave? Who is your master?" he asked Conops. "What does he want with Simon ben Tobias of Alexandria? What is a Gaul doing with a Greek slave? You must tell me. Come and stand here."

He pointed to the floor beside him. Conops obeyed, knife in hand, well satisfied to stand where he could hold the old Jew at his mercy at the first suggestion of attack.

"Put your knife away. Slaves are not allowed to carry weapons," said the Jew, and again Conops obeyed. He could redraw the knife in a second. "Who is your master? Why did you come to my house?"

Orwic seemed perfectly undisturbed, although he kept on sniffing at the strange smells.

"Tell him to show us the way to Simon's house," he said patiently.

"You would never be admitted into Simon's house at this hour," said the Jew. "There are always his slaves in the street, and they protect his house unless they know you. Do they know you?"

"Tell him," said Orwic, "that we have a letter for Simon."

But the Jew seemed to understand the Gaulish perfectly.

"Show me!" he remarked, and held his hand out.

"Don't you, master! Don't you!" Conops urged, but Orwic had not understood the Greek. He had supposed the Jew demanded money to show the way.

The Jew's eyes gleamed in the direction of the door. Conops turned instantly. There were three Jews in the passage—confident, young, strong, armed with heavy leather porters' straps, which was a weapon quite as deadly as a knife. They leaned with their backs against the passage wall and gazed through into the room with insolent amusement.

"Simon is my friend," said the Jew. "If it is true you have a letter, I will take it to him. You wait here. But I don't believe you have a letter. You are robbers. Who should send strangers with a letter to Simon at this hour of the night?"

Conops explained that to Orwic.

"Tell him he may come with us and satisfy himself," said Orwic, beginning to be piqued at last.

"Which of you has the letter?" the old Jew demanded, and the three young Jews in the passageway advanced into the room, as if they had been signalled.

"I can kill all three of those!" said Conops grimly.

His hand went like lightning to his knife-hilt, but a woman screamed in the gallery and smashed something. Conops and Orwic glanced up, and in the same second each found himself caught in a rawhide noose, arms pinioned.

They fought like roped catamounts with teeth and feet, but the three young Jews were joined by others, who helped to kneel on them and tie them until they could not move, the old Jew sitting all the while, his back against the wall, as if the whole proceeding were quite usual and did not interest him much.

He said something in a sharp voice, and the men began to search their prisoners.

One of them tossed the purse on to the table. Orwic's short Roman sword followed, then Conops' knife and the bronze badge taken from the gate guard. At last the letter was discovered, tucked under the belt of Orwic's tunic. The old Jew read it, knitting his brows, sitting sidewise so as to hold it toward the light, his lean lips moving as he spelled the words.

"Eh? Tros of Samothrace! Eh?"

He rolled up the letter and thrust it in the bosom of his robe, then spoke rapidly in Aramaic to the Jews who were squatting beside their prisoners. Presently he opened the purse on the table, counted the money, closed it, threw it down, called to the woman, who tossed down a cloak from the gallery and left the house, shuffling along the passage-way in slippers.

CHAPTER V

CHLOE—"QUI SALTAVIT PLACUIT."

TROS and Sigurdsen stood over by the water-clocks, the full width of the ship from where Chloe and Horatius Verres sat in hiding. But Sigurdsen's voice was a sailor's and, the Gaulish being foreign to him, he spoke it with peculiar emphasis.

"Skram was badly bitten by the dogs," said Sigurdsen. "He saw both men enter the city, and he is afraid now he will go mad from dog-bite. The other men think Skram will bite them. They talk of killing him for a precaution."

Tros groped in a corner.

"Take this," he commanded. "Tell Skram and all those other fools that the Druids gave it to me. It'll sting, mind. You'll have to hold him while you rub it on. Tell Skram that if he drinks nothing but water, and eats no meat for three days, he'll recover and the dogs'll die. Tell him I said that. Then put Skram to bed, choose another in his place, and row back to the shore to wait for Orwic, Conops and the man they'll bring with them."

Sigurdsen departed and presently Skram's yells announced the application of the pine-oil dressing to sundry tender parts of his anatomy. Being a skald, he had a strong voice trained to out-yell storms and drunken roistering.

Chloe came out of the dark into the whale-oil lantern light.

"You have sent men ashore?" she asked. "To get in touch with Simon? At this hour of the night? They'll fail! They'll be caught by Balbus' city guards, or be killed by the Jews." She thought a minute. "Better have sent me! Were they slaves?"

"They are friends," Tros answered. "Where did you learn Gaulish?"

She laughed.

"Pkauchios sent me to Gaul one time to dance for Cæsar."

"Why did Pkauchios send you to Cæsar?"

"Pkauchios' business is to know men's secrets. But I failed that time. Cæsar is no fool."

She sat on the bunk again, covering her bare knees with a blanket, and for an hour Tros talked to her, he pacing up and down the cabin floor and she regaling him with all politics of Gades.

"Balbus bleeds the place," she told him. "Balbus pretends to be Cæsar's friend, but he is the nominee of Pompey the Great, who has all Spain for his province but stays in Rome and has men like Balbus send him all the money they can squeeze out of their governorships, not that a good percentage doesn't stick to Balbus' fingers. Balbus intends to rebuild the city. If those men you sent ashore get caught by the city guard, they'll find themselves in the quarries sometime tomorrow. Balbus has forbidden the export of male slaves, because he wants to glut the market, so as to buy them cheap for his labor gangs. He sentences all able-bodied vagrants to the quarries. He will crucify you, though, if he catches you, unless—"

"Are there any Roman war-ships in the harbor?" Tros asked her.

"Only one guard-ship, a trireme, but it's hauled out for repairs. The spring fleet hasn't come yet, and the fleet that wintered here has gone to Gaul with supplies and recruits for Cæsar's army."

"When is the spring fleet expected?"

"Any day. It's overdue. The spring fleet comes with the merchant ships to protect them from the pirates. They say the pirates are getting just as bad as they were before Pompey the Great made war on them; and they say, too, that Pompey is too lazy to go after them again, or else afraid that Cæsar's friends might take advantage of his absence. You know, Pompey and Cæsar pretend to be great friends, but they're really deadly enemies, and now that Crassus, the richest man in the world, has gone to Syria, people are saying it's only a matter of time before Cæsar and Pompey are at each other's throats. Until now they've both been afraid of Crassus' money bags, which seems silly to me. The winner could kill Crassus—"

"And which side does Balbus take?"

The girl laughed.

"Balbus takes his own side, just like all the rest of us. Balbus aedificabit^[1] He hopes to win fame by making Gades a great city. If Cæsar should win in the struggle that everybody knows is coming, well—Balbus is Cæsar's friend. If Pompey wins, Balbus is Pompey's nominee and very faithful to him."

"What about you?" Tros asked her.

"What do I matter? I am a dancing girl, a slave—the property of Pkauchios the Egyptian."

"Which way lie your sympathies?" Tros insisted.

"With me, of course, with Chloe. But Balbus loves me, if that is what you mean. He would buy me, if I weren't so terribly expensive. And he would find some way of freeing me from Pkauchios, if Pkauchios weren't so useful to him."

"How?"

"Pkauchios reads the stars, and prophesies. Quite a lot of what he says comes true."

"Sorcery, eh?"

"Call it that if you like. Pkauchios owns other dancing girls besides me. We are all of us rather well trained at picking up information."

"You say you know Cæsar. You like him?"

"Who could help it? He's handsome, intelligent—oh, how I hate fools!—he has manners, fascination, courtesy. He can be cruel, he can be magnanimous, he thrills you with his presence, he's extravagant—as reckless as a god with his rewards. Oh, he's wonderful! There isn't any meanness in him, and when he looks at you, you simply feel his power. You can't help answering his questions. And then he just looks away—like this."

Chloe broke into a song that had become current wherever women followed in the wake of Roman arms:

"If my love loves not me,
May a bear from the mountains hug him."

"So now you love Balbus instead?" Tros suggested.

"Bah! Thirty thousand Balbuses are not worth half of Cæsar! I said, Balbus loves me. But he is much too mean to buy me. What are two hundred thousand sesterces to a man who can tax all Gades and sell judgments and confiscate traitors' property? I myself own more than two hundred thousand sesterces."

"Then why don't you buy your own freedom?"

"Two good reasons. One is, that I placed my peculium^[2] in Simon, the Jew's hands, out of the reach of Pkauchios. And Simon can't repay me at the moment, though he's honest in money matters like most of the rich Jews. The other is, that if I buy my freedom, I would still be Pkauchios' client. I couldn't leave Gades without his permission."

"And—?"

Tros felt himself on the scent of something. He experienced that strange thrill, unexplainable, that precedes a discovery. He shot questions at random.

"Why didn't you deposit your money with the temple priests, as most slaves do?"

"Because the priests hate Pkauchios. They would rob me to spite him. Simon is more honest."

Possibly she felt in Tros something like that same compelling force that she said had made her answer Cæsar's questions. After a moment's pause she answered:

"I didn't want my freedom until—" she glanced at the dark corner where Horatius Verres sat in silence—"you see, I had more liberty without it. As a slave there are few things I can't do in Gades."

"But—?" Tros insisted.

She shuddered.

"Roman law! If my master should be charged with treason they would have to take my evidence under torture. No escape from that. A slave's evidence against her master mayn't be taken any other way. Some of them die under torture. None of them are much good afterwards. They're always lame, and the fire leaves scars."

TROS whistled softly to himself, pacing the cabin floor, his hands behind him. Suddenly he turned on her.

"You didn't come here just for Horatius Verres' sake! You didn't cross that marshland in the dark for the fun of a swim to a pirate's ship! You called me a pirate just now. You had Verres' word for that. Whose else?"

"Cæsar wrote to Balbus to be on the watch for you. I saw the letter. It came by the overland mail three weeks ago."

"You a slave, and you risk yourself on a pirate's ship?"

"Well, I thought I would make friends with you."

"Why?"

"Because, if Pkauchios gets into difficulties, I might be able to escape to somewhere. Almost anywhere would do."

Tros, pacing the floor again, turned that over in his mind, reflecting that if she were willing to risk herself in what she supposed were a pirate's hands, she must be in serious danger of the Roman torturers. Pkauchios, her master, must be well into the toils. However, he was not quite sure yet that she was telling him the truth.

"You say Balbus loves you and would torture you?" he asked. "He is the governor, isn't he? He can overrule the court. He would find some excuse—"

"Bah!" she interrupted. "Balbus would enjoy it! You should see him at the circus. He isn't satisfied unless a dozen horses break their legs under the chariot wheels. See him at the spectacles. He likes the agony prolonged. A month ago he had a woman scourged and then worried by dogs, but he gave her a stick to defend herself and it took the brutes an hour to kill her. Balbus pretends he does it for the people's sake, but he makes them sick. It is he who likes it!"

Tros grinned pleasantly. The girl was trembling, trying to conceal it. He perceived he might make use of her, but fear, and the more of it the better, though a safe spur, would not provide against her treachery. He must supply hope, practical and definite. However, first another question, to make sure he was not wasting time and wit:

"So, after all, you have no real influence with Balbus?"

"That I have! I say, he loves me! I whisper, and he favors this or that one. But he would get just as much pleasure out of seeing me tortured as he does out of hiring me from Pkauchios to dance before his guests. He would say to the world, 'See how just I am. Behold my impartiality. I torture even Chloe, qui saltavit, placuit.'^[3] Then he would enjoy my writhings! He would enjoy them all the more because he loves me."

Tros stood staring at her, arms akimbo.

"Do you think, at a word from you, Balbus would admit me into Gades?" he asked.

"That would come better from Pkauchios. Pkauchios can go to him at any hour and say he has read portents in the stars," she answered.

"Can you manage Pkauchios?"

She frowned, then nodded.

"Yes. But he is dangerous. He will try to put you to his own use." Suddenly she laughed. "Let Pkauchios go to Balbus and prophesy that Tros the Samothracian will enter the harbor at dawn in his great red ship. It is red, isn't it? So Cæsar's letter said."

"Vermilion, with purple sails!" Tros answered proudly.

"And let Pkauchios say to Balbus that Tros of Samothrace is destined to render him a very great service. At dawn, the first prophecy will come true. So Balbus win believe the second and will receive you eagerly."

Tros nodded. He well knew the Romans' superstitious reverence for signs and omens. But he also knew the notorious treachery of the dancing girls of Gades, so there remained to pin down this one's friendship for himself.

"Do you care for pearls?" he asked her, and she gasped.

He took a big one with his thumb and finger from the pocket in his belt and placed it on the palm of her extended hand.

"You shall have enough of those," he said, "to make a necklace."

"But a slave mayn't wear them."^[4]

"You shall buy your freedom from your master."

"But Simon can't give me my money!"

"And if all plans fail, you shall escape with me on my ship—you and Horatius Verres."

"If?" she said, watching him, weighing the pearl in the palm of her hand.

"If you give to me in full, meanwhile, your influence in Gades! If you work for me ten times as faithfully as you have ever served your master! If you fail me in nothing, and lend me all your wit and all your knowledge."

"A bargain!" she exclaimed and held the pearl between her lips a moment. Then, suddenly, "Show me the rest of them! How many pearls?"

"You shall have them at the right time. Their number will depend on you," Tros answered, stepping to the door. He heard the oar-thumps of the long-boat. "How will you go back?"

"I will swim."

He shook his head. "I will send you ashore. Say nothing to the men. But how will you reach the city? There will be no Horatius Verres this time to fight the dogs off and protect you."

"I told you I am a slave who owns slaves. I have two men waiting for me on the beach."

Tros heard the deck-watch challenge and Sigurdsen's answering howl from close at hand.

"There is time yet," he said, glancing at the water-clock. "Hide there." He pointed to the dark comer where Horatius Verres sat. "If this is Simon coming, don't let him see you. Slip out when he enters the cabin and I will order my boatmen to row you to the beach."

Then he peered at Verres. He could hardly see his outline in the shadow under the row of clothing.

"You," he said, "stay where you are, and don't let me hear a sound from you!"

CHAPTER VI

HEROD BEN MORDECAI

TROS went to the deck and peered over the bulwark into darkness. There was a half-moon now, but the ship's shadow covered the long-boat and he could only vaguely see the shapes of four men sitting in the stern, one of whom was hugely fat, unquestionably Simon.

Sigurdsen climbed to the deck and grumbled, using Norse oaths:

"Helpless! Weighs like six men! Have to hoist him!"

"Orwic? Conops?"

"Haven't seen them. Fat man rode horseback to the beach. Asked for you. Others are his servants."

Sigurdsen ordered a rope rove through a block on the after yard-arm and a bight put in the raid of it. Tros leaned overside.

"Simon!" he called. "Simon ben Tobias?"

A hoarse voice answered him. Question and answer followed in a mixture of three languages, but Tros could hardly hear what Simon said.

"Ho there!" he exploded. "Put a parceling on that rope? Will you cut good Simon's rump in halves? Now steady. That's a nobleman of Gades, not a sack of corn!"

They walked the grunting weight up to the bulwark rail and swung him inboard, where Tros received him in strong arms.

"Simon, salaam! Salaam aleikum. Marhaba fik!"

"Peace? Blessing? There is none in Gades!" Simon answered, wheezing with fatness and asthma. "Curses on this night air. There is death in it! Tros, Tros, I can not pay the debt I owe you!"

Tros hurried him into the stateroom, a slave, who had clambered up the ship's side, fussily arranging shawls around the old Jew's shoulders. A second slave helped a lean man up over the bulwark, who followed in uninvited.

"Door—door—shut the door!" Simon gasped in Greek, the language he had grown more used to than his native tongue.

The two slaves slammed it and remained outside. Tros helped Simon into a chair beside the table and then turned to face the second man, an old Jew in a cloak and a dirty cloth cap, beneath which long black ringlets curled beside his eyes. He disliked the man at once instinctively.

"Who is this?"

Simon, coughing apoplectically, answered—

"Herod ben Mordecai."

It might have been the cough, but it appeared to Tros he did not like the name.

"A friend?" he asked.

Simon did not answer—only coughed again, his tongue between his teeth.

Herod ben Mordecai smiled, his lower lip protruding as he thrust his head and shoulders forward to peer into Tros' face.

"Let us hope we are three friends!" he said significantly. "Shall I sit on that chair or on this one?"

He began to peer about the cabin, his bright eyes appraising everything. Tros sat down on his own oak chair with his back to the stern of the ship and Simon on his right. Herod ben Mordecai helped himself to the third chair, facing Simon, with his back toward the corner in which Chloe and Horatius Verres crouched in hiding.

"Where are the Lord Orwic and the man I sent with him?" Tros asked, looking straight at Simon.

Simon's face, majestic, heavy-browed and framed in a patriarchal beard, but sallow now from ill-health, wrinkled into a worried frown. Old before his time and physically weak from being too much waited on, he looked too strong-willed to yield to death and yet unable to enjoy the life he clung to. His clothes were wholly oriental, of embroidered camel hair, and there were far too many of them, making him look even fatter than he was. An eastern head-dress, bound on with a jewelled forehead band, concealed his baldness and increased his dignity; and he wore heavily jewelled rings on three of the fingers of each of his fat hands. He had kicked off his sandals when he entered and his fat feet, stockinged in white wool, were tucked up under him and hidden by the bulge of his prodigious stomach.

"I haven't seen them!" he said hoarsely, with a gesture of both hands that disclaimed all knowledge. He looked at Tros, not at the Jew who faced him, and he dropped no hint by word or gesture. Tros could not have told how the information was conveyed, but understood that Herod ben Mordecai was the man who could answer his question.

"Then how did you get my letter?" he asked.

"Herod ben Mordecai brought it," said Simon and drawing short, asthmatic breaths, he folded both hands on his stomach. Plainly there should be no secrets told in Herod's presence. Tros stared at Herod hard, but the old Jew's brilliant eyes met his without a quiver.

"How did you obtain my letter?" he demanded.

"My friend," Herod answered in an unexpectedly firm, business-like voice, "you are lucky it fell into my hands. I took it straight to Simon, who keeps his house like a castle. There are not so many who could get to Simon at such an hour and, believe me or not, there are fewer who would not have gone straight to the Romans with the news that Tros of Samothrace is so near Gades!"

"I asked you, how did you get the letter?" Tros insisted.

"I heard you. I didn't answer," said the Jew.

"Very well," said Tros, "you are my prisoner!"

He made no move. He simply kicked his scabbard to throw the sword-hilt forward, and sat still. The Jew looked keenly at him, thrusting out his lower lip again, and for a minute there was silence, only disturbed by Simon's heavy breathing. Then Herod leaned across the table toward Tros, thrusting forward one hand, fingers twitching.

"You should make a friend of me," he said excitedly, "for Simon's sake. Let Simon tell it."

Herod resettled himself, twitching at his curled black beard and showing yellow teeth. Simon sighed heavily.

"Tros!" he gasped suddenly, "Herod knows too much!"

"He's a prisoner! What he knows won't sink the ship!" Tros answered.

Herod leaned forward again, elbows on the table, lower lip protruding, eyes as hard and glittering as jet.

"But it will ruin Simon," he retorted in a level voice.

SIMON blurted out the facts, a list of them, while Herod tapped a finger on the table as if keeping check.

"I am in debt. Caius Julius Cæsar owes me three million sesterces, and won't pay. Balbus owes me a million, and I daren't ask him for it. If a word gets out in Gades against my credit, there will be a run on me. I lent my warehouse to conspirators for—"

Tros whistled softly.

"Which faction now?" he asked.

"Oi-yoi! Gades is full of factions!" Herod remarked, rubbing his hands as if washing them. He seemed amused.

"—for the storage of weapons, Simon went on. "They paid well. I needed—need money. I didn't know those bales of merchandise were weapons until Herod spied on me and came and told me. Now, if Balbus learns of it, he will jump at the chance to seize my goods. He will tear up his own promises to pay. Cæsar's too for the sake of Cæsar's favor—and crucify me!"

"On a great—big—tree!" said Herod, laying both hands on his knees and smiling cruelly. "You would better tell Simon why you sent for him and make your proposal, whatever! it is, and let us all three consider it. I am a man of business. Offer me business or my young men will be at Balbus' door at dawn. Before he has bathed himself he will have sent his guards to Simon's warehouse, where they will find the weapons in bales and bags and barrels. Then a thousand slaves that Simon owns and his great house full of curios and his daughters' children—how many, Simon? How many daughters' children?—will all be sold. And Simon, well—he may escape on this ship. I don't know. But the two who went ashore tonight will remain in Gades, where they will suffer such tortures as only Balbus can imagine—rack, fire, spikes under the nails—"

"Tros!" Simon exclaimed wheezily, his nervousness increasing the effect of asthma. "We are old friends! You will not—"

"None knows what I won't do!" Tros interrupted, thumping his great fist down on the table. "My young friend Orwic and my servant Conops went ashore. If a hair of the head of either one is injured, this man—" he scowled and showed his teeth at Herod—"dies!"

"What if I don't know where they are?" said Herod, shrugging his shoulders impudently.

"So much the worse for you!"

"You heard me. Balbus will ruin Simon!" Herod insisted, thrusting out his lower lip again.

"We will cross the bridge of Simon when we reach it," Tros said grimly.

Herod showed anxiety at last. His eyes admitted he had overstepped his reach, grew shifty, glanced from one man to the other, rested at last on Tros' angry face.

"You're a fine friend, to talk of letting your friend Simon be sold up and crucified just for the sake of a Gaul and a Greek slave! Mind you, I can't stop it, not unless I go ashore. My young men know I went to Simon's house. They don't trust him—nah, nah! They don't trust him. They know what to do! Any of Simon's slaves might murder me, mightn't they? Any time. Dead men can't talk. So you see, if I don't return pretty soon from Simon's house, my young men will go straight to Balbus. I tell you, I can't stop it unless—"

"I'll drown you unless my men return!" Tros interrupted. "You may send a messenger ashore—"

"I'll go!" said Chloe's voice, and even Tros was startled. Simon nearly screamed.

She stepped out from the dark and Simon stared uncomfortably at her, looked like a man caught naked in the bath for all that he wore so many clothes and she so few. Herod ben Mordecai recovered from surprize and found speech first. He became all oily smiles, a mass of them, his very body writhed itself into a smile, and his lower lip grew pendulous like an elephant's.

"Ah, pretty Chloe! Clever Chloe! Who'd have thought of finding Chloe on the ship of Tros of Samothrace! Chloe and I are old friends, aren't we! Often I hired Chloe before she grew so famous and so expensive. Many a stroke of business Chloe had a hand in, eh, Chloe? Yeh-yeh. Chloe could tell who taught her how to turn a pretty profit now and then, eh, Chloe? Friendship, eh!"

He chuckled, as if remembering old mischief she and he had shared in, dug her in the ribs with his long forefinger, caught the edge of her damp chlamys, trying to pull her closer to him. She broke away, approached Simon from behind and stroked his forehead with her cool hands.

"Poor Simon!" she said merrily. "And he owes me two hundred thousand sesterces! Am I to lose it, Simon? And you so old! You'll never have time to grow rich again before you die, unless we help you! How shall we do it?"

Tros seemed to know. He reached for pen and ink and set them down in front of Herod. Then he clipped a scrap of parchment from a roll.

"Write!" he commanded. "To the people you refer to as your young men. Bid them release to Chloe, the slave of Pkauchios my two men from whom you took that letter. Add that secret business will detain you. They are not to be troubled on your account. They are not to go to Balbus."

Herod ben Mordecai shrugged up his shoulders almost to his ears, then shook his head.

"I won't!" he said. "Sometimes letters get into the wrong hands. And besides, I can't—I can't write."

Chloe chuckled. Tros reached into a locker behind his chair, chose a long knife, stuck it point first in the table, bent it back toward him and released it suddenly.

"You have until that stops quivering!" he remarked.

Herod began to write with great facility, using Aramaic characters. He covered both sides of the scrap of parchment and then signed his name. Tros scrutinized the writing carefully, then handed it to Simon for a second censorship before entrusting it to Chloe.

"There, you see, there. I have done exactly what you say," said Herod. "I was only bargaining. We all have our own way of bargaining. You had the better of it. Now let's be friendly. I wouldn't have hurt Simon for—"

He wilted into silence under Tros' stare. He looked puzzled—seemed to wonder what mistake he might have made in judging character. Tros turned to Chloe.

"Understand me now, my two friends first! Go bring them here."

"Too late!" said Chloe. "I will have to hide them. Remember, I must go to Pkauchios and send him hurrying to Balbus with a reading of the stars!"

TROS nodded, chose a pearl out of the pocket in his belt, held it for a moment between thumb and finger in the lantern light, and tucked it away again. None but he and Chloe was aware of that sideplay.

"Hide them then. Bring them here as soon as possible. I want an interview with Balbus. Do you think your master could persuade him to come to my ship?"

Chloe shook her head violently.

"There have been too many plots against his life of late," she answered. "In some ways he is careless, in others he is like an old fox for caution. If you were an informer, if you had some tale to tell him about new conspiracies—"

Tros grinned. She had touched his genius. His hero was the great Odysseus, and he knew the Odyssey by heart. He could make up a tale on the spur of a moment to meet almost any contingency.

"Let your master tell Balbus that I bring him opportunity to be a greater man than Cæsar!" he said confidently. "Bid him tell Balbus to trust me, that he may stand in Cæsar's shoes."

She smiled, stared, smiled at him, her eyes astonished.

"Are you a seer?" she asked. "Those lion's eyes of yours—I—I—"

"Go do my bidding!" Tros said, gazing at her steadily. He realized he had aroused her superstition, and if superstition might assist the pearls to bind her in his service, he could play that game as well as any man.

He rose from his chair and took Herod ben Mordecai by the neck. The Jew clutched at his wrists and tried to struggle. Tros shook the senses nearly out of him and dragged him out on deck, where he called a Northman.

"Put this man below. Fasten him up in an empty water cask," he commanded. Then suddenly he thought of Horatius Verres and turned to Chloe. "Go fetch your Roman."

She led out Horatius Verres by the hand. They looked like handsome children in the darkness.

"Verres," said Tros, "here is work for you. Let me see you earn my favor. Go below. Stand guard over this Jew. See he doesn't escape from the cask and that none has word with him."

There was a smile on Verres' face as he followed the Northman. The fellow had the Roman military habit of obedience without remark. Tros decided he liked him. He turned to Sigurdsen.

"Put this woman ashore. Nay," he said, taking his cloak from her, "that stays here! You may have a blanket." He returned to the stateroom, took a blanket from his bunk and threw it over her. "Now, I will be in Gades harbor with the morning tide, ready for action. If Balbus is friendly, be you on the beach. If you are not here, I will send a threat to Balbus that unless the Lord Orwic and my man Conops are on board by noon, unharmed, I will burn all Roman shipping. I make no threats that I will not fulfill. For you, in that case, there will be no pearls, no freedom, no Horatius Verres, for I will sail away with him! So use brains and be swift."

Chloe went overside like a trained athlete, hardly touching the rope-ladder that Sigurdsen hung carefully in place. Tros watched the boat until it vanished in gloom at the edge of the path of moonlight, then returned to Simon in the stateroom.

"Simon, old friend," he said, sitting down beside him, "in the fires of friendship men learn what they are and are not. I have learned this night that you are not so rich as I believed, nor yet so bold as you pretended. No, nor yet so wise as your repute. Tell me more of this Herod ben Mordecai."

Simon drooped his massive head in the humility of an oriental who acknowledges the justice of rebuke, and was silent for as long as sixty labored breaths. Then, wheezing, he revealed the sharp horns of his own dilemma.

"Tros, that Herod is a professional informer. Now he acts spy for the tax gatherers, now he betrays a conspiracy, now he plays pander to Balbus. Now he buys debts and enforces payment. Now he lays charges of treason, so that he may buy men's confiscated valuables at the price of trash. And he has found out what is true—that there are weapons in my warehouse!"

Tros thought for a minute, drumming with his fingers on the table.

"Simon," he said at last, "you are not such a fool as to have let that happen without your knowledge."

In silence Simon let the accusation go for granted. He stared at the table, avoiding Tros' eyes.

"Tros!" he said presently, hoarsely. "I am a Jew. I am not like these Romans who open their veins or stab themselves when their sins have found them out. Yet mine have found out me. I let myself be called the friend of Pkauchios, that cursed, black-souled dog of an Egyptian, a sorcerer! Hey-yeh-yarrh! It is the fault of all my race that we forever trust the magicians! We forsake the god of our forefathers. Too late, we find ourselves forsaken. Adonai! I am undone!"

"But I not!" Tros retorted. "I am not a Jew, so your god has no quarrel with me. Tell me more concerning Pkauchios."

"He has a hold on Balbus, through his sorceries. He knows that Balbus owes me a million sesterces. He knows I need the money. He knows Balbus would like to indict me for something or other in order to confiscate my wealth, such as it is—such as it is. I have a thousand slaves I can't sell, some millions I can't collect! Pkauchios plans an insurrection by the Spaniards, who will listen to any one because they groan under the Roman tyrrany. But forever they plot, do nothing and then accuse one another. I would have nothing to do with it. But Pkauchios knew of nowhere, except in my great warehouse, to conceal his weapons from the Roman spies. He offered me a price—a big, a very big price for the accommodation. And he threatened, if I should refuse, to whisper a false charge against me."

"And you were weak enough to yield to that?" Tros asked him, wondering.

"I grow old. I needed money. Tros, I had sent much money to Jerusalem for the rebuilding of the Temple. Aie-yaie, but will it ever be rebuilt!It was rebuilt several years later by Herod, the Great. Pkauchios swore that when Balbus is slain his debt to me shall be paid at once out of the treasury. I let him use my warehouse. And then Herod's spies! Ach-h-h! Herod came to me tonight with your letter in his hand. He would not say where or how he had obtained it. He said, 'What does Tros of Samothrace require of you? Tros is a pirate, proclaimed by Cæsar, as all know. There is a reward of three talents set on the head of Tros of Samothrace.' He offered to share the reward with me—two for him and one for me. He said, 'Let us tempt this fellow Tros ashore with promises. Let us tempt him into your house, Simon, and then send for Balbus.' And he made threats. He said, 'Balbus would be interested to learn where those weapons are hidden in barrels and bales and boxes!' So I came with him, bribing the guard at the gate. And Tros, I don't know what to say or what to do!"

SIMON bowed his head until it nearly touched the table, then rocked to and fro until the strong oak chair groaned under him. Tros closed his eyes in thought, and for a moment it appeared to him the cabin was repeopled. There were Fflur, Caswallon and the Druid, bidding him good-by. He could see Fflur's gray eyes. He could hear her voice—"Be bold. Lord Tros!" And then the Druid—"In the midst of danger thou shalt find the keys of safety!"

Tros leaned and patted Simon on the shoulder. "What of Chloe?"

"A slave. A Gades dancing girl," said Simon with an air as if that was the worst that could be said of any one. "From earliest infancy they are trained in treachery as well as dancing. That one has been trained by Pkauchios, than whom there is no more black-souled devil out of hell! None in his senses trusts the dancing girls of Gades. Balbus, so they say, trusts Chloe. He is mad—as mad as I was when I trusted him and Cæsar with my money! Uh—uh! Trust no dancing girl."

"She seems to have trusted you with her money," Tros remarked.

"Aye, and shame is on me. I took her money at interest, even as I took yours. I can not repay her."

"But I think you shall!" said Tros, and shut his eyes again to think. "You shall repay her and you shall repay me."

For a while there was silence, pulsed by Simon's heavy breathing and the lapping of light waves against the ship's hull.

"Simon!" Tros said at last. "I need the keys of Rome!"

"God knows I haven't them!" said Simon. "Until Crassus went to Syrian had a good, rich, powerful friend in Rome, but now no longer."

"But you have influence with Balbus since he owes you so much money?"

"Influence?" said Simon, sneering. "He invites me to his banquets, to over-eat and over-drink and watch the naked-bellied women dance. But I asked a favor only yesterday—only a little favor—leave to export a few hundred slaves to Rome. If they had been women he would have said yes, but he has placed an embargo on male slaves, to depress the local market so as to have cheap labor to rebuild Gades. He knows I have no female slaves, so it was no use lying to him. He answered, he would give permission gladly, only that Tros of Samothrace, the pirate proscribed by Cæsar, is at sea and might capture the whole consignment, for which he, Balbus, would be blamed. Bah! So much for my influence! He let Euripides, the Greek export a hundred women only last week, and that was since Cæsar's letter came. Pirates! What he fears is a rising market! He knows I need money. He knows I have a thousand Lusitanii that I bought for export. At his suggestion, too. I bought them at his suggestion! Tros, it costs money to feed a thousand slaves! That dog Balbus waits and smiles and speaks me fair and watches for the day when I must sell those slaves at auction, so that he may buy them dirt cheap for his labor gangs!"

"But you stand well with Cæsar," Tros suggested. "You say Cæsar owes you three million—"

"Phagh!" Simon's face grew apoplectically purple. "Cæsar is the greatest robber of them all!"

"But he has brains," Tros retorted. "Caius Julius Cæsar knows it is wiser to keep an old friend than to be forever hunting new ones. Why did you lend him the money?"

"Because his creditors were after him and he promised me his influence. Of what use to me now in, Gades is Cæsar's influence in Gaul? Tell me that! I wrote to him for my money, for a little something on account. No answer! I suppose a secretary read the letter. Tschah! With Cæsar it is face to face that counts. Nothing matters to him then but the impression he makes on bystanders. Vain! He thinks himself a god! He acts a drama, with himself the hero of it. Approach him, flatter him, ask for what he owes you in the presence of a dozen people and he will pay if it takes the last coin in his treasury. Pay if he has to capture and sell sixty thousand slaves to reimburse himself! That was how he repaid Crassus. Sixty thousand Gauls he sold in one year! Tschah! With a smile he will pay, if he has an audience. With a smile and a gesture that calls attention to his magnanimity and modesty and sense of justice! But a letter, opened by his secretary, read to him, perhaps, in a tent at night, when his steward has told him of a nice, young, pretty matron washed and combed and waiting to be brought to him—Tshay-yeh-yeh ! None but a Jew, but a Jew—would have let him have three million sesterces!"

Tros tried to appear sympathetic. He leaned out of his chair and patted Simon on the shoulder. But the news of Simon's difficulties only strengthened his own confidence. When he was sure that Simon was not looking, he permitted a great grin to spread over his face.

No Roman warships in the harbor, conspiracies ashore, Simon's warehouse full of weapons, between decks two hundred and fifty first class fighting men, demanding shore-leave and agreeable to act the rôle of slaves for the occasion, Balbus the Roman governor ambitious, greedy, superstitious and in the toils of an Egyptian sorcerer whose slave, Chloe, a favorite of Balbus, was in a mood to betray her master—it would be strange, it would be incredible, if the gods could not evolve out of all that mixed material an opportunity for Tros of Samothrace to use his wits!

"Simon!" he said. "Once you did my father a good turn in Alexandria. You did it without bargaining, without a price. I am my father's son. So I will help you, Simon. You shall pay your debts—"

"God send it!" Simon muttered.

"You shall be spared the shame of not repaying Chloe—"

"S-s-sheh-eh!" Simon drew in his breath as if something had stabbed him.

"We will both of us have our will of Balbus—"

"Uh-uh! He is all powerful in Gades. If they kill, him, there will only be a worse one in his place!"

"You shall have your sesterces, and I, the key to Rome!"

"God send it! Eh, God send it!" Simon answered hopelessly. "But I think we shall all be crucified!"

"Not we!" Tros answered. "I have crucified a plan, that's all. A plan that can't be changed is like a fetter on a man's foot."

He arose and kicked out right and left by way of illustration that his brain was free to make the most of opportunity.

CHAPTER VII

THE COTTAGE IN PKAUCHIOS' GARDEN.

ORWIC and Conops lay flat on a tiled floor with leather thongs biting their wrists and ankles. Somebody had put the light out. The only sound was the quiet breathing of the Jews who squatted with their backs against the wall. Thought was tense, speculative, almost audible, but Conops was the first to speak in a whisper to Orwic:

"Roll toward me. I can move my fingers. Maybe I can untie your—"

A Jew leaned through the dark and struck him on the mouth with the end of a leather strap. After that there was silence again—so still that the rats came and the slow drip-drip of water somewhere up behind the gallery began to sound like hammer blows on an anvil.

After an interminable time the Jews began to talk in muttered undertones. Then a woman brought food to them. There was a reek of pickled fish and onions that they guzzled in the dark. Orwic took advantage of the noises to try to chafe the thongs that bound his wrists, rubbing them against the floor tiles. But a Jew heard the movement and struck him. After that there was silence again, until one of the Jews fell asleep and snored.

There was no way of judging the time, but no light shone yet through the shutter-chinks when a furious knocking began at the street door. It boomed hollow through the house and brought the Jews to their feet, whispering to each other. One of them leaned over Orwic to examine his thongs and another kicked Conops in the ribs by way of warning to be still. A woman leaned over the gallery and whispered excitedly. One of the Jews went out into the passage, lighted a lantern after a dozen nervous fumbles with the flint and steel and shouted angrily, but Conops, who knew many languages could not understand a word he said.

The knocking continued and grew louder, until the Jew with the lantern began talking to some one through a hole in the street door. He was answered by a woman's voice in Greek. She seemed to have no care for secrecy and Conops could hear her without the slightest effort.

"I say, admit me! Keep me waiting and I'll call the Romans! I tell you, I have a letter from Herod ben Mordecai! Open!"

The door opened. Several people entered. There was excited conversation in the passage. Up in the gallery the unseen Jewess fluttered like a frightened hen. The wooden railing creaked as she leaned over it to listen. Then the girl's voice in the passage again, loud and confident, speaking Greek:

"No use telling me lies! I know they're here! You've read Herod's letter, so out of my way!"

"Give me the letter then!"

"No!"

A scuffle, and then a girl in a damp Greek chlamys, with a thick blue blanket over that—and it surely never came from Spain—stood in the doorway, holding the Jew's lantern. Over her shoulders two male Numidian slaves peered curiously.

"So there they are! Untie them! If they're hurt, I'll speak to Balbus and have him crucify the lot of you!"

Conops cried out to her in Greek:

"Get me my knife, mistress! Then no need to crucify them!"

She laughed.

"I am Chloe," she said. "I come from—"

Suddenly she checked herself, remembering the Jews were listening.

"You will do exactly what I say!" she went on. "No fighting! They shall give you back everything they have taken from you. Then come with me."

She looked like a princess to Orwic, although the blanket puzzled him. It did not for a second occur to him that she might be some one's slave, although her sandals were covered with filth from the barren land outside the city and he might have known no woman of position would have walked at that hour of the night. Had she not slaves of her own, who obeyed her orders? Did the Jews not slink away from her like whipped curs? Was her manner not royal, bold, authoritative?

Her Numidians took the weapons off the table—they had none of their own—and cut the thongs that bound wrists and feet.

"Now count your money!" she said, pointing at the purse. So Conops shook out the money on the table.

"Ten gold coins missing!" he remarked, chafing his wrists, rubbing one ankle against the other. If he might not use his knife, he was determined that the Jews should pay in some way for the privilege of having put him and Orwic to indignity. Instantly he wished he had said twenty coins.

The woman in the gallery began to scream imprecations in a mixture of Greek, Aramaic and the local dialect, which itself was a blend of two or three tongues. Chloe silenced her with a threat to call the city guards.

"Who will take more than ten gold pieces," she remarked, "if I tell them I have authority from Balbus."

After a few moments, still noisily protesting, the woman threw ten coins down to the floor, one by one, and Conops gathered them, well paid for a night's imprisonment, but grinning at himself because he had not been smarter. Chloe took Orwic's hand and smiled to him, chafing his wrist between her palms.

"Are you ready? Will you come with me?" she asked engagingly in Gaulish.

Orwic would have gone with any one just then. To go with Chloe, after lying in that smelly room with hands and wrists tied, was such incredibly good fortune that he almost rubbed his eyes to find out whether he were dreaming. When she let go his hand he took his Roman sword from one of the Numidians and followed her into the passage; there he drew it to guard her back against the Jews, his head full of all sorts of flaming chivalry. She turned and whispered to him, raising her arms to draw his head close which, if he bad thought of it, a princess hardly would have done on such scant acquaintance.

"You must walk through the streets with an arm around me," she said, using the Gaulish with a funny, foreign accent that thrilled him almost as much as her breath in his ear. "You must look like a Roman nobleman who has seduced a girl and takes her home with him. We must walk swiftly and then none will interfere with us."

She rearranged the blanket, throwing one end of it over her head, as a girl ashamed of prying eyes might do, and led the way into the street where she shrunk, as if she needed the protection, into Orwic's left arm, under his pallium.

"To the left!" she said. "Forward! Quickly!"

The Jews' door slammed behind them, and the procession at once became perfectly regular. Conops understood the game now. He walked in front, just close enough for Chloe to call directions to him, his long knife tapping on the scabbard as a warning to all and sundry to keep their distance. The two Numidians brought up the rear, striding as if they were owned by Balbus himself. Being slaves of a slave, they were much more harmless than they looked.

ORWIC'S Celtic diffidence prevented him from speaking. He was not exactly shy. He was ashamed of having failed Tros and of having to be rescued by a woman, half inclined to think the gods had personally had a hand in it, so sudden and mysterious the rescue had been, and not a little bewildered, besides thrilled. He hurried along in silence for ten minutes through a maze of winding alleys, thinking furiously before Chloe volunteered some information.

"I sent my two women to Pkauchios to warn him to be up and ready for us."

But ignorant of who Pkauchios might be, Orwic simply turned that over in his mind. Developments seemed more mysterious than ever. Chloe went on talking:

"Pkauchios may try to scare you with his magic, but remember what I tell you: his magic is all humbug. He gets most of his secret information from us girls."

"Us girls" did not sound like the words a princess would have used. Orwic's wits were returning.

"Who are you?" he asked, looking down at her, pulling aside a corner of the blanket so as to see her face. It was very dark; he had to bend his head, and at a street corner a drunken Roman stopped his litter to laugh raucously.

"Ho there, Licurgus Quintus!" he roared. "I recognize you! Where did you find that pretty piece you have under your pallium? Mark me, I'll tell Livia! I'll tell them all about it at the baths tomorrow! Ha-ha-hah! Licurgus Quintus walking, and a girl under his pallium at this hour of the night. Ha-ha-ha-hah!"

Four slaves bore the litter off into the darkness, with its owner's leg protruding through the panel at the side.

"That drunken fool is Nimius Severus," Chloe remarked. "He offered to buy me last week. Bah! He has nothing but an appetite and debts to feed it with!"

"Who are you?" Orwic asked again.

"Chloe, the slave of Pkauchios of Egypt. I am called the favorite of Gades. Soon you shall see me dance, and you will know why."

"Oh!" said Orwic.

He relapsed into a state of shame again, his very ears red at the thought of having mistaken a slave girl for a princess. Being British, he had totally un-Roman notions about conduct; it was the fact that he had made the mistake, not that she was a slave, that annoyed him. Chloe misinterpreted the change of mood, that was as perceptible as if he had pushed her away from him.

"I expect to be free before long," she remarked.

Suddenly it occurred to Orwic that the best thing he could do would be to head straight for the beach and swim to the ship if there should be no long-boat waiting.

"Tros—is Tros on the ship?" he demanded.

But Chloe guessed rightly this time, understood that in another second he would be out of her reach, going like wind downhill toward the city gate.

"No," she lied instantly. "Tros is with Pkauchios."

Orwic detected the lie. She realized it.

"Tros came in search of you," she added.

But by that time Orwic did not believe a word she said. It seemed to him he was escaping from one danger to be trapped a second time.

"How did you learn where I was?" he demanded.

"Tros told me."

They had halted and were standing in the moonlight face to face where they could see each other. Her clever eyes read his, and she realized she needed more than words to convince him.

"Tros paid me to come and rescue you," she went on, raising the edge of her chlamys, showing a yard of bare leg as she thrust her fingers into a tiny pocket. "Look, he gave me that to come and rescue you."

She showed him a pearl in the palm of her hand, and it was big enough to convince Orwic that it might be one of those pearls that the Druids had given to Tros. He decided to let her lead him farther but his normal mistrust of women, that Tros had encouraged by every possible means, increased tenfold.

"Though you hate me, you must walk as if you love me!" Chloe remarked, and he had to take her underneath his pallium again.

The stars were bright and it lacked at least an hour of dawn when they emerged into a rather wider street that led between extensive villas set in gardens. Trees leaned over the walls on either hand. Toward the end of the street there was a bronze gate set into a high wall over which a grove of cypresses loomed black against the sky; a panel in that gate slid back the moment Chloe whistled; a dark face eyed her through the hole, and instantly the gate swung wide on silent hinges. There was a sound of splashing fountains and an almost overwhelming scent of flowers. Tiles underfoot, but a shadow cast by the cypresses so deep that it was impossible to see a pace ahead.

Fifty yards away among the trees were lights that appeared to emerge between chinks of a shutter, but Chloe took Orwic's hand and led him in a different direction, through a shadowy maze of shrubs that murmured in the slight sea breeze, until they reached a cottage built of marble, before whose door a lantern hung from a curved bronze bracket.

Two Greek girls came to the door and greeted Chloe deferently. One of them behaved toward Conops as if he were a handsome Roman officer instead of the ugliest one-eyed, horny-handed Levantine sailor she had ever set eyes on. The Numidian slaves found weapons somewhere—took their stand outside the door on either side of it, with great curved swords unsheathed. Chloe nodded to them as she led the way in.

Orwic followed her because there was light inside and the place did not look like a trap or a prison, although the small, square windows were heavily barred. There was a fairly large room, beautifully furnished in a style so strange to his British notions that he felt again as if Chloe must be at least a princess. By the British firesides minstrels had always sung of princes and princesses in disguise who rescued people out of foul dungeons and conveyed them to bowers of beauty, where they married and lived happy ever after; and it is what the child is taught that the grown man thinks of first in strange surroundings. True, British slaves were very often treated like the members of a family, but he had never heard of a slave girl living in such luxury as this.

THERE was a second room curtained off from the first, and into that Chloe vanished, through curtains of glittering beads that jingled musically. One woman followed, and there were voices, laughter, splashing. Almost before Orwic had had time to let the other woman, on her knees before him, clean his sandals, and before Conops had done staring pop-eyed at the rugs and gilded couch, the little Greek bronze images of half a dozen gods, the curtains from Damascus and the pottery from Crete, Chloe stood rearrayed in front of them, fresh flowers in her hair, in gilded sandals, with a wide gold border on a snow-white chlamys. Over her shoulders was a shawl more beautiful than anything Orwic had ever seen.

"You, a slave?" he said, staring, wishing his own tunic was not soiled from the night's adventure.

Smiling at him merrily, she read and understood the chivalry that stirred him. Suddenly her face turned wistful, but she was careful not to let Conops see the changed expression. Levantines were experts in incredulity.

"Yes," she said, "but you can help me to be free. Will you wait here while I find the Lord Tros?"

She was gone before he could answer, closing the door but not locking it, as Orwic was quick to discover. He would have followed her to ask more questions, but the two Numidians prevented him politely enough but firmly, drawing no particular attention to the great curved swords they held. Staring at them, realizing they were slaves,. Orwic decided that he and Conops could quite easily defeat them if necessity arose. Noticing there was no lock on the outside of the door, but only a slide-bolt on the inside, he returned to question the two women.

But they knew no Gaulish. One of them was fussing over Conops, putting up a brave pretense of being thrilled by his advances, which were seamanly of the harbor-front sort. Conops began to sing a song in Greek that all home-faring sailors heard along the wharves of Antioch, Joppa, Alexandria and wherever else the harpy women waited to deprive them of the coins earned in the teeth of Neptune's gales. It was not a civilized song, though it was old when Homer was a youth in Chios, and its words aimed at the core of primitive emotion.

To keep him entertained, the women danced for him when one of them had brought out wine from the inner room. And because the dance was not the bawdy entertainment of the beach-booths, but a sort of poetry of motion beyond Conops' ken, they kept him half excited and half mystified, thus manageable until Chloe came back, lithe and alert in the doorway, with a look of triumph in her eyes.

"Tros?" Orwic asked her instantly.

"He has gone with Pkauchios to Balbus' house," she answered.

But it was once more clear to Orwic she was lying. Tros, he knew, would never have gone away without first setting eyes on him, or, at any rate, without first sending him a message, if only a word or two of reassurance.

"What did he say?" he demanded.

"He was gone when I got to the house."

That, too, was a lie. She had been gone too long not to have talked with somebody; and there was a look of triumph in her eyes, that she was trying to conceal but could not.

"I, too, go to Balbus!" said Orwic. He gestured to Conops to follow, and strode for the door with his left hand on his sword-hilt.

Chloe slammed the door shut and stood defiant with her back against it.

"Prince of Britain!" she said, laughing, but her laugh was challenging and confident. "Be wise! All Gades would like Chloe for a friend! All Gades fears the name of Pkauchios! You are safe here. I have promised the Lord Tros no harm shall happen to you, and he holds my pledge."

Orwic sat down on the gilded couch to disarm her alertness. It offended his notions of chivalry to feel obliged to use force to a woman, but the mystery annoyed him more than the dilemma. It had begun to dawn on him that he was dealing with a girl whose instinct for intrigue prevented her from telling stark truth about anything. For a second, observing Conops' antics through the corner of his eye, he even thought of making love to her; but he was too much of an aristocrat for that thought to prevail; he would have felt ashamed to let Conops see him do it.

Above all else he felt stupid and embarrassed in the strange environment, aware that he would be as helpless as a child by daylight in the city streets. He had not even the remotest notion how a Roman would behave himself in Gades, and was sure the crowd would detect his foreign bearing in an instant. His Celtic diffidence and thin-skinned fear of being laughed at so oppressed him that he actually laughed at his own embarrassment.

"That is better!" said Chloe and sat down beside him.

But he noticed she had shot the door-bolt, and he did not doubt there was some trick to the thing that would baffle anybody in a hurry.

"Why do you keep on lying to me?" he demanded.

"Don't you know, all women lie?" she asked him. "We arrive at the truth by other means than by telling it. Prince of Britain, if I told you naked truth you would believe me mad, and you would act so madly there would be no saving you!"

Conops was becoming rougher and more like an animal every minute. Chloe's two slave-women were having all their work to keep out of his clutches, the one teasing while the other broke away, turn and turn. At last he seized one woman's wrist and twisted it. She screamed.

Chloe sprang to the rescue, broke a jar over Conops' head, and had his knife before he could turn to defend himself. He knew better than to try to snatch the knife back. His practised eye could tell that she could use it.

"Pardon, mistress!" he said civilly. "I was only playing with the girls."

Chloe tossed the knife into the air and caught it, noticing that both men wondered at her skill. She said something in Greek, too swift and subtle for Conops' marlin-spike intelligence—more dull than usual just then from the effect of honied wine and an emotion stirred by dancing girls—then frowned, her mind searching for phrases in Gaulish.

"YOU CAN use weapons," she said, her gesture including both men. "I, too. The Armenian who trained me meant me for a female gladiator. But the ædile^[1] to whom I was offered said it would be bad for Roman morals, so I was sold to Pkauchios. You are male and I female. What else is there that you are, and I not?"

Orwic smiled his way into her trap.

"Are you free?" he suggested. "I am a prince of Britain." He said it very courteously.

"Now! This morning!" she retorted. "How about tonight? My father and my mother were free citizens of Athens, if you know where that is. The Roman armies came. I was sold at my mother's breast. She died of lifting grape baskets in a Falernian vineyard, and I was sold again to the Armenian, whose trade was the invention of new orgies. But I was not quite like the ordinary run of slave girls, so I was spared a number of indignities for the sake of the high price I might bring. If the Armenian had not set such a high price on me, I think the aedile would not have talked so glibly about morals. Today I am a slave. Tonight I think I will be a freed woman; tomorrow, wholly free. And you? Does it occur to you. Prince of Britain, that there is none but I who can keep you from falling into Balbus' hands? Balbus would condemn you as an enemy of Rome. He would put you up at auction to the highest bidder. Why, you might be my slave in a week from now!"

She had his attention at any rate. He laughed and his hand went to his sword-hilt, but his eyes looked worried. Conops watched her with a gleam in his one, steely eye, his muscles tightening for a sudden leap at her; but she understood Conops perfectly and changed the long knife from her left hand to her right with a convincing flicker of the bright Damascus steel.

"You sit there and keep still!" she ordered him. "I am not concerned about you in the least. You may die if you wish! You," she said, looking at Orwic, "shall not be harmed if I can help it. You must make up your mind you will trust me, or else—"

"Why did you lie?" Orwic asked her.

She laughed.

"You are here. You are safe. If I had told you the Lord Tros was on his ship, would you have come with me?"

Orwic shrugged his shoulders. "Well, what next?" he asked.

"You must do exactly what I say. Pkauchios knows you are here. He has gone to Balbus to persuade him to let the Lord Tros anchor in the harbor unmolested."

"Could he prevent that?" Orwic asked, remembering Tros' great catapults and arrow-engines.

"And to persuade Balbus to invite Tros ashore for a conference under guarantee of protection. When Pkauchios returns, I will take you to him and leave you with him. I have told Pkauchios, and I will tell him again that you are a superstitious savage. Remember that. You are to agree to anything that Pkauchios proposes, no matter what it is."

"And you?"

"I go to Tros and perhaps also to Balbus. I take Conops with me because Tros, perhaps, might not believe me when I tell him you are unharmed, and I think the Lord Tros is not easy to manage. Also, Conops is a nuisance, who will get drunk presently, and there is no place to lock him up except in the ergastulum. And I can take Conops through the streets in daylight because he is a Greek who will arouse no comment."

"And if I refuse to trust you?" Orwic asked.

"I will have to lock you both in the ergastulum. It is not a pleasant place. It is dark in there, and dirty. There are insects. Listen!" she said, obviously making a concession to his prejudices.

A blind man could have guessed it went against the grain with her to lift a corner of the curtain of intrigue.

"You will spoil everything unless you obey me absolutely! Tros wants—I don't know what. But I will get it for him. I go presently to make sure that Balbus' promise of protection shall be worth more than the breath he breathes out when he makes it. Simon the Jew wants his money. Tros, I think, can get it for him. I want my freedom. Pkauchios, well, Pkauchios himself will tell you what he wants. Are you still afraid to trust me? Listen then. Tros holds a pledge of mine worth more to me than all the wealth of Gades. He keeps my lover on his ship!"

If Orwic had known more about the reputation of the Gades dancing girls, he would have mistrusted her the more for that admission. But she would not have made it to a man of more experience. She was as shrewd as he was innocent. Conops, cynically sneering, merely rallied Orwic's inborn chivalry:

"Huh! In Gades they change lovers just as often as the ships come in!"

Whatever she was or was not, Chloe looked virginal in that Greek chlamys with the plain gold border and the flowers in her hair. And whatever she felt or did not feel, she could act the very subtleties of an emotion instantly. She looked stung, baffled, conscious of the servitude that made her reputation any man's to sneer away, ashamed, albeit modest and aware of inner dignity. She blushed. Her eyes showed anger that she seemed to know was useless. Orwic passionately pitied her.

"You dog!" he snarled disgustedly through set teeth. "Go with her! Go back to Tros! And when I come, if I learn you have not treated her respectfully, I will have Tros tie you to the mast and flog you—as he did the rowers when they shamed those girls in Vectis!"

"Oh, never mind him," said Chloe. "He is only a sailor."

She hung her head, as Orwic believed, bashfully. But Conops understood right well it was to hide the flash of triumph in her eyes. She had Orwic where she wanted him. But what could a cynical seaman do or say, though he knew all ports and had been tangled in many snares of siren women, to convince a nobleman of Britain that a gesture and a glance were possibly play acting and not proof of honesty? Conops shrugged his shoulders.

"Very well," he said. "I'll go with her to the ship. You stay here and run your own risks!"

CHAPTER VIII

GAIUS SUETONIUS

THE first rule of all crises being that no man behaves according to the law of averages, if there is one, or according to expectation or in keeping with the dignity of great events—which surely calls for a continuous procession of brass bands, torches, incense and acclamation—Tros and Simon slept. They snored, Tros forward on the table, Simon leaning sackwise backward in the chair. They were fast asleep at dawn when Sigurdsen appeared, enormous in the stateroom doorway, to announce the first glimpse of the sun.

"Tide in about an hour, Lord Tros!"

Simon snored on. Tros blew the air out of his lungs, filled them two or three times, felt by instinct for his sword, simultaneously glancing at the water-clocks, ran fingers through his long, black hair, looked curiously once or twice at Simon, nodded and knew his mind.

"Serve breakfast. Then out oars! Man arrow-engines, clear away the catapults, ammunition ready in the racks, deck crew at quarters. Then haul short. We enter Gades harbor when the tide makes."

The ship became a thing of ordered tumult, din succeeding din and a smell of hot smoked fish pervading. Simon awoke with a number of grunts and "ohs" and "ahs," remembered where he was and fell incontinently into panic.

"Tros! Tros!" he gasped. "We talked madness!"

"Aye, Simon, aye! The gods love madmen!"

"Phagh! You sicken me with talk of many gods! Why not have a row of smirking idols? Worship them! Such talk, such talk, and we, looking death in the face!"

"We will see Gades first and then look Balbus in the face!" Tros answered. "Simon—madder than the gods themselves and than the wind and waves, a man needs be who will risk his neck for friendship! Aye, mad enough to trespass in the porch of wisdom! Rot me reason and religion when the die is cast! Talk yesterday, act now, tomorrow shall say yea or nay to it!"

He laughed and went up on the poop to watch the ship made ready, washed down, cleared for action, ammunition set in racks and baskets, sand-boxes filled, pumps tested and the trained crews stationed each in its appointed place. Then he ordered one great purple sail spread as a tribute to his own pride, and started the drums and cymbals going to slow measure, that the oars might take up the strain on the anchor-cable.

He gave the helm to Sigurdsen and whistled to himself, striding from side to side of the broad poop to con the harbor entrance, pausing in his stride to listen when the Northman in the chains called out the soundings, memorizing landmarks, feeling as brave and careless as he looked in his gold-edged purple cloak. He wished there might be fifty thousand Romans on the beach to see his ship come in!

But the harbor, splendid with its thirty-mile circumference, looked strangely empty. There was one great trieme hauled out on the beach beside a row of sheds, and six ships that had wintered on the beach lay newly launched, high-sided, all m ballast. One long rakish craft was certainly from Delos, anchored apart from the others—probably a pirate captured by a Roman fleet and kept to be taken to Ostia and sold at auction. Vague objects fastened in her rigging looked suspiciously like the remains of human bodies crucified and picked to pieces by the sea-birds.

Fishing boats swarmed on the beach and at anchor nearer shore, and there were rows of sheds in straight lines at the seaward end of a narrow road that led from city wall to beach. The city gleamed white in the sun, but its high wall looked dirty and needed repair; outside the wall there were villages of shacks and shambles clustered close against it, and between them a tired looking grove of palm trees, surrounded a cluster of thatched booths.

Between city wall and harbor was a waste of common land, all swamp and rubbish heaps. The shore was piled with seaweed, rotten with the colors of decay and black with flies.

The principal signs of Roman rule were the villas of officials set in gardens near the summit of the slope on which the city stood and, on a hill to the north of the city, a military camp with regular lines of tents and huts and four straight, paved roads leading to it. The lower part of the city was a crowded jumble of mixed Carthaginian, Greek, Roman and primitive Spanish roofs.

Tros dropped anchor within catapult range of the hauled out trireme. That and the store-sheds were at his mercy, although the city itself was beyond reach of his flaming stink balls. Trembling, gnawing at a hot smoked herring, Simon came to the poop and pointed out the sheds where all the wine was stored for export to Alexandria in exchange for corn and onions.

"We'll save Pompey's people a few headaches by destroying that stuff unless Balbus comes to terms!" said Tros.

But there were already signs of Balbus. A liburnian put out from a wharf near the store-sheds, leisurely rowed by slaves in clean white uniform. It had a bronze standard in the bow with the initials S. P. Q. R., and in the stern under an awning sat a Roman, dressed in the latest military fashion.

Simultaneously, another swifter boat, whose crew were not so neatly dressed nor nearly so in love with dignity, put out from a point much nearer to the ship and speeded at the rate of two to the liburnian's one. It had no awning. Chloe in the stern was plainly visible encouraging the rowers. Conops sat beside her.

The smaller, faster boat bumped alongside, reckless of Tros' vermilion paint, and Chloe came up the rope-ladder like an acrobat, bacchanalian with her wreath awry and her gilded sandals stained with harbor water.

"Lord Tros!" she exclaimed, breathless with excitement, "your great ship makes a braver spectacle than any Gades ever saw! I love it! We all love it! Look!"

She waved her hand toward the city wall whose summit was already black with people gazing. But Tros took more note of a hundred men who marched behind a mounted officer from the camp to the north of the city toward the shore.

"Orwic?" he demanded.

Conops answered him, climbing the poop steps sullenly with the air of a man expecting punishment:

"He lingers with the dancing women in a marble palace. Master, he refused to come away with me!"

CHLOE seized Tros' arm and began speaking in a hurry with excited emphasis.

"Trust me! Now trust me. Lord Tros! Your prince of Britain is absolutely safe! Look you! In that liburnian sits Gaius Suetonius. He is a youngster whom Cæsar sent to Balbus with a recommendation, a wastrel whom Cæsar wished to be rid of, but whom he did not care to offend because of his influence in Rome. Balbus makes a lot of him for Cæsar's sake, and also because they play into each other's hands to cheat the treasury. He comes with Balbus' permission to you to go ashore and talk with him.' Now listen, listen, listen! Gaius Suetonius knows most of Balbus' secrets. Balbus would never dare to let him be—"

"I understand," Tros answered and strode to the break of the poop to summon men to stand by the ladder and salute the Roman.

He was just in time to provide a flourish of drums and trumpets and to rearrange his own purple cloak becomingly. Chloe vanished into the stateroom and Simon followed her.

The Roman approached the poop with the peculiar, half patronizing, noncommittal but amused air of the aristocratic Roman face to face with something new. The sun shone on his heavily embossed bronze body armor and his nodding crimson plume was nearly twice the regulation size. He was immaculate down to the tips of his fingernails, much too calculating, insolent and greedy looking to be handsome but possessed of strong, regular features and a muscularity not yet much softened by debauch. His richly decorated shield was borne behind him by a Greek slave, the impudence of whose stare was an exaggeration of his master's.

Tros eyed them sourly, but obliged himself to smile a little when the Roman condescendingly acknowledged the salute.

"You are Tros of Samothrace? I am Gaius Suetonius, master of the ceremonies and confidential agent of Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor, Governor of Gades."

Tros bowed suitable acknowledgment. The Roman turned himself at leisure to observe the arrow-engines and the crews at battle station by the catapults.

"What does this warlike preparation mean?" he asked.

"I am prepared!" Tros answered with a characteristic upward gesture of both hands. His left hand returned to his sword-hilt, whereat the Roman looked as if he had a bad smell under his nose.

"Prepared for what?"

"To receive your message and to answer hot or cold, whichever it calls for."

"You are insolent!"

"Balbus charged you with something definite to say. I listen," Tros remarked.

"You would have found it wiser to have been courteous to me!" said Gaius Suetonius angrily. "You will find insolence expensive!"

Tros took no notice whatever of that speech. He almost turned his back, which brought him face to face with Conops, standing by the poop rail. He made a gesture, unseen by the Roman. Conops vaulted to the deck and went forward without noticeable haste. The Roman turned as if about to go and spoke over his shoulder to add visible rudeness to his tone of cold contempt.

"Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor invites you to the courthouse at the morning session to confer with him. He promises immunity for the occasion."

"Wait!"

Tros' voice was like a thunder clap. It startled the Roman into facing about—suddenly, indignantly. So he did not notice the dozen Northmen whom Conops was shepherding one by one under the break of the poop. They came unostentatiously, but armed.

"Did Lucius Cornelius Balbus offer a guarantee?" Tros asked.

"You have his promise conveyed by me," Gaius Suetonius retorted, sneering. But Tros smiled.

"It appears to me he sent you as hostage!"

The Roman's jaw dropped.

"By Bacchus!" he exploded. "You will suffer for it if you try to make me prisoner! I represent the senate and the Roman people!"

"Aye, handsomely!" Tros answered, grinning. "I wouldn't spoil your finery! You and that slave of yours shall have snug quarters for a while, where he may keep your armor bright and you may tell him all about the senate and the Roman people. And lest he grow weary of listening and try to slay you with that sword, I will keep it well out of his reach!"

Tros held his hand out. The Roman's right hand went to his sword-hilt and his face turned crimson with anger; the slave behind him made haste to pass the shield, but Conops was too quick, struck the slave over the jugular and the shield went clattering to the deck. The Northmen swarmed on to the poop and the Roman saw himself surrounded.

"Dog of a pirate, you shall pay for this!" he snarled. He held his chin high, thrusting out his throat, but he drew his sword and gave it hilt-first into Tros' hand. Tros glanced at Conops.

"Into the forward deck-house with them! Lock them in. No other restraint as long as they behave themselves. Stand you on guard with as many Northmen as you need."

Gaius Suetonius strode forward fuming in the midst of his ax-armed escort. Tros could not resist a gibe at him.

"An omen! Lo, the Consul and his lictors! Is the foretaste of a consulship not worth the day's confinement, Gaius Suetonius?"

TROS went below into the stateroom where Simon sat with his head between his hands refusing to listen to Chloe's optimistic reassurances. And after a short conference with Chloe he wrote a letter in Greek because, though he understood Latin well enough, he could write the Greek more elegantly.

To the most noble and renowned Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor, Governor of Gades, Greeting from Tros of Samothrace, the Master of the Trireme Liafail, who cordially thanks you for your invitation to attend you at a session of the court.

Your statesmanlike provision of a hostage in the person of the noble Gaius Suetonius removes all possible objection to my visit which, therefore, shall be made without delay, the more so since I appreciate the compliment of sending me as hostage one of such rank and so intimate in your secret counsels.

The hostage shall be comfortably housed and safely guarded. He shall be released unharmed, with the dignities due to his rank immediately after my own safe return on board my ship.

That morning irony was running in Tros' veins. He felt an impulse to be mischievous. To use his own phrase, gods were whispering good jokes into his ear. A glance at Simon, shuddering with nervousness, and at Chloe, all smiles and excitement, confirmed his mood. He opened an iron chest and took from it the seal he had captured a year ago along with Cæsar's private papers.

It was of glass and of marvelous workmanship, done by a Greek—a portrait of Julius Cæsar naked, in the guise of the god Hermes with an elephant's head below it, by the hand of some other artist who had certainly never seen an elephant.^[1]

Tros melted a mass of wax and affixed the impression of that well-known seal at the foot of the letter, which he placed in a silver tube, and went and tossed it to the men in the boat that had brought out Gaius Suetonius.

"To the Governor of Gades with all haste!" he commanded.

The boat backed away and made speed for the shore. Tros returned to the stateroom and sent for Sigurdsen and Conops.

"In my absence," he said, touching Sigurdsen's breast, "you are captain of the ship. The crew obeys you. But you obey Conops, who is my representative. I go ashore, and unless I return before dawn tomorrow you will put to sea after demolishing that trireme on the beach and all the stores and sheds. If I shall have been made prisoner, that hint will probably convince the Romans they would better release me. So you will keep in sight of the harbor mouth and hold speech with any boat the Romans send out. But you are not to surrender that hostage Gains Suetonius except in exchange for me."

"Master, let me go with you!" urged Conops.

But there was no need for Chloe's warning frown; Tros had made up his mind.

"I can trust you afloat," he remarked. "Ashore you're too ready with your knife and a lot too fond of drink and women! Stand by the ship. You're in charge. Be careful of the prisoners."

Jaun Aksue came then, none too deferential, demanding information as to when the shore leave might be had.

"We Eskualdenak are fond of seeing promises performed," he remarked. "My men are boasting they could swim ashore. Can you suggest to me how to restrain them?"

"Yes," Tros answered gravely, "tell them I go to pay a visit to the Governor of Gades. I will seek permission for my best behaved men to go roistering. But have you seen those Balearic slingers on the beach. You know their reputation? They can hit a man's head with a slung stone at two hundred paces. None of you have weapons. And mark this: Balbus the Governor needs cheap slaves for his quarry gangs. I will make him a free present of as many of my men as those Balearic slingers stun with their stones and capture!"

"But your promise holds? We are to have our shore leave?"

"Certainly," said Tros, "but when it suits me and on condition you pretend you are my slaves."

Chloe listened to that conversation, her eyes intently studying Tros' face. She turned to him and touched his arm when Aksue swaggered forward to explain the situation to his men.

"Lord Tros!" she exclaimed. "You can make yourself master of Gades! I can show you how! Make use of Pkauchios until the moment when he—then—"

Tros gazed at her, his amber eyes admiring and yet smiling with a comprehension deeper than her own. It baffled her.

"What do you really seek in Gades?" she demanded.

He did not answer her for thirty seconds. Then:

"For a beginning, the Lord Orwic. Where is he?"

"In Pkauchios' house."

Tros nodded.

"You shall take me to Pkauchios."

His eyes did not leave her face. All sorts of probabilities were passing in review before his mind, not least of them that a Gades dancing girl would hardly carry all her eggs in one chance-offered basket. She would have alternatives that she could switch to at a moment's notice.

"You would better go down in the hold," he remarked, "and confer with Horatius Verres. Better ask him whether he won't change his mind and try his luck again ashore."

IT SEEMED to Tros that Chloe caught her breath, but she was so well trained in self-command that he could not be quite sure.

"I will go to him, I will warn him to stay where he is," she said, smiling, and was already on her way, but Tros detained her.

"Wait! He goes ashore now to take his chance in Gades unless you tell me who and what he is."

Chloe stared, at first impudently, then with wavering emotions. Her lips began to move as if in spite of her.

"Tros of Samothrace, you are a strong man, yet you are not a pig. You have not made love to me. I can trust you?"

"Yes," said Tros.

"If I tell you who Horatius Verres is—"

"I will keep it secret."

"He is Cæsar's spy!"

Tros did not move, although he shaped his lips as if to whistle.

"Cæsar spies on Balbus?"

Chloe nodded. Tros began to stroke his chin.

"Horatius Verres has sent his messenger to Gaul," said Chloe. "There is nothing further he can do until—"

Tros seized her shoulder.

"Until what?"

"Until Cæsar himself comes!"

"Spain is not Cæsar's province! Cæsar has Gaul. Pompey has Spain."

"I know it!"

"When does he come?"

"I don't know! Nobody knows! Horatius Verres doesn't know!"

"And Balbus?"

"No. He doesn't dream of it!"

"By land or sea?"

"None knows! Cæsar never tells what he will do."

"And Horatius Verres waits for him, eh?—on my ship!"

"Tros, Lord Tros, you promised—"

"Go and talk to your Verres. Tell him I know he is Cæsar's spy. Say I will not interfere with him."

"I will not! If I admitted I had told you, he would cease to love me. He would say I am a common Gades dancing girl."

"Tell him I guessed he is Cæsar's spy."

"He would never believe. He is too keen. He can read me like a writing."

"I have seen writings that deceived the reader," Tros remarked and stroked his chin again.

"Listen!" exclaimed Chloe. "Thus it happened: Cæsar sent a thousand Gauls to Gades to be shipped to Rome for sale for his private account. Balbus put them in the quarries, where the most part died for he did not feed them properly and there was a fever.^[2] Cæsar, receiving no word of the arrival of his slaves in Ostia, sent Horatius Verres to find out about it. He spied and he discovered that Pkauchios, pretending to have read the stars, told Balbus he might safely keep the slaves because Cæsar will presently die."

"How did Verres discover that?" Tros asked.

"I told him! Pkauchios makes prophecies come true. You understand me? He sent his own men into Gaul to murder Cæsar. I knew all about it. I told Horatius Verres because he said he loves me, and I know that is the truth just as I know when an egg is fresh, just as I know I can trust you, Tros of Samothrace. But then I had to tell more, just as a witness has to when the torturers go to work. One piece of information led quite simply to the next. I told Horatius Verres how Pkauchios grew afraid that when Cæsar is slain Balbus might turn on him and have him crucified for the sake of appearances. There are always plots on foot in Gades, so Pkauchios joined a conspiracy to murder Balbus. He began by merely listening and giving his advice, but now he leads it. And I am afraid! I am afraid Balbus may discover everything and put me to the torture. That is why I want my freedom quickly, quickly, why I want o get away from Gades!"

"And Horatius Verres lies in hiding while all this is afoot?"

"He hides from Pkauchios. Somebody, I don't know who, warned Pkauchios, who put a dozen men to look for him and kill, him. But he was hiding in the midst of danger, on the roof of the ergastulum.

"Hasn't he tried to warn Balbus?"

"He daren't. Besides, what does he care about Balbus? He is Cæsar's man."

"What do you mean by 'he daren't?' "

"Balbus would order his head cut off or have him stabbed or crucify him. As soon as Pkauchios learned there was a spy of Cæsar's in Gades, he pretended to read the stars and went to Balbus, saying there would come a Roman with a tale about conspiracies, but that the tale would be a lie and that the man's real purpose would be to get Balbus into difficulties with the Roman Senate."

"And Balbus believed that?" Tros whistled softly to himself. "And the Lord Orwic is with Pkauchios? And, why waits Pkauchios?" he demanded. "Why hasn't he slain Balbus?"

"He likes others to do that work," Chloe answered. "And the others are hard to bring up to the point. They are half mistrustful, and they fear the soldiers. It is always so in Gades—talk, talk, talk, and then some one at last dares it or else somebody betrays. There has been one betrayal already. Balbus has made some unimportant prisoners. But I think this time Pkauchios has his plans well laid and merely waits for the news of Cassar's death. Then he will strike swiftly, and he thinks all Spain and Gaul will rise together and throw off the Roman yoke."

Tros laughed.

"Your Pkauchios can dream!" he said with irony. "When Gaul joins Spain against the Romans we may look for the Greek Kalends! Divide—divide et impera!^[3] Go and talk to Horatius Verres in the hold. Reassure him and be swift about it. You shall take me to the courthouse to see Balbus, and thereafter to the house of Pkauchios."

She hesitated. There was indecision, terror in her eyes. Her muscles twitched at the thought of Roman torturers. Tros nodded to her confidently.

"You shall have your freedom and your pearls and your Horatius Verres before tomorrow's dawn!"

Chloe stared into his amber eyes, nodded to herself, and went down into the hold to do his bidding.

CHAPTER IX

PKAUCHIOS THE ASTROLOGER

CHLOE had pushed Orwic into a room in a marvelous marble house and left him face to face with Pkauchios, closing the curtains behind him on their noisy rings and rod. Orwic stared at the Egyptian, wondering at the severely splendid furnishings and at the quiet that was accented by lute strings strummed slowly in another room, suggesting the procession of the æons and the utter insignificance of days—months—years.

Pkauchios was dressed as an astrologer—a tall old man, immensely dignified, in flowing black robes and head-dress, with the asp of Egypt on his brow, to which Tros would have at once known he was not entitled. But Orwic knew nothing about Egypt. He had an hypnotic presence, and used his large eyes, as a swordsman should, directing his gaze not at the pupils of the man in front of him but a fraction of an inch lower, so producing the effect of an indomitable stare without wearying himself or giving his opponent a chance to retaliate.

He possessed almost the majesty of a Lord Druid, but that only served to remind Orwic of the Druids' warnings against magic. He had been educated by the Druids, and whatever else they taught, they were succinct and vehement in their instruction as to the danger of any contact with the black arts.

Bridling at the calculated silence, Orwic broke it, asking curt, blunt questions:

"You are Pkauchios? I am Orwic of Britain. You sent for me? You wish to speak to me? What do you wish to say?"

There was no answer, no acknowledgment. Sweet-scented incense of lign-aloes burned on a tripod-table, and its blue smoke curled around the Egyptian until, where he stood in shadow, he began to look unearthly, and the human skull on another table near his right hand appeared to make grimaces, mocking the short-lived dreams of men.

Orwic shrugged his shoulders and strolled to the open window. Down a vista between well tended garden shrubbery he could see Tros' ship at anchor, miles away. The sight encouraged him; he began to think of jumping through the window, measuring with his eyes the height of the wall at the end of the garden and calculating the distance to the beach. But the Egyptian spoke at last—

"Orwic, prince of Britain, fortune favors you!"

The voice was resonant, arresting, but the Gaulish words were ill pronounced. Orwic remembered Druids who had spoken in much the same terms more gently, and yet with infinitely greater majesty.

"I was born lucky," he answered over his shoulder, and then resumed his gaze out of the window.

"Look at me. Look into my eyes," said Pkauchios.

"I admire the view," said Orwic, and continued to admire it.

Pkauchios ignored the snub and went on speaking as if Orwic had obeyed him. He badly mispronounced the Gaulish, but his voice compelled attention, and he was fluent.

"I, who nightly read the stars, have read your destiny! I forewarned Balbus of the great ship with the golden serpent at her bow. The stars in their conjunction said that ship should—shall—must enter Gades harbor, and from out of her shall step one in whose hand is the destiny of Spain and Gaul. I said, because the constellations indicated, that the man will be a prince from a far country, bold in war, young, handsome, destined to be lost in Gades but to be recovered by a stranger. Last night I told Balbus that the prince in the ship with the purple sails will arrive before dawn."

"Well. Here I am, but it is not my ship," said Orwic, and began to whistle softly to himself. When he was a little boy the Druids told him that was the simplest means of avoiding a magician's snares.

But magicians are not easily rebuffed. The business of snaring men in nets made of imagination implies a thick skin and persistence, along with an immeasurable, cynical contempt for the prospective victim's powers of resistance.

"You are indeed the man the stars foretold," said Pkauchios with admiration in his voice. "Indifferent to flattery, not stirred by rumor, iron-willed! It is of such men that the Gods make weapons when the tyrannies shall fall! I see your aura—purple as the sails of yonder ship!"

He struck a bronze gong and the music in the next room ceased. The sound of the gong startled Orwic, for it resembled the clash of weapons. He turned suddenly to face the Egyptian, who was no longer standing but seated on a sort of throne, whose arms were the gilded tusks of elephants. There was a canopy above the throne that threw that corner into deeper shadow, and the Egyptian's eyes appeared to blaze as if there were fire in them. In his lap he held a crystal ball, which he raised in both hands when he was sure that Orwic's gaze was fixed on him.

"Approach me!" he commanded. "Nay, not too close, or your shadow dims the astral light!"

He was staring at the crystal, frowning heavily, brows raised, lips parted, eyes glaring. The effort he was making seemed to tax his powers almost beyond endurance.

"You are the man!" he said at last, and sighing, set the crystal down on the table where the skull stood. His eyes had lost their frenzy suddenly. He leaned back, looking deathly weary, all the lines and winkles on his dark face emphasized by pallor.

"You, who listen, never know what we, who look into the unseen, suffer for your sakes," he said.

Even his voice was aged. Orwic began to feel pity for him, and something akin to shame for his former rudeness.

Pkauchios left the throne and walking forward wearily took Orwic by the arm. His manner was of age that leaned on youth with perfect confidence.

"So, help me to that seat and sit beside me."

They sat down on a bench of carved ebony and Pkauchios leaned his back against the wall.

"Youth! Youth!" he said. "With all the world before you! Age must serve youth. We who have struggled and are old may justify ourselves if we can guide youth through the dangers. Age and responsibility! If I should guide you wrongly, what responsibility were mine! I will say nothing. It is wiser. I will not foreshadow destiny."

Now that was something like the Druids' way of viewing interference with a man's own privilege of living as he sees fit. Orwic began to feel a vague respect for the Egyptian and to wonder whether he had not misjudged him. He might, after all, be a seer. It was hardly reasonable to suppose that all the prophets were in Britain, Chloe had said. But was a slave girl's judgment of her master to be accepted without proof? However, Orwic was still cautious.

"I don't believe in magic," he remarked.

"Rightly! Rightly so!" said Pkauchios. "It is destruction. It will destroy the Romans. It has ruined nations without number. Fools, who know no better, call me a magician. When I tell the truth to them, they weary me with their demands for untruth. It is restful to meet you. Honest unbelief is sweeter to me than the dark credulity of those who seek nothing but their selfish ends. Your incredulity will melt. Their superstition toughens as it feeds on vice. But I must crave your pardon. I am a laggard host, forgetting the body's needs in the absorption of a spiritual moment. You are young, strong, hungry, I have no doubt."

HE CLAPPED his hands, and almost on the instant two slave girls appeared bearing trays heaped with refreshment. One of them washed Orwic's hands and combed his hair; the other spread before him milk, fruit, nuts, three sorts of bread, butter, honey and preserves, whose very scent excited appetite.

"I will return when you have refreshed yourself," said Pkauchios. "We who commune with the stars eat little earthly food."

He left the room, but the slave girls stayed and converted Orwic's first meal on foreign soil into an experience that melted his reserve.

He began by being half ashamed to eat while the Egyptian fasted, remembering that the Druids hardly ate at all during their periods of spiritual commune with the universe. He began to be almost sure that fasting was a sign of the Egyptian's purity of purpose. It was incredible that such food as the slave girls set before him should not tempt a man with wordly motives—such as Orwic's own, for instance.

He began to confess to himself that he was having a glorious time, and he hoped Tros would not come for him too soon. Deeply though he admired Tros, loyal though he felt toward him, he dreaded Tros' abrupt way of dispersing dreams and scattering side issues. He could imagine Tros' contempt, for instance, for the slave girls. Orwic liked them.

Used to slaves and serving-women in his own land, he had never dreamed of such attentions as these two dark-haired women lavished on him. They were beautiful, smiling, silent, exquisitely trained, but that was not the half of it. In Britain guests were made to feel that their comfort was the host's one sole consideration, and the servants vied with one another to that end. But these two slave girls made a man feel that he owned them, that their very souls were his, that they would think his thoughts if he would. only deign to half express them, and be overjoyed to be the mothers of his sons.

It was bewildering at first, embarrassing; then gradually rather pleasant; presently as natural as if all other forms of hospitality were crude, uncivilized and no part of a nobleman's experience. This was the way to live. It was no wonder that foreigners regarded Britons as barbarians, with their crude ideas of courtesy and the servants' air of being members of the family instead of servants in the true sense of the word.

One of the girls was on his knee when Pkauchios returned. She was wiping his mouth and mustache with a napkin. She removed herself in no haste, unembarrassed, curtseying to her master, helping the other girl at once to carry out the tray and dishes. Pkauchios took no notice of either of them, which seemed to Orwic to prove that the man was an aristocrat, if nothing else.

"You are right, you are right," said Pkauchios, taking a seat beside him. "You should have nothing to do with magic. It is safer to avoid true revelation than to listen to the false. But tell me why you came to Gades."

Orwic told him all of it; told him the whole story of how Cæsar had invaded Britain and had been repulsed; and how Tros of Samothrace, for friendship and because his ship was built in Britain, had undertaken to go to Rome and by any means that should present themselves to deter Cæsar from invading a second time.

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" said Pkauchios when the tale was done and Orwic had finished his eulogiums of Tros. "All this and more I have seen written in the stars. You are a man of destiny. And yet—"

He leaned into the corner, frowning. It appeared that the decision between right and wrong, between his own high standard of integrity and a convenient alternative was forming in his brain.

"—if I should tell you what else I have seen—"

"Oh, you may as well tell me," Orwic interrupted. "I am not a child. And besides, I will do nothing without consulting Tros."

"Do you not see," said Pkauchios, "that if Spain were to rebel against the Romans, Cæsar's army would be needed to prevent the Gauls from rising too?"

"Yes, that seems obvious," said Orwic. He was devoting at least half his attention to wondering where those slave girls were. The scent from the one who had sat on his knee still clung to his tunic. No British girls that he had known had ever smelled like that.

"And if Cæsar were to die," said Pkauchios.

He paused, aware that Orwic was only partly listening to him.

"And if Cæsar were to die," he repeated solemnly, then suddenly gripped Orwic's arm and leaning forward, fixing him with penetrating gaze, almost hissed the words:

"Do you not see that you and Tros of Samothrace, with Spain in red rebellion, north, south, east and west, could lead the insurrection into Gaul and stir the Gauls until they, too, rise against the Romans?"

He sat back again and sighed.

"All this," he said, "and more, I have seen written in the stars. Sight must be given us that we may see. And yet—"

"Such a deed would save Britain," remarked Orwic. He was thinking now.

He was still aware of the faint, delicious woman smell, but its effect on him was changing. There were thoughts of women whom a sword could win, quite other thoughts than Orwic was accustomed to, thoughts not exactly chivalrous but blended in with chivalry, suggesting that the rescue of the Gauls from Roman rule might lead to a delightful destiny. He began to wonder what Tros would have to say to the proposal and whether Tros, too, secretly, in the recesses of his heart, would not rather like the prospect of—well—of whatever victory might provide.

"I should not be surprized at anything," he said after a minute's pause. "When I left Britain it was to face my destiny, whatever it might be. Now that girl Chloe—is it true she is your slave?"

Pkauchios' answer was startling:

"Do you covet her? Shall I give her to you?"

IT WAS almost too startling; it rearoused suspicion. Orwic eyed the Egyptian narrowly, turning over in his mind vague notions as to how much Chloe might be worth. He was not so stupid as to believe that offer genuine.

"If you should do what the stars indicate you safely may do," Pkauchios said mysteriously, "then by tomorrow's dawn you will be all powerful in Gades. I shall need your friendship then. To flaming youth in the hour of victory, what gift could be more suitable than Chloe? I am an old man. Her beauty means nothing to me."

Orwic's veins began to boil, so, being British, he proceeded to look preternaturally wise.

"What is all this about destiny? What did you read in the stars?" he demanded.

"You would better not let me influence you," Pkauchios suggested. "I have never yet made one mistake in reading others' destiny, but I have no right!"

"Oh, nonsense! Out with it!" said Orwic. "If you can read my destiny, you have no right not to tell me."

"I must have your definite permission."

"You have it."

"Know then, that the stars have indicated for a month that this is the night when Balbus, Governor of Gades, dies! On this night, too, dies Cæsar, imperator of the Roman troops in Gaul! But the conjunction of the stars is such that, if the Governor of Gades dies by the hand of a common murderer, as may be, then anarchy will follow and no good come of it. But should he die by the hand of the prince who stepped out of the red ship and was lost in Gades, then the prince shall wear a red cloak and shall rule a province."

"Strange!" said Orwic. "Strange! I have had peculiar dreams of late."

"And how many men have you on board that ship?" asked Pkauchios. "If I should show you how to smuggle them ashore and where to hide them and how to reach Balbus' house unseen at midnight, and should tell you that in Balbus' treasury is money enough with which to recompense those men of yours and to pay others and to raise an army—"

"I am not a murderer. I am not a thief," said Orwic, his sense of self-restraint returning.

"Did you slay no Romans when they invaded Britain?" Pkauchios asked. "Did the Romans slay none of your friends? According to the stars that prince, who steps out of the red ship, is to be an avenger and shall drive the Romans out of Gaul!"

"Ah, now you are trying to persuade me," Orwic commented.

"Not I! But I will give you Chloe, if you seize your opportunity. She is the richest prize in Gades. She is worth two hundred thousand sesterces."

Orwic had not the slightest notion how much money that was, so he magnified it in his own mind, and the result rearoused his suspicion. He got up and began to pace the floor, to discover whether or not Pkauchios was proposing to detain him forcibly. But Pkauchios made no move; simply leaned against a corner of the wall and watched him. Orwic decided to probe deeper; he desired to justify temptation by proving to himself that Pkauchios was friend, not enemy. He drew back the curtains at the doorway by which he had entered the room. There was nobody there. He passed into a hall all lined with statuary, entered rooms that opened to the right and left of it, found nobody, and tried the house door. It was unlocked; doves were cooing in the garden; fountains splashed; there were no lurkers; only a few old Egyptian slaves who dipped out water from a well a hundred yards away.

Plainly, then, he was not a prisoner. And as he breathed the incense smoke out of his lungs, refilling them with blossom-scented air, he felt the challenge of his youth and strength.

"Off Vectis, the Lord Druid said," he muttered to himself, "there is a man in Gades to whom he could have sent Tros, only that Tros' mind was closed against him. This Pkauchios is probably the man!"

Musing to himself, his hands behind him, he returned along the hall toward the room where he had left the old Egyptian. Chloe had said he should agree to anything the Egyptian might propose. It might do no harm to pretend to agree. But he wondered how he should explain away his rudeness, how he should accept the man's proffered aid now without cheapening his own position and above all, how he should explain to Tros.

"You must help me to convince the Lord Tros," he began, reentering the room.

But Pkauchios was gone. There was no trace of him nor any answer, though he called his name a dozen times.

CHAPTER IX

PKAUCHIOS THE ASTROLOGER

CHLOE had pushed Orwic into a room in a marvelous marble house and left him face to face with Pkauchios, closing the curtains behind him on their noisy rings and rod. Orwic stared at the Egyptian, wondering at the severely splendid furnishings and at the quiet that was accented by lute strings strummed slowly in another room, suggesting the procession of the æons and the utter insignificance of days—months—years.

Pkauchios was dressed as an astrologer—a tall old man, immensely dignified, in flowing black robes and head-dress, with the asp of Egypt on his brow, to which Tros would have at once known he was not entitled. But Orwic knew nothing about Egypt. He had an hypnotic presence, and used his large eyes, as a swordsman should, directing his gaze not at the pupils of the man in front of him but a fraction of an inch lower, so producing the effect of an indomitable stare without wearying himself or giving his opponent a chance to retaliate.

He possessed almost the majesty of a Lord Druid, but that only served to remind Orwic of the Druids' warnings against magic. He had been educated by the Druids, and whatever else they taught, they were succinct and vehement in their instruction as to the danger of any contact with the black arts.

Bridling at the calculated silence, Orwic broke it, asking curt, blunt questions:

"You are Pkauchios? I am Orwic of Britain. You sent for me? You wish to speak to me? What do you wish to say?"

There was no answer, no acknowledgment. Sweet-scented incense of lign-aloes burned on a tripod-table, and its blue smoke curled around the Egyptian until, where he stood in shadow, he began to look unearthly, and the human skull on another table near his right hand appeared to make grimaces, mocking the short-lived dreams of men.

Orwic shrugged his shoulders and strolled to the open window. Down a vista between well tended garden shrubbery he could see Tros' ship at anchor, miles away. The sight encouraged him; he began to think of jumping through the window, measuring with his eyes the height of the wall at the end of the garden and calculating the distance to the beach. But the Egyptian spoke at last—

"Orwic, prince of Britain, fortune favors you!"

The voice was resonant, arresting, but the Gaulish words were ill pronounced. Orwic remembered Druids who had spoken in much the same terms more gently, and yet with infinitely greater majesty.

"I was born lucky," he answered over his shoulder, and then resumed his gaze out of the window.

"Look at me. Look into my eyes," said Pkauchios.

"I admire the view," said Orwic, and continued to admire it.

Pkauchios ignored the snub and went on speaking as if Orwic had obeyed him. He badly mispronounced the Gaulish, but his voice compelled attention, and he was fluent.

"I, who nightly read the stars, have read your destiny! I forewarned Balbus of the great ship with the golden serpent at her bow. The stars in their conjunction said that ship should—shall—must enter Gades harbor, and from out of her shall step one in whose hand is the destiny of Spain and Gaul. I said, because the constellations indicated, that the man will be a prince from a far country, bold in war, young, handsome, destined to be lost in Gades but to be recovered by a stranger. Last night I told Balbus that the prince in the ship with the purple sails will arrive before dawn."

"Well. Here I am, but it is not my ship," said Orwic, and began to whistle softly to himself. When he was a little boy the Druids told him that was the simplest means of avoiding a magician's snares.

But magicians are not easily rebuffed. The business of snaring men in nets made of imagination implies a thick skin and persistence, along with an immeasurable, cynical contempt for the prospective victim's powers of resistance.

"You are indeed the man the stars foretold," said Pkauchios with admiration in his voice. "Indifferent to flattery, not stirred by rumor, iron-willed! It is of such men that the Gods make weapons when the tyrannies shall fall! I see your aura—purple as the sails of yonder ship!"

He struck a bronze gong and the music in the next room ceased. The sound of the gong startled Orwic, for it resembled the clash of weapons. He turned suddenly to face the Egyptian, who was no longer standing but seated on a sort of throne, whose arms were the gilded tusks of elephants. There was a canopy above the throne that threw that corner into deeper shadow, and the Egyptian's eyes appeared to blaze as if there were fire in them. In his lap he held a crystal ball, which he raised in both hands when he was sure that Orwic's gaze was fixed on him.

"Approach me!" he commanded. "Nay, not too close, or your shadow dims the astral light!"

He was staring at the crystal, frowning heavily, brows raised, lips parted, eyes glaring. The effort he was making seemed to tax his powers almost beyond endurance.

"You are the man!" he said at last, and sighing, set the crystal down on the table where the skull stood. His eyes had lost their frenzy suddenly. He leaned back, looking deathly weary, all the lines and winkles on his dark face emphasized by pallor.

"You, who listen, never know what we, who look into the unseen, suffer for your sakes," he said.

Even his voice was aged. Orwic began to feel pity for him, and something akin to shame for his former rudeness.

Pkauchios left the throne and walking forward wearily took Orwic by the arm. His manner was of age that leaned on youth with perfect confidence.

"So, help me to that seat and sit beside me."

They sat down on a bench of carved ebony and Pkauchios leaned his back against the wall.

"Youth! Youth!" he said. "With all the world before you! Age must serve youth. We who have struggled and are old may justify ourselves if we can guide youth through the dangers. Age and responsibility! If I should guide you wrongly, what responsibility were mine! I will say nothing. It is wiser. I will not foreshadow destiny."

Now that was something like the Druids' way of viewing interference with a man's own privilege of living as he sees fit. Orwic began to feel a vague respect for the Egyptian and to wonder whether he had not misjudged him. He might, after all, be a seer. It was hardly reasonable to suppose that all the prophets were in Britain, Chloe had said. But was a slave girl's judgment of her master to be accepted without proof? However, Orwic was still cautious.

"I don't believe in magic," he remarked.

"Rightly! Rightly so!" said Pkauchios. "It is destruction. It will destroy the Romans. It has ruined nations without number. Fools, who know no better, call me a magician. When I tell the truth to them, they weary me with their demands for untruth. It is restful to meet you. Honest unbelief is sweeter to me than the dark credulity of those who seek nothing but their selfish ends. Your incredulity will melt. Their superstition toughens as it feeds on vice. But I must crave your pardon. I am a laggard host, forgetting the body's needs in the absorption of a spiritual moment. You are young, strong, hungry, I have no doubt."

HE CLAPPED his hands, and almost on the instant two slave girls appeared bearing trays heaped with refreshment. One of them washed Orwic's hands and combed his hair; the other spread before him milk, fruit, nuts, three sorts of bread, butter, honey and preserves, whose very scent excited appetite.

"I will return when you have refreshed yourself," said Pkauchios. "We who commune with the stars eat little earthly food."

He left the room, but the slave girls stayed and converted Orwic's first meal on foreign soil into an experience that melted his reserve.

He began by being half ashamed to eat while the Egyptian fasted, remembering that the Druids hardly ate at all during their periods of spiritual commune with the universe. He began to be almost sure that fasting was a sign of the Egyptian's purity of purpose. It was incredible that such food as the slave girls set before him should not tempt a man with wordly motives—such as Orwic's own, for instance.

He began to confess to himself that he was having a glorious time, and he hoped Tros would not come for him too soon. Deeply though he admired Tros, loyal though he felt toward him, he dreaded Tros' abrupt way of dispersing dreams and scattering side issues. He could imagine Tros' contempt, for instance, for the slave girls. Orwic liked them.

Used to slaves and serving-women in his own land, he had never dreamed of such attentions as these two dark-haired women lavished on him. They were beautiful, smiling, silent, exquisitely trained, but that was not the half of it. In Britain guests were made to feel that their comfort was the host's one sole consideration, and the servants vied with one another to that end. But these two slave girls made a man feel that he owned them, that their very souls were his, that they would think his thoughts if he would. only deign to half express them, and be overjoyed to be the mothers of his sons.

It was bewildering at first, embarrassing; then gradually rather pleasant; presently as natural as if all other forms of hospitality were crude, uncivilized and no part of a nobleman's experience. This was the way to live. It was no wonder that foreigners regarded Britons as barbarians, with their crude ideas of courtesy and the servants' air of being members of the family instead of servants in the true sense of the word.

One of the girls was on his knee when Pkauchios returned. She was wiping his mouth and mustache with a napkin. She removed herself in no haste, unembarrassed, curtseying to her master, helping the other girl at once to carry out the tray and dishes. Pkauchios took no notice of either of them, which seemed to Orwic to prove that the man was an aristocrat, if nothing else.

"You are right, you are right," said Pkauchios, taking a seat beside him. "You should have nothing to do with magic. It is safer to avoid true revelation than to listen to the false. But tell me why you came to Gades."

Orwic told him all of it; told him the whole story of how Cæsar had invaded Britain and had been repulsed; and how Tros of Samothrace, for friendship and because his ship was built in Britain, had undertaken to go to Rome and by any means that should present themselves to deter Cæsar from invading a second time.

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" said Pkauchios when the tale was done and Orwic had finished his eulogiums of Tros. "All this and more I have seen written in the stars. You are a man of destiny. And yet—"

He leaned into the corner, frowning. It appeared that the decision between right and wrong, between his own high standard of integrity and a convenient alternative was forming in his brain.

"—if I should tell you what else I have seen—"

"Oh, you may as well tell me," Orwic interrupted. "I am not a child. And besides, I will do nothing without consulting Tros."

"Do you not see," said Pkauchios, "that if Spain were to rebel against the Romans, Cæsar's army would be needed to prevent the Gauls from rising too?"

"Yes, that seems obvious," said Orwic. He was devoting at least half his attention to wondering where those slave girls were. The scent from the one who had sat on his knee still clung to his tunic. No British girls that he had known had ever smelled like that.

"And if Cæsar were to die," said Pkauchios.

He paused, aware that Orwic was only partly listening to him.

"And if Cæsar were to die," he repeated solemnly, then suddenly gripped Orwic's arm and leaning forward, fixing him with penetrating gaze, almost hissed the words:

"Do you not see that you and Tros of Samothrace, with Spain in red rebellion, north, south, east and west, could lead the insurrection into Gaul and stir the Gauls until they, too, rise against the Romans?"

He sat back again and sighed.

"All this," he said, "and more, I have seen written in the stars. Sight must be given us that we may see. And yet—"

"Such a deed would save Britain," remarked Orwic. He was thinking now.

He was still aware of the faint, delicious woman smell, but its effect on him was changing. There were thoughts of women whom a sword could win, quite other thoughts than Orwic was accustomed to, thoughts not exactly chivalrous but blended in with chivalry, suggesting that the rescue of the Gauls from Roman rule might lead to a delightful destiny. He began to wonder what Tros would have to say to the proposal and whether Tros, too, secretly, in the recesses of his heart, would not rather like the prospect of—well—of whatever victory might provide.

"I should not be surprized at anything," he said after a minute's pause. "When I left Britain it was to face my destiny, whatever it might be. Now that girl Chloe—is it true she is your slave?"

Pkauchios' answer was startling:

"Do you covet her? Shall I give her to you?"

IT WAS almost too startling; it rearoused suspicion. Orwic eyed the Egyptian narrowly, turning over in his mind vague notions as to how much Chloe might be worth. He was not so stupid as to believe that offer genuine.

"If you should do what the stars indicate you safely may do," Pkauchios said mysteriously, "then by tomorrow's dawn you will be all powerful in Gades. I shall need your friendship then. To flaming youth in the hour of victory, what gift could be more suitable than Chloe? I am an old man. Her beauty means nothing to me."

Orwic's veins began to boil, so, being British, he proceeded to look preternaturally wise.

"What is all this about destiny? What did you read in the stars?" he demanded.

"You would better not let me influence you," Pkauchios suggested. "I have never yet made one mistake in reading others' destiny, but I have no right!"

"Oh, nonsense! Out with it!" said Orwic. "If you can read my destiny, you have no right not to tell me."

"I must have your definite permission."

"You have it."

"Know then, that the stars have indicated for a month that this is the night when Balbus, Governor of Gades, dies! On this night, too, dies Cæsar, imperator of the Roman troops in Gaul! But the conjunction of the stars is such that, if the Governor of Gades dies by the hand of a common murderer, as may be, then anarchy will follow and no good come of it. But should he die by the hand of the prince who stepped out of the red ship and was lost in Gades, then the prince shall wear a red cloak and shall rule a province."

"Strange!" said Orwic. "Strange! I have had peculiar dreams of late."

"And how many men have you on board that ship?" asked Pkauchios. "If I should show you how to smuggle them ashore and where to hide them and how to reach Balbus' house unseen at midnight, and should tell you that in Balbus' treasury is money enough with which to recompense those men of yours and to pay others and to raise an army—"

"I am not a murderer. I am not a thief," said Orwic, his sense of self-restraint returning.

"Did you slay no Romans when they invaded Britain?" Pkauchios asked. "Did the Romans slay none of your friends? According to the stars that prince, who steps out of the red ship, is to be an avenger and shall drive the Romans out of Gaul!"

"Ah, now you are trying to persuade me," Orwic commented.

"Not I! But I will give you Chloe, if you seize your opportunity. She is the richest prize in Gades. She is worth two hundred thousand sesterces."

Orwic had not the slightest notion how much money that was, so he magnified it in his own mind, and the result rearoused his suspicion. He got up and began to pace the floor, to discover whether or not Pkauchios was proposing to detain him forcibly. But Pkauchios made no move; simply leaned against a corner of the wall and watched him. Orwic decided to probe deeper; he desired to justify temptation by proving to himself that Pkauchios was friend, not enemy. He drew back the curtains at the doorway by which he had entered the room. There was nobody there. He passed into a hall all lined with statuary, entered rooms that opened to the right and left of it, found nobody, and tried the house door. It was unlocked; doves were cooing in the garden; fountains splashed; there were no lurkers; only a few old Egyptian slaves who dipped out water from a well a hundred yards away.

Plainly, then, he was not a prisoner. And as he breathed the incense smoke out of his lungs, refilling them with blossom-scented air, he felt the challenge of his youth and strength.

"Off Vectis, the Lord Druid said," he muttered to himself, "there is a man in Gades to whom he could have sent Tros, only that Tros' mind was closed against him. This Pkauchios is probably the man!"

Musing to himself, his hands behind him, he returned along the hall toward the room where he had left the old Egyptian. Chloe had said he should agree to anything the Egyptian might propose. It might do no harm to pretend to agree. But he wondered how he should explain away his rudeness, how he should accept the man's proffered aid now without cheapening his own position and above all, how he should explain to Tros.

"You must help me to convince the Lord Tros," he began, reentering the room.

But Pkauchios was gone. There was no trace of him nor any answer, though he called his name a dozen times.

CHAPTER X

BALBUS QUI MURUTUM AEDLFICABIT

pONDERING the situation in all its bearings, Tros called Chloe back into the stateroom while the deck crew lowered Simon into the long-boat.

"Your Horatius Verres waits for Cæsar and is Cæsar's man. You have befriended Verres. Therefore Cæsar will befriend you. Why, then, should you be in haste to flee from Gades?"

"Torture!" she said and shuddered. "Horatius Verres sent a messenger who may reach Cæsar in time to warn him. But if Balbus dies and Cæsar comes, then Cæsar will investigate—"

"This is not his province. He has no authority in Spain."

"He is Cæsar," Chloe answered. "And I shall be tortured, because Pkauchios will certainly be found out and they will need my evidence against him."

"So, unless we save Balbus' life—"

Chloe looked into Tros' eyes. She laid the palms of her hands against his breast, her lip quivering for a second—on the verge of tears, but struggling to regain her self-control.

"Lord Tros," she said, "there isn't a slave in Gades but knows Cæsar would jump at an excuse to invade Pompey's province. Pompey and Cæsar pretend to be friends. They're as friendly as two lovers of one woman! Balbus is Pompey's nominee, and he is willing to win Gaul for Pompey or to betray Spain into Cæsar's hands, whichever of the two he thinks is stronger. All men know there will be war before long, and none can guess whether Pompey or Cæsar will win. Pompey is lazy, proud, rich, popular. Cæsar is energetic, loved, feared, hated, deep in debt."

"Wager your peculium on Cæsar!" Tros advised.

"Nay, on Horatius Verres! Have you ever loved a woman?" she asked.

Tros did not answer. He stroked his chin, watching her eyes. She asked him another question.

"Do you think it possible for me to tell the truth?"

He nodded. He expected a prodigious lie was coming. Her eyes were melting, soft, abrim with tears, held bravely back. The stage was all set for Gadean trickery. But she surprized him.

"I would die for Horatius Verres! I would submit to torture for him. But not for you, Pkauchios, Simon, Balbus, Cæsar nor any other man!"

"Pearls?" Tros asked her, studying her face.

She reached for the hem of her chlamys and produced the one pearl he had already given her, holding it out in the palm of her hand.

"You may keep them! Simon may keep my money unless you find a way of freeing me tonight! I will sing no more. I will dance no more and please none but myself. For they shall buy me where the other dead slaves' bodies rot if I lose Horatius Verres. Tros of Samothrace, if you have never loved a woman—"

"Come," said Tros.

The long-boat set them on the seaweed-littered beach, where an officer of Balearic slingers, aping Roman airs and very splendid in his clanking bronze, signed to Tros to pass on, but demanded to be told by what right Simon, the Jew, paid visits to a foreign ship in harbor. A party of Simon's slaves, with his great unwieldy, paneled litter in their midst had been detained some distance o£F, a detachment of slingers guarding them.

Simon began to argue excitedly, gesticulating, gasping as the nervousness increased his asthma. Chloe interrupted.

"Do you know me?" she asked.

"I pass you, exquisite Chloe!" the officer answered in Latin with an atrocious Balearic accent.

"I pass Simon!" she retorted. "Do you dare to prevent me?"

"But Chloe—"

"Bring me Simon's slaves or count me your enemy!" she interrupted.

With a half humorous grimace the officer beckoned to his men to let Simon's slaves advance.

"Remember me, O favorite of Fortune!" he said to Chloe. "My name is Metellus."

"I will mention you to Balbus. I will lie to him about your good looks and your loyalty," she promised, and motioned to Simon to climb into his litter.

"Be your memory as nimble as your wits and feet!" Metellus answered, shrugging his shoulders and signing to his men to let the party pass.

Those Balearic slingers lined along the beach were a godsend from Tros' point of view. There was a crowd of hucksters, pimps, idlers and loose women noisily protesting because the soldiers would not let them approach the shore. In the distance where the fishing boats were anchored three liburnians patrolled the waterfront and kept small boats from putting out. There was no chance of communication with the ship, no risk of the crew getting drunk or of Jaun Aksue and his Eskualdenak escaping.

All the way to the city gate the road was lined with idlers who had come to stare and touts who heralded the fame of Gades' brothels. They praised Tros' purple cloak, admired his bulk and strength, flattered, coaxed and tried to tempt him with descriptions of alleged delights, pawing at him, pulling, fighting one another, spitting and cursing at Simon's slaves for thrusting the litter through their ranks. They offered horses, donkeys, mules, drink, women and at last a litter.

Tros hired the litter and bade Chloe climb into it and ride with him. But she refused.

"There are some things I can not do. Once I bought a litter. But it is against the law for slave or even for freed women. The Romans' wives threatened to have me whipped. So I walk, and those women envy me my health, if nothing else!"

They were stared at by the gate guards and by the crowd that swarmed there, but not in any way molested. There was no wheeled traffic, but the narrow street was choked with burdened slaves, mules, oxen and leisured pedestrians who flowed in a colorful hot stream between the lines of stalls and booths that backed against the houses. There was a din of chaffering and a drone of flies where the fruit- and meat- and fish-shops made splurges of raw color; and there was a stench of overcrowded tenements that made Tros cough and gasp.

But people were less curious inside the city, and Chloe's presence had more effect. She walked ahead with one of Simon's slaves on either side of her, and the crowd made way, occasionally cheering, calling compliments, addressing her by name as if she were a free celebrity. One man, forcing his way through the crowd, presented her with flowers and begged her to ride in his chariot if he should win next month's quadriga race in the arena.

SHE nodded gaily and led on along the winding street until it widened suddenly and approached an irregular square with trees along one side of it and a statue of Balbus the governor in the midst. On the left hand of the street, with its front toward the square, was a great white building with small, iron-barred windows and the legend S. P. Q. R. in enormous letters amid scroll work all along the coping. From the windows issued shrill, spasmodic, tortured woman's screams, increasing and increasing, until the street crowd set its teeth and some laughed nervously, then ceasing abruptly, only to begin again.

There was no passing at that point. The crowd jammed the street. Even Chloe was helpless to force a way through, and while she pushed, coaxed, pleaded, argued, a girl younger than herself rushed out of a doorway fighting frantically with the crowd that interfered with her and, falling to her knees, seized Chloe's legs.

Her face was half hidden in a shawl; Chloe pulled it back and recognized her. The girl sobbed, and as the screams from the window rose to a shrill, broken summit of inflicted agony, she burst into a torrent of stuttering words all choked with sobs, her fingers clutching Chloe's knees.

Tros rolled out of the litter, for it was useless to try to force that eight-manned object through the crowd. He touched Chloe's shoulder.

"Her mother!" she whispered. "Some informer has told Balbus of a plot. He takes her mother's testimony."

She stooped and kissed the girl, then broke away from her and, beckoning to Tros to follow, began using violence and Balbus' name to force her way through, the crowd gradually yielding.

Around the corner, on the side of the building that faced the trees, eight Roman soldiers under a decurion leaned on spears beside the stone steps that led to a wide arched entrance. Beyond them, in the shadow of the wall, eight more legonaries stood guard over a group of miserable prisoners, gibing at them when they shuddered at the screams that could be heard there even more distinctly than in the street because the stone arch of the entrance magnified the noise. Held back by a rope between the steps and the trees at the back of the square was a crowd of Romans, Spaniards, Greeks, Moors, Jews, slaves and freemen, their voices making a sea of sound that paused regularly when the screams increased.

Chloe led Tros to the steps and whispered Balbus' name to the decurion in charge, who stared at Tros but nodded leave to enter. They fought their way into a crowded lobby, where men and women stood on tip-toe trying to see through the open courtroom door over the shoulders of two legionaries whose spears and broad backs blocked the way. There was hardly breathing room. A woman in a corner had fainted and a man was pouring water on her from a lion's mouth drinking fountain built into the wall.

Chloe kicked, shoved, imprecated, cried out Balbus' name and worked her way at last, with Tros behind her, until she touched the spears held horizontally across the door and Tros could see over her shoulder into the crowded courtroom.

The screams for the moment had ceased. On a sort of throne on a raised dais with a chair on either side of it on which the secretaries sat, was Balbus, governor of Gades, exquisitely groomed, pale, clicking at his front teeth with a thumbnail. He was handsome, but much darker than the average Roman;^[1] there were rings under his eyes, that had a bored look, as if he found it difficult to concentrate on a subject that vaguely irritated him. His crisp black hair was turning gray, although he was a comparatively young man. He looked decidedly unhealthy.

Presently he sat bolt upright and the crowded courtroom grew utterly still. When he spoke his well trained voice had the suggestion of a sneer, and his frown was a tyrant's, impatient, exacting, final—like the corners of his mouth that tightened when his lips moved.

"I have considered the advocate's argument. It is true, it is a principle of Roman law that no injustice shall be done; but this woman is not a Roman citizen, nor is she the mother of more than one child, so she has no rights that are involved in this instance. Treason has been charged against the Senate and the Roman People, a most serious issue. This woman has refused to answer truthfully the questions put to her, although she has been accused of knowing the conspirators' names. We must have her testimony. Let the torturers continue. Apply fire."

He leaned forward, elbow on his knee, and again the awful screams began to fill the stone-roofed hall. A scream from the street reechoed them. The crowd on the wooden benches reached and craned to get a better view and the sentries in the door-way stood on tip-toe; all that Tros could see over their shoulders was a glimpse of the men who held the levers of a rack and the red glow of a charcoal brazier. There began to be a stench of burning flesh.

Chloe slipped under the spears of the sentries; one of them reached out an arm but recognized her as she turned to threaten him, grinned and nodded to her to go wherever she pleased. She disappeared into the crowd that stood in the aisle between the benches. The next Tros saw of her she was in front of the dais, looking up at Balbus, who sat motionless, chin on hand, elbow on knee, apparently not listening. The tortured woman's screams made whatever Chloe said inaudible to any one but Balbus and, perhaps, his secretaries, who, however, were at pains to appear busy with their tablets.

Balbus suddenly sat upright, raising his right hand.

"Cease!" he exclaimed in a bored voice. "There will be a short recession. Remove the witness. Let the doctor see to her. After the recession I will examine the other witnesses in turn. It is possible we may not need this one's testimony."

The witness' screams died to a sobbing moan, and there was a murmur in the courtroom. Some one cried out, "Favoritism!" At the rear of the room there were audible snickers. Ushers and sentries roared for silence and, as two men carried the victim out on a stretcher through a side door, Balbus spoke with a metallic snarl:

"I will clear the court if there are further demonstrations! This is not a spectacle, but a judicial process. A courtroom is not an arena. Let decency attend the acts of justice. The next spectator who betrays disrespect for the dignity of Roman justice shall be soundly flogged!"

HE AROSE and left the courtroom by a door at the rear of the dais, nodding to Chloe as he went. She seized a court official by the arm and the crowd in the aisle made way in front of them. The official, lemon-faced, his skin a mass of wrinkles, sly-eyed from experience of litigation and his long nose looking capable of infinite suspicion, beckoned to Tros. The sentries let him through and the crowd in the courtroom turned to stare as he swaggered up the aisle, his sea legs giving him a roll that showed off his purple cloak and his great bulk to advantage. With his sword in its purple scabbard and the broad gold band that bound his heavy coils of black hair he looked like a king on a visit of state and, what was more to his purpose, he knew it. They passed the torture-implements, where a Sicilian slave on his knees blew at a charcoal brazier in preparation for the next unwilling witness; the long-nosed official opened the door at the rear of the dais and Chloe, all smiles and excitement, led the way in.

"The renowned and noble Tros of Samothrace!" she exclaimed, and shut the door behind her, leaning with her back against it.

Balbus looked up. He was sitting by the window of a square room lined with racks of parchments, holding toward the light a tablet, which he appeared to find immensely interesting. Tros approached him and bowed, hand on hilt.

"So you are that pirate?" said Balbus, looking keenly at him.

"That is Cæsar's view of it," Tros answered. "I had the great Pompeius' leave to come and go and to use all Roman ports, but Cæsar stole my father's ship and slew him."

"Why do you come to Gades?"

"To find a friend who shall make it safe for me to take my ship to Ostia, and there to leave the ship at anchor while I go to Rome."

"For what purpose?"

"To stir Cæsar's enemies against him; or, it may be, to persuade his friends of the unwisdom of his course. I hope to keep him from invading Britain."

"Who is this friend whom you propose to find in Gades?"

"Yourself, for all I know," said Tros, spreading his shoulders and smiling. "I offer quid for quo. A friend of mine may count on me for friendship."

Balbus was silent for a long time, appearing to be studying Tros' face, but there was a look behind his eyes as if he were revolving half a dozen issues in his mind.

"You took a hostage from me!" he said suddenly.

"Aye, and a good looking one!" Tros answered. "I was fortunate. You shall have him back when I leave Gades. I am told he knows your secrets."

"What if I hold you against him?" Balbus sneered; but he could not keep his eyes from glancing at Tros' sword.

Tros smiled at him.

"Why, in that case, my lieutenant would take my ship to Ostia. And I wonder whether that hostage, whom he will there surrender to the Romans, will keep your secrets as stoutly as the woman in the court just now kept hers!"

Balbus glared angrily, but Tros smiled back at him, his hand remaining on his sword-hilt.

"However, why do we talk of reprisals?" Tros went on after an awkward pause. "Balbus, son of Balbus, is it wisdom to reject a friendship that the gods have brought you on the western wind?"

Balbus looked startled, but tried to conceal it. Chloe, her back to the door, took courage in her teeth and interrupted in a strained voice:

"What said Pkauchios? A red ship with a purple sail? A bold man in a purple cloak?"

"Peace, thou!" commanded Balbus, but in another second he was smiling at her. "Chloe," he said, "you dance for me to-night?"

She nodded.

"As long as Pkauchios owns me." Balbus stared at her, frowning:

"Pkauchios will never manumit you!" he said. "You know too many secrets."

Chloe bit her lip, as if she regretted having spoken, but her eyes were on Tros' face and appeared to be urging him to follow the cue she had given.

"Balbus, what if I should save your life?" Tros asked. "What then? Or shall I sail away and leave you?"

Again Chloe interrupted:

"Balbus! What said Pkauchios? What said the auguries? 'Death stalks you in the streets of Gades unless Fortune intervenes!'"

Balbus stared at Tros again.

"How come you to know about conspiracies in Gades?" he demanded.

"I, too, consult the auguries," said Tros. "For my ship's sake I read the stars as some men read a woman's eyes. The stars have blinked me into Gades. The very whales have beckoned me! My dreams for nine nights past in storms at sea have been of Gades and a man's life I shall save."

Balbus' lips opened a little and his lower jaw came slowly forward. He used his left hand for a shield against the sunlight streaming through the window and, leaning sidewise, peered at Tros again.

"You look like a blunt, honest seaman," he remarked, "save that you are dressed too handsomely and overbold!"

"My father was a prince of Samothrace," Tros answered; whereat Balbus shrugged his shoulders. It was no part of the policy of Roman governors to appear much thrilled by foreign titles of nobility.

NOW Tros was utterly perplexed what course to take, for which reason he was careful to look confident. He knew the information that he had from Chloe might be a network of lies. There might be no truth whatever, for instance, in her statement that Cæsar was on his way to Gades; on the other hand it might be true, and Balbus might be perfectly aware of it. Examining Balbus' eyes, he became sure of one thing—Balbus was no idealist; a mere suggestion of an altruistic aim would merely stir the man's suspicion.

"I come to fish in troubled waters," Tros remarked. "I seek advantage in your disadvantage."

Suddenly, as if some friendly god had whispered in his ear, he thought of the Balearic slingers on the beach and how readily their officer had fielded to Chloe's arrogant support of Simon. He remembered that shrug of the shoulders when she promised to praise him to Balbus.

"Are your troops dependable?" he asked, knowing that mutiny was as perennial as the seasons wherever Roman troops were kept too long in idleness. He began to wonder whether, perhaps, Balbus had not sent for Cæsar to help him out of an emergency. Secretaries, slaves might have spread such a rumor. Chloe might have magnified it and distorted it for reasons of her own; the Gades dancing girls, he knew, were capable of any intrigue. For that matter Horatius Verres might be Balbus' spy, not Cæsar's.

But Balbus' startled stare was more or less convincing. And it dawned on Tros that a Roman governor who felt entirely sure of his own authority would not yield so complacently to that hostage trick; a man with his nerve unshaken would have countered promptly by arresting Tros himself. Balbus was worried, nervous, trying to conceal the fact. Subduing irritation, he ignored Tros' question and retorted with another—

"You used Cæsar's seal! What do you know of Cæsar's movements?"

"None except Cæsar can guess what he will do next," Tros said, trying to suggest by his expression that he knew more than he proposed to tell.

"Word came," said Balbus, "that you fought a battle with his biremes. I have heard that the Druids of Gaul report to you all Cæsar's moves in advance. Can you tell me where he is now? If you tell the truth, I will do you any favor within my power."

The pupils of Tros' amber eyes contracted suddenly. His head jerked slightly in Chloe's direction and Balbus took the hint.

"Chloe," he said, "go you to that woman who was tortured. Help to bandage her. Condole with her. Try to persuade her to confess to you the names of the conspirators who are plotting against my life. Tell her that if she confesses she shall not be tortured any more, and she may save others from the rack."

Chloe left the room, and Tros did not care to turn his head to see what effect the dismissal had on her.

"Now, what do you know of Cæsar?" Balbus asked.

Tros smiled. He was determined not to answer until sure of where the forks of Balbus' own dilemma pricked. And the longer Tros hesitated the more confident Balbus grew that Tros knew more than he would tell without persuasion.

"You are Cæsar's enemy?" he asked.

Tros nodded.

"I am of the party of Pompeius Magnus," Balbus remarked, narrowing his eyes.

Tros nodded again.

"It would not offend Pompeius Magnus if—ah—if death should overtake Cæsar," Balbus remarked, and looked the other way.

"So I should imagine," Tros said, watching him.

Balbus stroked his chin. It had been beautifully shaven. Tros kept silence. Balbus had to resume the conversation:

"If Cæsar should visit Gades and should die, all Rome would sigh with relief; but the Senate would assert its own dignity by crucifying any Roman who had killed him. You understand me?"

Again Tros nodded. He was having hard work to suppress excitement, but his breath came regularly, slowly. Even his hand on the jeweled sword-hilt rested easily. Balbus appeared irritated at his calmness. He spoke sharply—

"But if an enemy of Cæsar slew him—" Tros stroked his chin, passing the hand over his mouth to hide a smile—"that man would have a thousand friends in Rome!" Balbus went on. Then, after a moment's pause, his eyes on Tros, "Cæsar's corpse could harm no friends of yours in Britain!"

For as long as thirty breaths Tros and Balbus eyed each other. Then:

"Spies have informed me," said Balbus, "of a rumor that Cæsar intends to come here. What else than that news brought you into Gades? Did you not come to waylay and kill him?"

Tros, stroking at his chin again, assumed the slyest possible expression.

"I should need such guarantees of safety and immunity as even Balbus might find it hard to give," he remarked.

"We can discuss that later on," said Balbus. "Cæsar moves swiftly and secretly, but I know where he was three days ago. He can not be here for four or five days yet. We have time."

However, Tros remembered his friend Simon—probably already home by now and in abject terror awaiting news of the interview. Also he thought of Chloe. Those were two whose loyalty he needed to bind to himself, by all means and as soon as possible.

"I will make a first condition now," he said abruptly. "Simon, the Jew owes money but can not pay. He says you owe him money and will not pay. Will you settle with Simon?"

Balbus looked exasperated.

"Bacchus!" he swore under his breath.

It needed small imagination to explain what situation he was in. Like any other Roman governor, he had been forced to send enormous sums to Rome to defray his own debts and to bribe the professional blackmailers who lived by accusing absentees before the Senate. He had not been long enough in Gades to accumulate reserves of extorted coin.

Tros understood the situation perfectly. He also knew how men in debt snatch eagerly at temporary respite.

"There is no haste for the money," he remarked. "Let Simon write an order on your treasury which you accept for payment, say, in six months' time."

Balbus nodded.

"That would be an unusual concession," he said, "from a man in my position. But I see no serious objection."

"Would any one in Gades dare to refuse to accept such a document in payment of a debt?" Tros asked him.

Balbus stiffened, instantly assertive of his dignity.

"Some men will dare almost anything—once!" he remarked. "It would be a dangerous indiscretion!"

"Even if it were the price of the manumission of a slave?"

"Even so."

"Very well," said Tros. "There is a female slave in Gades whom I covet. Can you order the sale of that slave to me?"

"Not so," said Balbus. "But I can order the slave manumitted at the price at which the owner has declared that slave for taxation purposes, and provided the slave pays the manumission tax of ten per cent. on her market value."

"I am at the age when a woman means more to me than money," Tros remarked.

Balbus nodded. That was no new thing. The dry smile on his face revealed that he thought he had Tros in the hollow of his hand.

"But how did you make the acquaintance of this slave in Gades?" he asked curiously.

Tros could lie on the spur of a moment as adroitly as he could change his ship's helm to defeat the freaks of an Atlantic wind.

"She was sold under my eyes in Greece, two years ago. I was outbidden," he answered promptly. "I learned she was brought to Gades and, if you must know, that is why I risked coming here. She is extremely beautiful. I saw her just now in the street."

"Do you know who owns her?"

"I will find out."

"Well," said Balbus, "make your inquiries cautiously, or her owner may grow suspicious and spirit her out of sight. You would better get her name and legal description, her owner's name and her taxable value, have the document drawn and bring it to me to sign before the owner learns anything about it."

"When? Where?" Tros asked him.

Balbus turned in his chair suddenly and looked straight into Tros' face, staring long and keenly at him.

"At my house. Tonight," he said deliberately, using the words with emphasis, as a man might who was naming an enormous stake in a game of chance. "I bid you to my house to supper at one hour after sunset. There is an Egyptian named Pkauchios in Gades, an astrologer of great ability in the prediction of events. For two months he has predicted daily that Cæsar will die very soon by violence. Last night, between midnight and the dawn, he came to me predicting your arrival after sunrise. He prophesied that you shall serve me in a matter of life and death. I am thinking, if it should be my life and the death of Cæsar—"

"I must consult this Pkauchios!" said Tros, and Balbus nodded.

"I will send you to him."

"No," said Tros, "for then he will know I come from you. And if he has lied to you, he will lie to me. But if I go alone I may get the truth from him. I will not slay Cæsar unless I know the elements are all propitious."

"Go to him then," Balbus answered. "Make yourself as inconspicuous in Gades as you can. Bring me an exact account to-night of all that Pkauchios has said to you. I will sign the order for Simon's money and for the manumission of that slave girl just to let you feel my generosity. Thereafter, we will discuss the terms on which you shall—ah—shall—ah—act as the instrument of fate."

CHAPTER XI

CONSPIRACY

THE LITTER Tros had hired had vanished when he left the courtroom. In its place was a sumptuous thing with gilded pomegranates at the corners of the curtained awning, borne by eight slaves in clean white uniform. An Alexandrian eunuch, who seemed to have enough authority to keep the crowd at bay, came forward, staff in hand, to greet Tros at the courthouse steps.

"My master the noble Pkauchios invites you," he said, bowing, gesturing toward the litter.

"Where is my own litter?" Tros demanded.

The eunuch smiled, bowing even more profoundly.

"My master would be ashamed that you should ride in such a hired thing to his house. I took the liberty in his name of dismissing it and paying the trifling charges."

Tros hesitated. He would have preferred to go first to Simon's house, supposing that the Jew had hurried home to wait for him, but as he glanced to left and right in search of Simon's litter the eunuch interpreted that thought.

"Simon the Jew is also my master's guest," he announced.

Tros disbelieved that. It was incredible that Simon should accept hospitality from a man whom he had so recently described as a vile magician. But the decurion in charge of the soldiers at the courthouse entrance nodded confirmation:

"Simon went to have his fatness charmed away," he suggested with a grin. "Pkauchios has a name for working miracles."

Reflecting that in any event he had better see Orwic as soon as possible, Tros rolled into the splendid litter. There was no sign of Chloe and he did not care to arouse comment by asking for her. He was borne away in haste, the soldiers shouting to the crowd to make way for the litter and, after a long ride through well swept but fetid smelling streets, he was set down at Pkauchios' front gate, where the eunuch ushered him into the marble house, not announcing him, not entering the incense smelling room with him, but drawing back the clashing curtains, motioning him through and closing them behind him.

He was greeted by Orwic's boyish laugh and by a gasp from Simon. The two were seated face to face on couches near the window, unable to converse since Simon knew hardly any Gaulish, and both of them as pleased to see Tros as if he were a meal produced by a miracle for hungry men. Orwic ran to greet him, threw an arm around him, trying to say everything at once in an excited whisper:

"A great wizard. This must be the man our Lord Druid might have sent you to if you had only listened—made me a proposal—slip the Eskualdenak ashore—he says he knows how to manage that—hide that—in a place he'll show me—kill Balbus tonight—lead an uprising against the Romans—carry the rebellion into Gaul—no need then to go to Rome—we'll keep the Romans' hands too full to invade Britain!"

Tros snorted. One sniff was enough. There was a woman smell on Orwic's clothes.

"Magic works many ways," he remarked, and then thought of the curtains behind him. "We will consider the proposal," he added in a somewhat louder voice.

He approached Simon, who appeared too exhausted to rise from the couch and, glimpsing through the open window his great ship at anchor in the distance, he paused a moment, thrilled by the sight, before he spoke in Aramaic, his lips hardly moving, in an undertone that Orwic hardly caught:

"Out of the teeth of danger we will snatch success, but you must trust me. We speak now for an unseen audience."

He could feel the espionage, although there was no sign of it. He leaned through the open window, but no eavesdroppers lurked within earshot. He strode back to the curtains through which he had entered, jerked them back suddenly, and found the hall empty. There was another door a few feet from the throne with the arms of gilded ivory. He jerked back its curtains, too, and found the next room vacant, silent, beautifully furnished but affording no hiding place. There was a lute left lying by a gilded chair and the same smell of scented women that he had noticed on Orwic's clothes, but the wearers of the scent had vanished.

Nevertheless, he was convinced he was being spied on. He could feel the nervous tension that an unseen eye produces, and he suspected the wall at the back of the ivory throne might be hollow; the corner behind the throne was not square but built out, forming two angles and a short, flat wall. The canopy over the throne cast shadow, and there was a deal of decoration there that might conceal a peep-hole. He signed to Orwic to sit down by the window and, standing so that his voice might carry straight toward that corner wall, himself full in the sunlight, stroking his chin with an air of great deliberation, he spoke in Gaulish:

"It is good that we may speak among ourselves before the Egyptian comes. What kind of man is he?"

"A nobleman!" said Orwic. "A good hater of the Romans! It was his slaves who rescued me from some ruffians in a mean street. He is not a false magician but a true one. He had prophesied the coming of your ship, and my landing at night and being lost in Gades. He has read our destiny in the stars and he refused, like a true magician, to say a word about it until I almost forced it out of him."

Tros nodded gravely.

"Then he made me that proposal. And I tell you, Tros, you would do well to consider it."

"I am an opportunist," Tros said. "I will do whatever fortune indicates."

"I objected to murdering Balbus," Orwic went on, "but the Romans invaded Britain. They killed our men. And he said Balbus is doomed anyhow but, according to his reading of the stars, if he should be killed by the prince from a far country who steps out of the ship with the purple sails, it will mean the end of Roman rule in all Spain and Gaul. Whereas, if he is killed by a common murderer, no good will come of it."

Tros stroked his chin and frowned. No trace of incredulity betrayed itself as he answered solemnly—

"Few men can read the stars with such precision."

"That is exactly my opinion," Orwic agreed. "He speaks like a Lord Druid,"

Simon had made very little of the conversation, but he was watching Tros' face with a sort of blank expression on his own, as if his intuition rather than his ordinary faculties were working. He had suppressed his noisy breathing.

"Get me my money, Tros! Get me my money!" he gasped suddenly, noisily in Aramaic.

But his expression had changed and his eyes were brighter; Tros interpreted the remark to mean that Simon could see light at last. He answered him in Greek, speaking very loudly.

"I will put the illustrious Pkauchios to a test, as a man throws dice to solve a difficult decision. For I think that in such ways the gods are willing to indicate a proper course to us in our perplexity. If he shall grant me the first favor that I ask and faithfully perform it, then I will let him guide me in this matter. But if he shall quibble with me or refuse or, having promised, fail to do what I shall ask, then no. So, let the gods decide!"

HE MADE a gesture as of throwing dice and turned his back to the window, striding the length of the room with measured steps. He had paced the room three times before he saw Pkauchios standing in the doorway, not the doorway near the throne—the other one.

"I welcome you. Peace to you!" said Pkauchios in Greek. "But I foresee that you must snatch peace from the fangs of war!"

"I thank you for your courtesy," Tros answered, bowing.

He did not bow so deeply that his eyes left Pkauchios' face. He hated the man instantly, and hid the hatred under a mask of eager curiosity.

The magician's dark eyes seemed to be trying to read into his very soul, but Tros knew nothing better than that men of genuine spiritual power are careful never to display the outward signs of it and, above all, never to distress strangers with a penetrating stare. The astrologer's robes and the air of superhuman wisdom were convincing, but not of what Pkauchios intended. The Egyptian spoke again pleasantly, with the air of a wiseman condescending:

"I regret I should have kept you waiting, but I observed the flight of birds, from which much may be foretold by those who understand natural symbology. Why do you come to Gades?"

"You are a magician. You should know why I came," Tros answered.

"And indeed I do know. But I see there is a question in your mind," said Pkauchios.

The pupils of the Egyptian's eyes contracted into bright dots. He made a gesture with his hand before his eyes, brushing away veils of immaterial obscurity.

"Doubt? Or desire? One blended with the other, or so it seems. You have a request to make," he went on. "Speak then, while the vision holds me."

He had not moved. He was standing before the curtains like a dignified attendant at the door of mystery.

"There is a slave," said Tros, "who at great risk brought me information. Speak for me to Balbus that he manumit that slave."

"I will," said Pkauchios, without a second's hesitation. "Whose is the slave?"

"Do you or do you not see that the slave should be set free?" Tros countered.

"I see it is just and can be accomplished. But how shall I urge Balbus unless I know the slave's name and his master's?" Pkauchios answered.

"Speak to him thus—" said Tros. "'It would be well if you should order manumitted whichever slave Tros the Samothracian indicates.'"

"It shall be done," said Pkauchios. But he did not quite retain his self-command. There was a twitching of the face muscles, a discernible effort to conceal chagrin.

Tros did not dare to glance at Simon or at Orwic. He was so sure now that the Egyptian had been spying through an eye-hole in the wall behind the throne, that he would have burst out laughing if he had not bowed again and backed away, biting his lower lip until the blood came. That gave him an excuse to break the tension.

"Blood?" he exclaimed, frowning, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and examining it.

"Aye, blood!" said Pkauchios in a hollow voice and walked in front of him to near where Orwic sat.

By the window he turned and, after greeting Simon with a stare and a gesture of condescension, spoke again:

"Blood! Mars with Saturn in conjunction! And a red ship on the morning tide! The blood must flow in rivers-full! But whose?"

He stared at Simon balefully until the Jew in nervous resentment gaped at him and tried to force himself to speak, but failed because the asthma gripped his throat.

"I know your danger!" Pkauchios remarked. "There are weapons in your warehouse—"

"Yours!" Simon interrupted, pointing a fat finger at him. "You—"

The Egyptian cut him short.

"Jew! Have a care! You come to me for help, not for recrimination. At a word from me you would be tortured with the rack and charcoal. Rob not opportunity!"

Tros kept staring through the window at his great ship in the distance. She summoned to the surface all the mysticism in him and he muttered lines from Homer as he gazed. The blind poet who once dwelt on rocky Chios, when he stamped on to the racial memory that character of crafty, bold Odysseus, hymned a hero after Tros' own heart. The Egyptian seemed to read the tenor of his thought.

"Tros of Samothrace," he said, turning his back on Simon, "you have impelled yourself into a vortex of events. You—your ship—your friends—your crew—are all in danger. Win or lose all! Forward lies the only road to safety!"

"It appears you have a plan," said Tros. "Unfold it."

The Egyptian nodded.

"We are few who can interpret destiny, but to us is always given means with which to guide events. I have awaited you these many days."

"I am here," said Tros.

"And you have men with you! You will sup tonight with Balbus; that I know, for I advised him to invite you. Listen. There is a quarry close to Balbus' house where you can hide your men. There is a wall between the quarry and the house, where no guards are ever posted. It is easy to scale that wall from the side of the quarry. It is simple to bring unarmed slaves into the city. It is easy to bribe Balearic slingers to see and to say nothing after darkness has set in. There are weapons in Simon's warehouse. There is only a small guard at Balbus' house at night—not more than twenty or thirty men. You have, I think, two hundred and fifty men who could hide in the quarry and at a signal overwhelm the guard."

Simon was growing restless, trying to catch Tros' eye and warn him against being caught in any such network of intrigue, but Tros trod on his foot to signal to him to keep still. Orwic, who knew no Greek, was walking about the room examining strange ornaments. The Egyptian after a pause continued:

"Balbus, who envies Cæsar, has sent emissaries into Gaul to murder him! Hourly he awaits the news of Cæsar's death! The stars, whose symbolism never lies, inform me that Cæsar is already dead, and the news will reach Gades tonight! But if Balbus lives, he will blame others for the murdering of Cæsar. Therefore, Balbus shall die, too!"

Tros nodded. Not a gesture, not a line of his face suggested that he knew it was the Egyptian himself had sent slaves to murder Cæsar. His lion's eyes were glowing with what might have been enthusiasm. He stood, hands clenched behind him, making no audible comment.

"It is expedient that Balbus dies tonight in any case," said Pkauchios. "He has received word of a conspiracy against him. Sooner or later a witness in the agony of torture will reveal names. The conspirators are fearful; they lack leadership. But if Balbus were slain, the whole city would rise in rebellion! I have a plan that at the proper moment will draw away the legionaries from the camp outside the city."

He paused, and then dramatically raised his voice:

"By morning messengers will have gone forth summoning all Spain to rise. Good leadership and I, Pkauchios, will guide you, Tros of Samothrace. Good, ruthless leadership, and Spain and Gaul will throw off Roman rule!"

Tros grinned. He had made his mind up, which is a difficult thing to do in the teeth of an expert in personal magnetism. He succeeded in convincing even Simon.

"Well and good," he said, folding his arms. "But I will not kill Balbus until he has set that slave free and has repaid Simon what he owes."

"Those two preliminaries granted?" said the Egyptian.

He seemed quite sure that Tros had committed himself.

"Orwic shall smuggle my men into the city if you show him how," said Tros, "and at the proper signal. But who shall give the signal?" he asked.

He was wary of definite lying. Any promises he made he liked to keep. But he had no objection to the Egyptian's deceiving himself.

"I will give the signal," Pkauchios answered. "Let brazen trumpets peal the death of Balbus! Six trumpets shall clamor a fanfare on the porch. Then plunge your dagger in!"

"Where will you be?" Tros asked him.

"At the banquet. Where else? Behold me. I rise from the banqueting couch. I stand thus to announce an augury. My servant, squatting by the door, will watch me, and when I raise my right hand thus, he will pass out to the porch where the trumpeters will be waiting who are to make music for the midnight dance Chloe has invented. The fanfare resounds. Your men come swarming over the quarry wall. Your dagger does its work—and—and you may help yourself, if you wish, from Balbus' treasury!"

Tros acted so immensely pleased that Orwic came and wondered at him. Simon hove himself off the couch at last and clutched Tros' arm.

"Tros, Tros!" he gasped. "Don't do this dog's work! Don't! You will ruin all of us!"

Scowling, Pkauchios opened his thin lips to rebuke and threaten the Jew, but checked himself as he saw the expression on Tros' face. Tros took Simon by the arms, driving his fingers into the fat biceps, the only signal that he dared give that his words need not be taken at face value.

"Simon!" he exclaimed in a voice of stern reproach. "You owe me money! Yet you dare to try to keep me from this golden opportunity? Fie on you, Simon!"

Simon wrung his hands. Tros turned to Orwic.

"Go you to the ship," he said. "Our friend here, the Egyptian, will provide you a guide to the beach. Talk with Jaun Aksue. Tell him all the Eskualdenak shall come ashore tonight under your leadership, and do a little business of mine before I turn them loose to amuse themselves. Say they shall be well paid. Make them understand they must be sober until midnight. I will come to the ship later and explain the details of the plan. Go swiftly."

CHAPTER XII

THE COMMITTEE OF NINETEEN

IT APPROACHED high noon. Simon had left an hour ago in a sort of wet-hen flutter of indignant misery, with a threat from the Egyptian in his ear:

"Jew! Balbus owes you money. He would welcome excuse to proscribe you and seize your property! One word from me—"

Thereafter Pkauchios held Tros in conversation, seeking to make sure of him, promising him riches should the night's attempt succeed and more than riches, "power, which is the rightful perquisite of honest men!" Too shrewd to threaten, he nevertheless dropped hints of what might happen if Tros should fail him.

"You are not the first. Man after man I have tested. One fool tried to betray me, and was crucified. My word with Balbus outweighed his! Another thought he could do without me, after I had made all ready for him. Those he would have led to insurrection burned his house and threw him back into the flames as he ran forth in his night clothes. No, no, you are not the first!"

"I am the last!" Tros answered grimly, and Pkauchios' dark eyes took on a look of satisfaction.

Then Tros tried to find out where Chloe was without arousing Pkauchios' suspicion.

"Who was that woman," he asked, "who came out to my ship?"

"Oh, a mischievous Greek slave. A very clever dancer who will perform to-night for Balbus."

"Trustworthy?" Tros suggested.

"No Gades dancing girls are trustworthy. Theirs is a very religion of intrigue."

"Ergastulum?"^[1] Tros suggested.

"No. She sleeps to be ready for tonight."

However, there was plainly a mask over Pkauchios' thought. Tros was quite sure he was lying, equally sure he was worried. All sorts of fears presented themselves that Tros was hard put to it to keep from showing on his face. Chloe might have disappeared, turned traitress. He decided he was a fool to have left Horatius Verres at large on the ship. If Chloe loved that spy of Cæsar's—or was he Balbus' spy, pretending to be Cæsar's—then she would quite likely do whatever Verres told her and perhaps betray every one, Pkauchios included.

Yet he decided not to return to the ship until he had spoken alone with Simon. The old Jew was possibly the weakest link in the intrigue. In terror he might run to Balbus and betray the whole plot. Before all else he must reassure Simon.

Pkauchios ordered out the litter with the eunuch in attendance and the eight white-liveried slaves. Tros saw him whisper to the eunuch, but pretended not to see. He had contrived to look entirely confident when the Egyptian walked with him to the garden gate.

"After sunset," said Pkauchios, "there will go a messenger to the gate guards who will bid them admit two hundred and fifty slaves on the excuse that they are needed as torch-bearers for the midnight pageant in Balbus' garden. They will be shown a writing to that effect which the fools will think is genuine. Another messenger will go to the Balearic guards who line the beach. And he will take money with him, a considerable bribe. At sunset a great barge will be rowed alongside your ship. Put your men into that. They shall be led to Simon's warehouse where they may help themselves to weapons. And the same guide will lead them afterward to the quarry outside Balbus' garden. He will lead them by roundabout ways so as not to attract attention."

Tros rolled into the litter and allowed the eunuch to lead as if his first objective were the ship. But he had no intention of being spied on by that eunuch, and when the litter halted at a narrow passage in the street to let three laden mules go by he rolled out of it again.

"Wait for me by the city gate," he commanded.

The eunuch demurred, tried persuasion, offered to carry him anywhere, and at last grew impudent.

"You insult my master's hospitality!"

A crowd began to gather, marveling at Tros' purple cloak and at the broad gold band across his forehead. The eunuch tried to drive them away, fussily indignant, prodding with his staff at those who seemed least likely to retaliate, but the crowd increased. Tros felt a tug at his cloak and, glancing swiftly, caught his breath. He saw Conops slip out of the crowd and go sauntering along the street! His red cap was at a reckless angle and his bandy legs suggested the idle, erratic, goalless meandering of a sailor in a half-familiar port.

Tros climbed back into the litter promptly as the best means of escaping from the crowd. Conops, faithful little rascal, would never have left the ship without good reason. Clearly he expected to be followed. The eunuch contrived to clear the way and the crowd dispersed about its business, which was mainly to sit in doorway shadows. As the litter began to overtake Conops he increased his pace until, where five streets met, he turned up an alley and turned about to watch. He made no signal.

Making sure that Conops was not following the litter downhill toward the city gate, Tros vaulted to the ground and had made his way to the alley mouth before the eunuch, walking ahead rapidly to clear the way, realized what was happening.

"This way, master—swiftly!"

Conops opened a door ten paces down the alley and Tros followed through it. The door slammed behind him and in stifling gloom he was greeted by a laugh he thought he recognized. It was nearly a minute before definite objects began to evolve out of the shadows. He could hear a rasping cough that seemed familiar, and there were other noises that suggested the presence of armed men, but the sunlight had been dazzling on the whitewashed walls and there were no open windows in the place in which he found himself. It took time for eyesight to readjust itself. The first shape to evolve out of the darkness was a stair-head, leading downward; then, down the stairs a leather curtain of the rich old-golden hue peculiar to Spain. Above the curtain, on a panel of the wall the stairway pierced, was a painted picture of a bull's head; and there was something strange about its eyes. After a moment's stare Tros decided there were human eyes watching him through slits in the painted ones. There was a murmur of voices from behind the curtain and, every moment or two, that sound of labored breathing and a cough that resembled Simon's.

CONOPS was in no haste to explain. He slunk behind Tros in the darkness, and a man stepped between them in response to a thundering on the street door. He opened a peep-hole and spoke through it to Pkauchios' eunuch; Tros could see him clearly as the light through the hole shone on his face—a lean, intelligent, distinguished looking man. He assured the eunuch in good Greek he was mistaken. None had entered the house recently. Perhaps the next house or the next or the one over the way. Finally, he advised the eunuch to wait patiently.

"People who vanish usually reappear unless the guards have seized them. Private business or perhaps a woman, who knows? At any rate, I will trouble you not to disturb a peaceful household. Go away!"

He closed the peep-hole and in the darkness Tros could sense rather than see that he bowed with peculiar dignity.

"Do me the favor to come this way," he murmured, using the Roman language in as gentle a voice as Tros had ever heard.

He led down the dark stairs as if they were not quite familiar to him.

Tros groped for Conops, seized him by the neck and swung him face to face.

"Well?" he demanded.

Conops answered in a hurried whisper:

"That fellow Horatius Verres came out of the hold and said 'if you value your master's freedom, follow me!' Then he jumped overboard and swam. I followed to the beach in a boat. All the way to this place he kept a few paces ahead of me. Then he said 'find your master and bring him here, or he'll be dead by midnight!' I was on my way to Pkauchios' house when—"

"Go ahead of me!" Tros ordered.

He loosed his sword in the scabbard and trod quietly, hoping Conops' heavier step might be mistaken for his own in the event of ambush, so leaving himself free to fight. But the curtain was drawn aside, only to reveal a dim lamp and another curtain. The sound of men's voices increased; there was low laughter and a smell of wine. Beyond the second curtain was a third with figures on it done in blue and white. Some one pulled the third curtain aside and revealed a great square room whose heavy beams were set below the level of the street. The walls were of stone, irregularly dressed. There was a tiled floor covered with goat-hair matting, and a small table near one end of the room, at which a man sat with his back to a closed door. Around the other walls were benches occupied by men in Roman and Greek costume, although none of them apparently were Romans and by no means all were Greeks. There were two Jews, for instance, of whom one was Simon. All except Simon rose as Tros entered. Simon seemed exhausted, and was sweating freely from the heat of the bronze illuminating lamps.

"The noble Tros of Samothrace!" said the man with the gentle voice who had led the way downstairs.

Tros glared around him, splendid in his purple cloak against the golden leather curtain, and the man at the table bowed. Simon coughed and made movements with his hands, suggesting helplessness. He who had led the way downstairs produced a chair made of wood and whaleskin and with the air of a courtier offered it to Tros to sit on, but he pretended not to notice it.

"Illustrious Tros of Samothrace, we invite you to be seated," said the man at the table.

He looked almost like Balbus, except that his face was harder and not wearied from debauch of the emotions. He had humor in his dark eyes, and every gesture, every curve of him suggested confidence and good breeding.

Tros noticed that Horatius Verres was seated in the darkest corner of the room, that Conops' knife-blade was a good two inches out of the sheath, that his own sword was at the proper angle to be drawn instantly, and that the men nearest to him looked neither murderous nor capable of preventing his escape past the curtain. Then he accepted the proffered chair.

"Illustrious Tros of Samothrace," said the man at the table, "we have learned that you win lend your dagger to the cause of Gades."

"Who are you?" Tros retorted bluntly.

"We are a committee of public safety, self-appointed and here gathered, unknown to our Roman rulers for the purpose of conspiracy in the name of freedom," he at the table answered. "My own name is Quintillian."

Tros heard a noise behind the curtain, was aware of armed men on the stairs. By the half smile on the chairman's face he realized he was in a trap from which there was no chance of escape without a miracle of swordsmanship or else a shift of luck. He stared very hard at Simon, who seemed to avoid his gaze.

"We wish to assure ourselves," said the man who had called himself Quintillian, "that we have not been misinformed."

"There are two who might have told you," Tros answered. "One is Simon, the other Chloe, a Greek slave. I will say nothing unless you tell me which of them betrayed me."

Quintillian smiled. His dark, amused eyes glanced around the room, resting at last on Simon's face.

"Your friend Simon," he said, "has refused to answer questions. We are pleased that your arrival on the scene may save him from that application to his person of inducements to speak, which we had in contemplation."

Tros blew a sigh out of his lungs, half of admiration for his old friend Simon, half of contempt for himself for having trusted Chloe. Then he glared at Horatius Verres over in the corner.

"How came I to trust you?" he wondered aloud.

"I don't know," the Roman answered, smiling. "I myself marveled at it. I am greatly in your debt, illustrious Tros. You gave me opportunity to hold a long conversation with Herod ben Mordecai down in the dark, in the hold of your ship. And you left me free to watch for signals from the shore. You knew that Chloe loves me. I am sure you are much too wise to suppose that a woman in love would neglect to signal to her lover." The voice was mocking, confident, cynical.

TROS stood up and shook himself as if about to speak, staring straight at the man at the table to conceal his intention of charging the stairs and fighting his way to the street. Up anchor and away from Gades—there was nothing else to do! The only thing that made him hesitate was wondering how to rescue Simon.

"You are in no danger at present. Be seated," said Quintillian courteously. "We wish to hear from your lips confirmation of a plot that interests us deeply. We also are conspirators."

"I will be silent," Tros answered, closing his mouth grimly.

He did not sit down, but laid his left hand on the chair-back, intending to use the chair as a shield when he judged the moment ripe for fighting his way to the street.

"Ah, but that is only because you have not understood us properly," said Quintillian. "Trouble yourself to observe that we are not warlike men, nor even armed with anything but daggers. We are students of philosophy, of music, of the sacred sciences. Our purpose is, that Gades shall become a center of the arts, a city dedicated to the Muses. We have heard that Pkauchios the Egyptian plans an uprising which you will lead by slaying Balbus, for whom none of us has any particular admiration. In the interests of Gades we propose to discover in what way we can be of assistance to you."

Tros let a laugh explode in one gruff bark of irony.

"I am no friend of Balbus. I am the enemy of Cæsar and of Rome," he answered. "But if I were so far to forget my manhood as to cut a throat like a common murderer, it would be the throat of Pkauchios! You fools!"

"Not so foolish, possibly, as weak!" Quintillian answered with a suave smile. "But as the poet Homer says, 'The strength even of weak men when united avails much!'"

The mention of the poet Homer mollified Tros instantly. He began to feel a sort of friendly condescension. These were harmless, poet-loving people after all. They might be saved from indiscretion.

"Fools, I said! But I, too, have been foolish. I thought to pluck my own advantage from the whirlpool of this city's frenzy! Murder never overthrew a tyranny. Ye are like dogs who bite the stick that whips them instead of fighting foot and fang against the tyranny itself! Slay Balbus, and a tyrant ten times worse will take advantage of the crime to chain a new yoke on your necks!"

There was a murmur of surprize. Quintillian raised his eyebrows and, leaning both elbows on the table, answered—

"But we know for a fact you have agreed with Pkauchios to stab Balbus in his house at the supper—tonight."

"Chloe told you. Well, I, too, was fool enough to trust her, but not altogether," Tros said, grimly. "I would not trust Pkauchios if I had him tied and gagged! My plan was nothing but to rescue Balbus, to protect him, and so win his gratitude! I seek a favor from him. Bah! Do you think I would lend my men for a purpose that would bring disaster on a city against which I have no grudge, and myself for an act of cowardice? Phaugh! Murder your own despots, if you will, but count me out of it! Look you—"

He drew his sword and shook the cloak back from his shoulder. Behind him he heard the click of Conops' knife emerging from the sheath.

"I go!" He took a stride toward the door, but as none moved to prevent him he paused and faced Quintillian again. He decided to test them to the utmost. If he had to fight his way out he proposed to know it. "Simon may come if he will. I have two words of advice for you: Kill me if you can before I gut your men who guard the stairs, because I go to Balbus! I will warn him, for the sake of Gades! Fools! If you must murder some one, make it Pkauchios! If that dark trickster has his way, all Spain and Gaul will run blood! You have let the Romans in and now you must endure the Romans! Make no worse evil for yourselves than is imposed already!"

He beckoned to Simon, but Quintillian rose and bowed with such dignity and obvious good will that Tros paused again.

"Illustrious Tros," Quintillian said, "if you could favor us with any sort of guarantee that those are your genuine sentiments, we would even let you go to Balbus! It is just Balbus' death that we hope to prevent!"

Smiling, his dark eyes alight with amusement and with something strong and generous behind that, he struck the table sharply with the flat of his hand. There was a sudden sound behind Tros' back; the inner curtain had been drawn; in the opening stood two men armed with javelins, and there was a third behind them with a bow and arrows.

"You may live and we will turn you loose if you will convince us," remarked Quintillian. "Time presses. Won't you do us the favor to resume your seat?"

But Tros refused to sit.

"It is you who must convince me!" he retorted.

With his cloak, his sword, the whaleskin chair and Conops to create diversions, he knew himself able to defeat javelins and bow and arrow, but he was interested to discover whether there were any more armed men in hiding. Quintillian, however, gave him no enlightenment on that point beyond continuing to smile with utmost confidence.

"You see," he said, "none of us can go to Balbus, who is altogether too suspicious. He would have us crucified for knowing anything about conspiracies. Yet we have suffered so much in pocket and peace and dignity from former abortive risings that we ventured to take liberties with you in order to nip this one in the bud, or rather, to prevent its budding. Balbus and his troops would nip!"

"Then his troops aren't mutinous?" Tros asked.

Quintillian smiled.

"They are always mutinous. Just now they talk of marching to join Cæsar in Gaul. But a chance to loot the city would restore them to sweet reasonableness, as Balbus perfectly understands. Illustrious Tros, we might not exercise ourselves if we liked Pkauchios or if we thought the city were united. We, believe ourselves sufficiently intelligent to take advantage of the disaffection in the Roman camp. The moment might be ripe for insurrection but for one important fact: We have learned that Julius Cæsar is coming!"

He glanced at Horatius Verres, who smiled at Tros and nodded with the same air of amused confidence that he had displayed from the beginning.

"Speak to him," said Quintillian. So Horatius Verres stood up, arms folded, and in a very pleasant voice explained how he came to be there.

"Illustrious Tros," he said, "I am in worse predicament than you, I being Cæsar's man, and you your own. I obey Cæsar, because I love him. While I live, I serve him at my own risk, whereas you are free to follow inclination. I discovered a plot to murder Cæsar. It was launched in Gades, and I sent him warning as soon as I knew.

"I received a reply that he will come here. But though he is Cæsar, he cannot be here for several days, whether he come by land or water. I cannot warn Balbus, who is touchy about being spied on and would have my head cut off to keep me from telling Cæsar things I know. But it is not Cæsar's desire that Balbus should meet death, there being virtues of a sort which Balbus imitates that might serve Cæsar's ends to great advantage.

"From Herod, the Jew, in the darkness of the hold of your ship, I learned of these distinguished Gadeans, who call themselves a committee of public safety. So I risked my life by coming to them, and I risked yours equally, by persuading your man Conops to summon you, believing you to be a man who would see humor in" the situation and take the right way out of it."

HE SAT down again.

"May the gods behold your impudence!" said Tros. But he could not help liking the man.

"We know," said Quintillian, "that Pkauchios has ruffians ready to attack Balbus' house at midnight. We also know that he has bribed some of the body-guard, and we suppose he will make some of the others drunk with drugged wine. We imagine he has offered you inducements to bring a few hundred men ashore—"

"You had that from Chloe," said Tros, but Quintillian took no notice of the interruption.

"—to give backbone, as it were, to the mob that might otherwise flinch. And we know there are weapons in Simon's warehouse, some of which we presume are to be supplied to your men. We ourselves might kill Pkauchios, but Balbus has a great regard for him and, strange though it may appear, though public-spirited, we prefer not to be tortured and we object to having our possessions confiscated. Nevertheless, we will not permit Balbus to be slain, and if you are willing to protect him for the sake of Gades—"

He paused and Tros waited, almost breathlessly. In his mind he made a bargain, named the terms of it by which he would abide for good or ill—a final test of these men's honesty.

"We will offer you our silent gratitude," Quintillian went on, "and we will take a pledge from you not to reveal my name or our identity to Balbus."

It was a tactful way of saying they would not murder him if he succeeded and provided he should keep his mouth shut. Tros laughed.

"If you had offered me a price," he said, "I would have spat my scorn."

"As it is, are you willing to betray Pkauchios to Balbus?" Quintillian asked. "You could do it without the risk that any of us would run."

Tros snorted.

"No!"

Quintillian smiled with a peculiar, alert, attractive wrinkling of his face and glanced around the room. Men nodded to him, one by one.

"Had you agreed to betray Pkauchios, we would have known you would betray us!" he said. "Illustrious Tros, what help can we afford you? We are nineteen men."

"See that Cæsar doesn't catch me when he comes!" Tros announced. "Keep me informed of the news of his movements." He looked hard at Horatius Verres. "You," he said, "will you keep me informed? Your Cæsar is my enemy, but I befriended you."

"I know no more than I have told you," Verres answered.

Once again Tros hesitated. Impulse, sense of danger urged him to escape while it was possible. It would be easy to make these men believe he would go forward with the plan, then to return to the ship ostensibly to instruct his own men for the night's adventure. Orwic was on board. He could sail away and leave Gades to stew in its own intrigues.

But obstinacy urged the other way. He hated to withdraw from anything he had set his hand to before the goal was reached. And again he remembered the Lord Druid's admonition, "Out of the midst of danger thou shalt snatch the keys of safety!"

While he hesitated, the door behind Quintillian opened. He recognized the hand before the woman came through, knew it was Chloe without looking at her, looked, and knew she held the keys of the whole situation. There was triumph in her eyes, although she drooped them modestly and stood beside Quintillian's table with hands clasped in an attitude of reverence for the august assembly.

"Speak!" Quintillian commanded, and she looked at Tros, her eyes alight with impudence.

"Lord Tros," she said, "would you have come here of your own accord? Would you have come, had I invited you? Would you not have sailed away, if you had known these noblemen would kill you rather than permit you to kill Balbus? And do you think I propose to lose those pearls you promised me, or my freedom?"

She nodded and smiled.

"Do you think I intend to be tortured?"

There was a long pause, during which everybody in the room, Quintillian included, looked uncomfortable. Then she answered the thought that was making Tros' amber eyes look puzzled:

"These noblemen don't kill me because they know there are others who know where I am, who would go straight to Balbus and name names. It would deeply interest Balbus to learn of a committee of nineteen who propose to direct the destiny of Gades unbeknown to him! It was not I who told those nobles of your plot with Pkauchios. There is one of this committee—illustrious Quintillian, shall I name him?"

Quintillian shook his head.

"There is one in this room who pretends to be Pkauchios' friend and whom Pkauchios trusts. It was he who told. To save your life I signalled to the ship, and when Horatius Verres hurried through the streets I whispered to him so that he knew where to come."

"Who told him to persuade Conops to come?" Tros demanded, not more than half believing her. But Verres himself answered that question:

"Cæsar does not select agents who are wholly without wits," he remarked in his amused voice. "Chloe signalled, which she would not have done if all went well. Suspecting that you might be causing her trouble I proposed to myself to bring a hostage with me, whose danger might bring you to reason. I had observed that you value your man Conops. So I hinted to him that your life was in danger, and of course he followed me, being a good faithful dog. Chloe reached this place ahead of us, and when she whispered to me again through the hole in the door, I sent Conops to find you. Is the mystery explained?"

"You are a very shrewd man," Tros answered. "But why did you tell these noblemen that Cæsar is on the way?"

"To confirm them in their resolution not to let Balbus be slain. It might not suit Cæsar to find Gades in rebellion. You see, this is not his province and it is not certain what the troops would do. If he should assume command here, it might stir Pompey to go before the Senate and demand Cæsar's indictment and recall to Rome."

All the while Verres was speaking Chloe whispered to Quintillian. Her hand was on his arm and she was urging him. Suddenly Quintillian sat upright and rapped with his hand on the table.

"Time presses," he said. "Comrades, we must come to a decision. Shall we trust the illustrious Tros and take a pledge from him?"

There was a murmur of assent.

"A pledge?" said Tros. "From me?"

"Why, yes!" said Chloe. "We think you are an honorable man, but at a word from you to Balbus we might all be crucified!"

The men in the doorway behind Tros rattled their weapons.

"We all risk our lives if we give you liberty," Quintillian remarked. "You are a stranger to us."

Tros began to turn over in his mind what pledge he could deposit with them. There was no alternative except to fight his way out to the street, and he suspected now that there were many more than three men on the stairs. Quintillian enlightened him:

"You would have seven men to fight, besides ourselves. But why fight? Why not leave your faithful follower with us?"

Conops drew breath sharply. Tros turned his head to glance at him.

"Little man," he said, "shall we fight?"

"Nay, they are too many," Conops answered.

For a fraction of a second Conops' face wore the reproachful look of a deserted dog's. But he saw Tros' eyes and recognized the resolution in them. Never, in all their long experience together, had Tros looked like that at him and failed.

"You are not such a fool as you look!" he sneered, staring straight at Quintillian. "My master would lose his own life rather than desert a faithful servant. Harm me if you dare, and see what happens!"

At a sign from Quintillian everybody in the room rose, making a rutching of feet and a squeal of moved benches. Only Tros heard Conops' whisper:

"Now they will trust you! It was I who led you into this trap. Leave me and sail away. The worst they'll do is kill me."

For answer Tros grinned at him, grinned and nodded, clapped him on the back.

CHAPTER XIII

AT SIMON'S HOUSE

TROS watched Conops led away through the door by which Chloe had entered, and then beckoned to Horatius Verres.

"Roman," he said, "you have risked my life for Cæsar's sake. Now the wind shifts. Lean the other way and serve me or, by all the gods, you shall not live to mock my downfall!"

"I serve Cæsar!" Verres answered.

"I also, by the irony of fate!"

Tros took him by the shoulder.

"My father, Perseus, Prince of Samothrace, tortured to his death by Cæsar's executioners, told me with his dying breath that I should live to serve that robber of men's liberties, whose enemy I am! I see I must."

"Serve well!" said Verres. "Cæsar values good will higher than the deed."

"I bear him ill will, but I will not be his murderer," Tros answered. "In fair fight, yes. In treachery I have no willing hand."

"I believe you," said Verres, and nodded.

"Then tell me, when is Cæsar coming?"

"I don't know," Verres answered. "If I did know, I might lie to you. Since I don't know, I tell you the plain truth."

"You know that Pkauchios has prophesied the death of Cæsar. Do you know that he expects the news of Cæsar's death to-night?" Tros asked him.

Verres nodded.

"Do you know by what means he expects the news?"

"By a slave, I suppose. He sent murderers to Gaul. Doubtless he has reckoned up the days, hours, minutes and awaits a messenger."

Tros gripped him again by the shoulder.

"Get you a disguise," he said. "Tonight, near midnight, creep into Balbus' garden and send word to Pkauchios by one of Balbus' slaves that a messenger has come from Gaul who wishes word with him. When Pkauchios comes to you, whisper to him from the darkness, 'Cæsar is dead!' Then Pkauchios will return into the house and make the signal to me to slay Balbus. But instead, when the trumpets sound, my men will rush into the house and protect him against Pkauchios' rabble."

"There will be more than rabble," Verres answered. "Pkauchios has bribed some of the Roman guard. I know that, for I know where some of them have spent the money and I have heard that they boast how they will excuse themselves by saying that Balbus plotted against Rome. I think you will have a hard time to save Balbus' life. Yet if you warn him, he will only suspect you and throw you in prison. Cæsar understands good will. Balbus only understands a fact that he can see with his two eyes, feel with his two hands, bite with his teeth and then turn promptly into an advantage for himself. I think that even should you save his life, he will turn on you afterward."

"I will cross that bridge when the time comes," Tros replied. "Will you whisper that word to Pkauchios?"

"Yes. I can lie to him circumstantially. I know the names of the murderers he sent to Gaul."

Tros wasted no more time on him, knew he must trust him whether he wished to or not, dismissed him with a gesture, beckoned Chloe. She laughed in his face confidently yet not without wistfulness.

"Now we are all committed," she said, "and all depends on you! We die unless you win for us all tonight!"

It was her action that restored Tros' trust in her. She slipped a phial into his hand, a tiny thing not bigger than a joint of her own finger.

"Three drops from that are enough," she remarked. "It is swifter than crucifixion or being butchered at the games!"

"I go to Simon's house," Tros answered, pocketing the phial. He understood enough of the Samothracian teachings to despise the thought of suicide, but he did not propose to chill her friendliness by refusing such proof of it. "Go you to Pkauchios' eunuch. Lie to him as to where I am. Invent your own tale. Bid him look for me at Simon's house. Then go back to your master Pkauchios and tell a likely tale to him."

She nodded and vanished through the same door through which they had taken Conops.

"Simon, old friend, we squander time like men asleep!" said Tros. "Where waits your litter? Will it hold the two of us?"

Simon rose to his feet, but he was numb, dumb, stupid with the fear that made him tremble and contracted all the muscles of his throat until his breath came like the rasping of a saw-mill. He gestured helplessly, but no words passed his lips, though he tried as he leaned on Tros' shoulder. Quintillian approached to reassure them both:

"We nineteen and the few we keep in our employ are not ingrates," he said. "Balbus tortured one of our people all day yesterday. He betrayed no one. We will protect you in all ways possible."

Quintillian led Tros and Simon out by tunnels and devious passages to a walled yard where Simon's litter waited; there he told off four men to follow the litter secretly as far as Simon's house, which they approached by a back street so as not to be seen by Pkauchios' eunuch.

It was an almost typically eastern house—all squalor on the outside, with windowless walls and doors a foot thick, fit to be defended against anything less than Roman battering-rams. The plaster on the walls was peeling off; there was no paint, nothing except size to offset the appearance of mean shabbiness. But within was splendor.

The door in the wall of the back street opened on a tiled court, with a fountain and exotic trees in carved stone Grecian pots. A Jewish major domo marshaled half a dozen slaves, who set chairs and a table beneath potted palms. More slaves brought cooling drinks and light refreshment. Simon in the guise of host began to throw off some of the paralysis of fear; in his own house he was master and the evidence of wealth around him counteracted the terror of debt and the anguish of unsecured loans, made to powerful, slow-paying creditors.

"Write two bills on Balbus' treasury," said Tros, "one for two hundred thousand sesterces, the other for whatever balance Balbus owes you."

Simon wrote, his hand trembling and, sighing, gave the bills to Tros.

"Tros, Tros," he said, "I rue the day l ever came to Gades! It was bad enough in Alexandria, where Ptolemy the Piper borrowed from the Romans and taxed us Alexandrians to death to pay the interest. But Ptolemy was human and knew men must live. We all lived well in Alexandria. Yey! These Balbuses and Cæsars think of nothing but themselves and their ambition!"

TROS clapped him on the back, his mind on pearls he had on board the ship. There was market for enough of them in Gades to relieve all Simon's difficulties. Yet the Druids had not given them to him to provide relief for slave-trading Jews. It was bad enough to have to give a dozen of them to a dancing girl. Simon, his mind groping for new hope, detected something masked under Tros' air of reckless reassurance.

"Tros," he said, "haven't you a cargo on your ship, some tin or something with which we two could turn a profit? Better that than running risks with Balbus! Stchnyarrh! That Roman would kill us both for having talked with the committee of nineteen rather than pay those orders on his treasury! Any excuse will serve him! Spies may have seen us. Safer to go to him straight away, denounce Pkauchios and beg a trading-favor from him as reward! That's it! That's it! Beg leave to take a ship-load of my slaves to Ostia! Then I can draw money against them here in Gades—"

Tros interrupted with another shoulder slap. That panic mood of Simon's had to be cured at all costs, Druids or no Druids. But he was cautious.

"Simon, I have assets in reserve. If I should fail tonight to coax your money out of Balbus for you, I will loan you enough to tide you over."

"Ah! But that Roman wolf is crafty! What if Balbus learns of this conspiracy too soon and sets a trap for you, accuses you of a plot to murder him and—"

Tros touched his sword-hilt.

"Simon, I have two hundred and fifty fighting men. It will be a sorry pass if I can't cut my way to the beach."

"And me? What of me?"

"I will take you with me. Since you are so fearful, hide yourself tonight on my ship—"

"No," said Simon, "no! Those beach guards would arrest me!"

"Very well then, hide by the city gate. Watch the street from an upper window. Keep two or three men near you whom you can trust. Then, if you see anything of Roman soldiers entering the city after dark, you can send me warning—your messenger can pretend he brings me news about the safety of my ship. Balbus' servants may admit him, but if not, they will at least announce a messenger and I will understand. If it comes to a fight, Simon, I will pick you up by the city gate and carry you away with me. But I hold a hostage on my ship—one Gains Suetonius. Balbus will search all Gades until he finds Conops to exchange against Gains Suetonius."

"O-o-o-hey! But my household goods!" groaned Simon. "My daughters and my daughters' children!"

He put his head between his hands and leaned his elbows on the table. Tros stared at him, scratching the back of his head, wondering what argument to use next. He did not dare to leave the man in that state of panic, nor did he dare to threaten him. Fear is no antidote for fear. Somehow he must make him hope and give him courage.

"Simon," he said suddenly, "it is not too late for me to turn back. I will go to that committee of nineteen, tell them I have thought better of the risk and reclaim Conops. They will return him to me if I promise to leave Gades straight away!"

Simon sat up and for a moment stared at him with frightened eyes.

"You mean—you mean—?"

"I will sail away. I will forgive you what you owe me. I will let Gades rot in its own conspiracies."

"Tros! Tros! You can't! You promised! You can't back out of it, now you have gone this far!" Simon clutched his wrist, and Tros gave him time to feel the full force of a new emotion, staring at him coldly, looking resolute in his determination to have no more to do with Gades and its dancing-girl conspiracies. "Tros! I am an old man, you a young one! We are friends, your father was my friend. You—Tros!"

Tros shook his hand off.

"Farewell, Simon!"

"Tros! You will leave me to be crucified?"

"You have frightened me with your fears and your forebodings," Tros answered. "No man can succeed with such a lack of confidence as yours to make the skin creep up his back."

Simon staggered to his feet and, almost tottering, took hold of Tros by either arm.

"You—are you your father's son? You turn back? You?" His hoarse breath came in snores. "You leave us all at Chloe's mercy? Tros, do you know what it means to be at the mercy of a dancing girl of Gades? She knows everything. She will betray us all to save her own skin. Tros, if you leave us in the lurch now, may God—"

Tros drew Chloe's phial out of the pocket in his cloak. He offered it to Simon.

"Three drops," he remarked.

"Stchnrarrh! You! To that, what would your father have said? Tros, I will sooner endure the torture!"

Tros poised the phial in his hand.

"Simon, is it yes or no? Do we burn our bridge and see this matter through to a conclusion, or—"

He offered the phial again on his open palm. Simon took it, held it in his clenched fist, set his teeth—then suddenly dashed the phial to the tiles and smashed it into fragments. A cat came and sniffed at the liquid.

"Then we are agreed? You will be brave? You will see this through?" Tros asked.

His eye was on the cat; he was beginning to feel nearly sure of Simon.

"Go!" said Simon hoarsely. "Yes. I see this through. God give you wisdom, skill, cunning, and make Balbus blind! May God protect us all."

"Amen!" said Tros.

He was watching the cat. It had lapped up nearly all the poison and seemed none the worse for it.

"Watch Chloe!" Simon urged. "She is as fickle—as fickle as quicksilver! She will betray you for the very sake of cleverness at the last second if she can see a way of doing it!"

Tros nodded. The cat had selected a sunny, warm place in a palm pot and was licking its fur contentedly.

"She will play on your emotions, she will win your confidence, she will put herself into your power, but remember, she loves nothing except slavery! Her wits are sharp. She loves to be outwitted! She is clever enough to govern Gades by whispering to Pkauchios and Balbus. And with her whole soul she craves to be governed by some one cleverer than herself! Watch her, Tros!"

TROS watched the cat, which was watching a bird, its tail twitching with the inborn instinct of a destroyer. He kicked the fragments of the phial.

"Better have those gathered, Simon! Now I go marshal my men for tonight. I have a golden bugle that the Britons gave me, and if anything goes wrong at Balbus' supper I will wind a blast on it to summon Orwic and my men. So be waiting by the city gate with your daughters and your daughters* children if you wish, in case that I have to fight my way out of Balbus' clutches."

"Have you only that Briton and those Eskualdenak?" asked Simon.

"Aye," Tros answered. "I must leave my Northmen on the ship, and to man the long-boat and the barge."

"Take care! Take care!" urged Simon. "Chloe will turn that Briton and your Eskualdenak against vou if she sees advantage in it!"

"She will have shot her bolt and earned her pay," Tros answered, "if she has persuaded Pkauchios that I went from his house straight to yours. I will see that the eunuch has no chance to carry tales. Those Balearic slingers on the beach shall guard him and the litter bearers until I need them again to carry me to Balbus' house. Now, swiftly, write me out an order for the manumission of a slave and leave a space blank for the slave's name and plenty of room at the bottom for Balbus' seal and signature."

CHAPTER XIV

IN BALBUS' DINING HALL.

IN THE litter belonging to Pkauchios, borne by eight slaves and preceded by a sulkily insolent eunuch, Tros presented himself at the guardhouse by the arched front gate of Balbus' palace one hour after sunset. An officer of the gate guard peered into the litter; the eunuch sneered to him in an audible falsetto whisper about the incredible grossness of barbarians who did not give self-respecting servants time to change their uniform; the legionary clanked a shield against his breastplate as a signal to proceed and Tros was carried up a winding, broad path, in the shadow of imported Italian cypresses, into the glare of lamplight at the marble-columned porch.

There was a veritable herd of well-trained slaves in waiting. Two laid a mat for Tros to tread on as he rolled out of the litter. Two more held his cloak, lest it should in- convenience him as he moved. Two others spread a roll of carpet across the porch into the house, covering the three-headed dog done in colored mosaic and its legend, "Cave Canem." Two splendidly dressed slaves preceded him into the house between two lines of bowing menials and led him into a small room to the left of the hallway where no less than three slaves dusted off his sandals. A household official offered to take charge of his sword, but Tros refused, which caused some snickering among the slaves.

"Tell Balbus, your master, that to me this sword is as his toga to himself. As he receives no guest without his toga, so I enter no man's house without my symbol of independence!"

The official, shrugging his shoulders, smirking, went away to bear that message and Tros sat down on a bench to wait. The slaves seemed amused that he should give himself such airs, yet have no personal attendants of his own; they whispered jibes about him in a language they thought he did not understand; but their snickering among themselves did not prevent Tros from hearing fragments of another conversation.

Close to the bench on which he sat were curtains concealing a doorway into another small room. He heard Chloe's voice distinctly:

"Pkauchios! It is a long time since you have dared to whip me! Come to your senses! I am Chloe, not one of the slaves who knows nothing about you!"

Pkauchios' answer was indistinct, a mere murmur of anger forced through set teeth. Then Chloe again—

"Pkauchios!"

The Egyptian spoke louder with bitter emphasis:

"1 have endured your impudence too long! One disobedience tonight or one mistake, and I will have all your peculium confiscated!^[1] I know where you put it out of my reach! I will demand it of Simon, who can't pay! Simon is one of many who will feel the weight of my hand when tomorrow's sun dawns! So remember, it is your own fault you have had no sleep. Dance and sing so well that Balbus is beside himself, or take the consequences and be whipped, reduced to beggary and sold tomorrow morning!"

The curtains parted and Pkauchios came through, frowning, stately, black-robed, with the asp of Egypt on his brow. He checked an expression of surprize at sight of Tros, but Tros managed to convince him he had heard nothing, by avoiding the obvious mistake of trying to convince him. He merely appeared glad to see him, showed him ostentatious deference for the benefit of the watchful slaves, and in a low voice spoke of the main issue:

"My men came ashore with your man, though the barge was hardly big enough to hold them. They are warned to keep silence in the quarry and to expect a midnight signal. Are your Gades rioters ready?"

Pkauchios nodded.

"They gather. Balbus' guard has been well bribed and will not interfere when a crowd surrounds the wall. When your men lead, mine will follow. Near midnight a small town twenty miles away will be set on fire and the legionaries will be summoned to keep order and to help put out the flames."

"In what mood is Balbus?" Tros asked him.

"He glooms. He has tortured witnesses all day and to no purpose. He even tried to read an augury in the entrails of a woman who was gored by a bull in the street as he came homeward. I have assured him you bring fortune."

"Go to him again then. Tell him I must be allowed to wear my sword and cloak."

"He will never permit it," said Pkauchios, shaking his head.

"Then I go away now!" Tros answered and began to stride toward the door.

His cloak was quite as necessary as the sword because it concealed the golden bugle.

Pkauchios detained him, clutching his arm violently; nervousness robbed him that second of all his hierophantic calm.

"I will try. But ask not too much, or you spoil all."

However, Tros knew how how to deal with Romans, also with Egyptian sorcerers:

"All or nothing! Cloak and sword, or he may sup without me, and you may manage your own murders!" he added in a deep-growled undertone. Then, "Warn him he must make concessions if he hopes for help from me."

The Egyptian's face looked livid with resentment, but he vanished through the curtains and presently returned with Balbus' head steward, a freed man, ruddy from high living and exuding tact as well as dignity. He bowed, offering a wreath of bay leaves.

"Illustrious guest of my noble master," he said, "you are asked to pardon the indiscretion of the officious fool who first received you. He shall be soundly whipped. The noble Balbus naturally makes allowance for the customs of his guests and feels outraged that indignity was offered you. That handsome cloak and sword will ornament the simple style we keep, as truly as your presence will confer an honor. Pray permit me."

He adjusted the chaplet of bay leaves and, again bowing, led the way across a fountained courtyard into Balbus' presence, in a room whose walls were painted with pictures of Roman legendry but done in the Egyptian style by an artist who was evidently trained in Greece. There were six other Romans in the room, two of them military tribunes in crimson tunics. All rose to their feet as Tros entered; all eyed him curiously, each in turn acknowledging his stately bow but not one of them taking the trouble to return Pkauchios' ravenly solemn greeting. Pkauchios stood back against the wall, and Balbus in a rather tired voice broke the awkward silence:

"Welcome! Be whatever gods you worship kind to us all!"

HE PRESENTED Tros to all other guests, explaining nothing, merely saying he was Tros of Samothrace whose ship lay in the harbor. They asked Tros whether he had had a pleasant voyage, and one or two of them marvelled loudly at his good health.

"Most sailors come ashore so sick they can hardly walk," said a tribune, admiring Tros' bulk and stature.

"Aye," said another, "and they all get drunk in Gades, where the fever enters as the fumes of wine depart. When Balbus rebuilds the city he will have enough sailors' bones to mix all the mortar, if he pleases!"

Ushering six slaves in front of him, the steward brought in sharply flavored wine, and Tros noticed that Balbus hardly took time to spill the usual libation to the gods before he drank deep and let the slave refill his goblet. He had drunk three times and appeared to feel the effect of it, for his eye was brighter, when he gestured very condescendingly to Tros to walk beside him and led the way across the fountained court toward the dining hall.

"You shall sit at my right hand," he said, as if offering the greatest favor in his gift.

The room in which the supper had been prepared was too large for the house, too grandiose, a foretaste, possibly, of Balbus' plans for a new city. It was overloaded with extravagant decoration. Two rows of columns divided the room into three equal sections, in the middle one of which was the upper table with the couches set, ends toward it.

At the host's end of the table was a dais hung with curtains, furnished with two gilded couches almost like long thrones. The dais was approached by three steps, and behind it were three more steps leading to a platform beneath a gallery. They had entered by a side-door, facing the kitchen and scullery; the main door of the room opened on that platform under the gallery at the rear of the dais.

Facing the dais, twenty feet beyond the table's lower end, was a wooden stage for the entertainers, with a flight of steps leading to the tiled floor of the room and smaller, narrower stages on either side for the musicians, who greeted the guests with a noisy burst of string-music—a jarring twangle of very skillfully manipulated chords.

"I dread draughts," said Balbus, explaining the crimson and blue curtains that hung from the canopy over the dais. "These stone buildings are cold when the night wind comes in from the sea. It is an ill wind, that sea wind. It moans. It makes me shudder."

He tossed off a great gobletful of red wine that the steward handed to him, then reclined on the couch and signed to Tros to take the other one. The remaining guests were ushered to the places on either side of the table by obsequious attendants, and Pkauchios strode gloomily to what was evidently his usual place at the table's lower end, with his back to the stage. A procession of slaves brought jars of wine, offering each guest his choice of half-a-dozen vintages, and the guests began drinking at once, ignoring Pkauchios, pledging Balbus and one another amid jokes and laughter.

Balbus acknowledged the toasts with a nod, but was silent for a long time, now and then glancing at Tros while he toyed with the food, all sorts of food, fish, eggs, whale-meat, peacock, sow's udders, venison, birds of a dozen varieties. Tros ate sparingly and drank less, but Balbus ate hardly at all, though he drank continually. There was almost no conversation up there on the dais until entertainment commenced on the stage and most of the guests readjusted their position so as to watch more comfortably a performer on a slack-wire, who went through diabolical contortions with a naked knife in either hand.

The contortions seemed to suggest unpleasant memories to Balbus. He drank deep and leaned toward Tros.

"Now," he said, "we can talk."

Tros glanced at the curtains behind the dais, and hinted to Balbus that he was ready to talk secrets. Balbus jerked the curtains apart, revealing the great carved cypress door at the rear of the platform behind them. The door was slightly ajar, but it was fifteen feet or more away from the dais, and there was nobody there except one of Pkauchios' slaves squatting beside a basket.

"What do you do there?" Balbus asked him.

"I wait to summon the midnight dancers."

"Wait outside!" commanded Balbus, and closed the curtains on their noisy rings and rod with an impatient jerk. The wire-walker had vanished from the stage. There were nine girls dancing bawdily to dreamy music in a greenish light amid incense smoke, and the guests were giving full attention to the stage.

"I understand you wish for influence in Rome," said Balbus. "Cæsar has denounced you as a pirate. There is a way open to you to become the friend of all Cæsar's enemies."

"Are you his enemy?" Tros asked, and Balbus pouted, frowning.

"No. But the great Pompeius is my patron. A man in my position falls between two stools if he tries to serve two masters. If Cæsar should trespass into Spain, which is Pompeius' and not Cæsar's province, he would do so at his own risk. My information is that he will be here within a few days."

Tros pretended to think awhile and to drink cup for cup with Balbus, but at the foot of his couch near the corner of the curtains there was a very large Greek vase containing flowers, into which it was not particularly difficult to empty a wine-goblet unobserved.

"If Cæsar died," Tros said at last, "Pompeius would be practically owner of the world. He would reward you."

Balbus nodded and drank deep again.

"Nothing for nothing!" Tros said abruptly. "I have brought with me the documents of which we spoke."

He drew the parchments from the pocket in his cloak.

"Presently, not now," said Balbus, showing irritation. "We will discuss those later. Watch this."

"There is nothing to discuss," Tros answered. "You have said you will sign these. Thereafter—"

But Chloe was on the stage, dancing and singing, and now Balbus had eyes and ears for nothing except her.

"Wonderful!" he muttered. "Wonderful!"

IT WAS her wistfulness that pleased. Beneath the laughter and the daring was a hint of tragedy. She was arrayed in white, a wreath of roses in her hair—a picture of youth, innocence, mirth, modesty. But with an art beyond all fathoming she made it evident that modesty and innocence did not protect her. Not a gesture of indecency, no hint of the vulgarity the other dancers had displayed, marred rhythm, voice or harmony of sound and motion. Saltavit placuit.

But she pleased by being at the mercy of the men who watched, not posing as a victim that had been debauched, which is a blown rose, but as a bud just opening, aware of life, outbreathing from herself the fragrance of its essence, yet not hoping to be spared the pain of being plucked and trampled underfoot.

The words of the song she sang were Latin, but the mood was Greek, the tune a mere street melody imported by the legionaries from the wine-shops in the slums of Rome, cynically mocking its own plaintiveness.

"Sun, trust the night; thy beams shall burn again!
Night, trust the dawn; thy shadow shall return!
Earth, bear thy fruit; thy dust shall drink the rain,
Dewdrops shall moisten thee, though dry winds burn.
Trust! The ripened grape twice sparkles in the wine!
Wind among the sedges, ripples on the shore
Sing to me of triumph in the passing. Lover mine,
Is it only love whose ashes live no more?"

There were tears in Balbus' eyes. He had reached an almost maudlin stage of drunkenness. When Chloe's dance was done and the noisy guests pledged her in refilled goblets of Falernian, he leaned over toward Tros again and murmured:

"I will buy that girl, though she cost me a senator's ransom! That dog of an Egyptian sorcerer shall find himself surprized for once! He may be able to read the skies, but in Gades I am governor!"

Tros laughed, his mind on opportunity.

"For luck's sake, noble Balbus, sign these first and pledge me to your service!"

He thrust the parchments forward.

"What were they, I forget," said Balbus, passing a hand before his tired eyes. "Oh yes, Simon and a manumitted slave. Yes, I will presently be drunk. Yes, I will sign them."

He called for his secretary, who came with pen and ink-pot, kneeling on the dais beside Balbus' couch. The secretary read the documents.

"Are they correct?" asked Balbus.

"Simon's account is correct, and he has charged no interest, although he grants six months' time, but—"

"He may be dead in six months or an outlaw!" Balbus commented. The secretary smiled.

"—but the name of the slave to be manumitted is not written. The master's is—"

Balbus pushed him away; he nearly fell over backward. Chloe was coming down the steps from the stage amid shouts of greeting from the guests. "Dance, Chloe! Dance down here among us!"

Balbus beckoned to her.

"Bring my seal!" he snapped at the secretary. "Get me this business over with!"

Chloe came up to the dais and Balbus seized her around the waist, dragging her down beside him on the couch. To Tros it seemed her wistfulness was due to weariness as much as anything, but Balbus was too far gone in drink to make discrimination of that sort.

"Chloe!" he murmured sentimentally. "Chloe! Divine Chloe! What shall I do for you? That old Egyptian holds you at a price that—"

He kissed her and she let him cling to her lips, hugging her. The secretary came and pinched her leg. She glanced at him.

"Noble Balbus," she said, "documents to sign! Oh, who would be a governor of Gades! La-la!"

She broke away and knelt beside the secretary, exchanging one swift glance with Tros as she rubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. Balbus had crushed her lips against her teeth.

"Swiftly now and be gone with you!" said Balbus, and the secretary put the seal on all three documents, thereafter holding them for Balbus to attach his signature. Having signed, Balbus snatched them and gave them to Tros. Chloe laughed excitedly, in a way that made Balbus stare.

"Your pen," said Tros and the secretary brought it to him.

Tros wrote the name of Chloe in the space provided and the secretary, leaning, watching him, laughed aloud, throwing up his hand in a salute to Chloe. Her eyes blazed answer, and it was that that made Balbus turn and stare at Tros.

"What is that? What have you written?" he demanded.

"I will read," Tros answered, and stood up.

There was dancing on the stage that had been set with branches to suggest a forest, through which satyrs pursued wood nymphs; but it was dull stuff after Chloe's entertainment. All eyes turned to Tros, and the musicians dimmed the clamor of their instruments.

"An order for the manumission of a slave," Tros read, his great voice booming through the hall. "In the name of the Senate and the Roman People, I Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor, Governor of Gades, in conformance with the law and with the powers vested in me, hereby manumit one Chloe, formerly the slave of Pkauchios the Egyptian, and do accord to her the status of freed woman with all rights and immunities thereunto pertaining, she having paid in full her value of two hundred thousand sesterces to Pkauchios and thereto in addition, into the public treasury, the manumission tax of ten per cent."

Pkauchios sprang to his feet, indignant, staggered, his jaws working as if he chewed on solid anger.

"But she hasn't paid it!" he exclaimed, his voice broken with excitement.

Tros gave a parchment to the secretary.

"Take it to him!"

The secretary, smiling with stored up malice, descended to the floor and gave Pkauchios one of Simon's six months' bills on the treasury. He appeared to believe that Balbus had contrived the entire highhanded business, so proceeded at once to lend a hand in it.

"Noble Balbus!" he cried from the end of the table where Pkauchios stood staring at the parchment. "This order is for two hundred and twenty thousand sesterces, whereas the price was but two hundred thousand. The tax has been included in the payment made to Pkauchios."

THE Egyptian lost his self-control. He shook the parchment in the faces of the grinning guests.

"This!" he exclaimed. "This is no payment! This is a mere promise—"

There was too much fume of wine in Balbus' head for him to let that speech pass. Tros had watched him hesitating angrily between repudiation of the documents on the score of trickery and the alternative of making a hard bargain in exchange. Now he turned the full force of his insulted dignity on Pkauchios:

"You speak of my promise as—what?" he demanded, rising from the couch. His legs were steady, but Tros stepped close to him and offered an arm, which he leaned on with relief. "Do you question my signature? Do you dare to insult me in the presence of my guests?"

"But this is an unheard of thing?" Pkauchios stammered, struggling to speak calmly.

"You question my authority?" demanded Balbus.

The Egyptian regained his self-control with a prodigious effort, drawing himself to his full height, breathing deeply, then folding the parchment and stuffing it into a pocket at his breast. His mouth was bitter, his eyes malignant.

"I was taken by surprize. I regret my improper exclamation. I accept the order," he remarked and sat down, rising again promptly because Balbus was still on his feet.

Tros' lips were close to Balbus' ear.

"You will never have to pay that bill," he whispered.

"He will sell it on the market," Balbus answered irritably.

Suddenly, under the pressure of personal interest, his brain cleared.

"Yes, yes, the tax!" he said, gesturing with his left hand to the secretary. "Hold that order on the treasury until Pkauchios pays the twenty thousand sesterces in coin. Otherwise the tax farmers will accuse me of irregularities."

He remained standing until Pkauchios had returned the parchment to the secretary, then sat down and drank from the silver wine cup that Chloe held for him.

"Divine Chloe, now you are a freed woman, but I have offended Pkauchios," he said, and kissed her. "No more will he read the omens for me."

Most of the guests were growing very drunk, and the girls who had been dancing on the stage came down to sprawl on the couches beside them. One of the two military tribunes noisily demanded that Pkauchios should deliver an augury. The Egyptian glared at him with concentrated scorn, but Balbus heard the repeated demand for an augury and approved it.

"Pkauchios!" he shouted. "Prove to us you are a true seer and no caviller at fortune!"

Pkauchios rose, glaring balefully at the drunken men and nearly naked women sprawling on the couches. It was nearly a minute before his eyes sought Balbus' face.

"I see fire!" he said then in a harsh voice. "I see a whole town burning and a thousand men fighting the flames!"

"Thank the gods, not Gades!" Balbus muttered. "If it were Gades it would be twenty thousand men!"

"I will read the stars!" said Pkauchios and with a bow of angry dignity began to stride toward the dais in order to leave the room by the big door behind Balbus.

It was Chloe who intercepted him. She broke away from Balbus' arms and ran to meet him midway of the room, putting both hands on his shoulders. Pkauchios stepped back from her.

"Ingrate!" he growled between set teeth. The coiled asp on his forehead was a perfect complement to the hatred in his eyes. Chloe began whispering to him rapidly, but Pkauchios' face was like a wall against her words.

There began a noise of shouting in the court. The door behind Balbus swung open and a centurion entered breathless. Balbus jerked back the curtains.

"Well? What?" he demanded.

"Fire!" said the centurion. "A town is burning about twenty miles away. We think it is Porta Valleculæ. The tribune Publius Columella has marched all available men to extinguish the flames. He requests you to make arrangements in behalf of those whose homes are burned."

"They shall have work in the quarries!" Balbus answered. "Bid him bring the destitute to Gades!"

The centurion saluted and withdrew. Balbus closed the curtains with a shudder at the draught, then stared at Pkauchios, who was still scowling at Chloe; but it was now Pkauchios who was whispering. His lips moved slowly, as if he were measuring threats between his teeth.

"A marvel of a man!" said Balbus. "Did you hear him just now say he could see fire? Fire and a thousand men?"

Chloe had moved so that she could catch Tros' eye; it seemed to him that she was trying to signal to him almost imperceptibly. He touched Balbus' elbow.

"It is too early yet to read the stars. He should read them nearer midnight."

Balbus glanced at Tros impatiently.

"It was he," he said, "who prophesied your coming and Cæsar's death."

"Near midnight is the time," Tros answered. "I am a seaman. I know."

Suddenly Chloe screamed so shrilly that she startled all the amorously drunken guests and brought them sitting upright, staring at her. She clapped both hands to her eyes and ran toward the dais, stumbling up the steps and flinging herself on her knees by Tros' couch, sobbing.

"Stop him!" she whispered. "Stop him!"

Then, as if realizing that she had come to the wrong couch, still sobbing with her hands before her eyes, she rose again and staggered into Balbus' arms.

"He cursed me!" she moaned. "He cursed me!"

Balbus began to try to comfort her, patting her between the shoulders, burying his own face in her hair, which gave her an opportunity to catch Tros' eye again. She made a grimace at him and jerked her head in the direction of the stage, then resumed her sobbing. Pkauchios strode solemnly toward the door. Balbus, distracted by Chloe's grief, took no notice of him.

"Music!" Tros suggested, nudging Balbus' elbow. "Who is in charge of the entertainers? It is music that—"

Balbus laid Chloe sobbing on the couch. She was crying, "He cursed me! Oh he cursed me!"

"Pkauchios!" he thundered and the Egyptian turned to face him. "Never was such a miserable farce in my house as this night's entertainment! Where are the singers? Why has the music ceased? You promised me such song and dancing for tonight as should—"

"You bade me read the stars," Pkauchios retorted angrily.

"No insolence!" said Balbus. "To your duty! Read me the stars at midnight."

PKAUCHIOS turned back toward the stage and gave his orders to a wizened man with painted cheeks, who disappeared behind the stage. The orchestra began a brilliant, eccentric tune; the kitchen slaves came hurrying with a dozen dishes heaped with steaming food, and the wine-bearers went the rounds. Laughter and conversation began again as a dozen girls writhed on to the stage to perform one of the dances that had made Gades infamous. Chloe ceased her sobbing. Balbus drank deep. Chloe begged leave from him to go and wash her face before she danced again. The slaves filled up the wine-cups and Balbus, refusing food, leaned over toward Tros, his drunken brain leaping from one passionate emotion to another.

"We were speaking of Cæsar. I must have no official knowledge. Do what you will suddenly, at the first chance that presents itself. Then go to Rome and I will send letters overland recommending you to the favor of Pompeius, who will be absolute master of Rome as soon as Cæsar is out of the way."

"Do you wish me to kill him in your house?" Tros asked.

"Kill him anywhere, so be you do it!"

The women on the stage danced in a delirium of orgy, parodying nature, blaspheming art, ideals, decency. Red light and incense smoke distorted the infernal scene; low drum beats throbbed through it. One of the military tribunes stood and began singing drunkenly a song that had been outlawed by the Roman aediles. Balbus lay chin on hands, staring at the stage. Tros felt a hand on his back, heard a whisper. Chloe had crept back between the curtains.

"Simon sends word there are soldiers coming through the city gate!"

She slipped away and knelt beside Balbus, who threw an arm around her, but went on staring at the stage. Tros did not move. He was watching Pkauchios, who was listening to the whispering of a slave. The Egyptian's face was a picture of emotions stirring beneath a mask worn very thin.

There began to be a creeping up Tros' spine. He felt the crisis had arrived too soon. Something, he could not guess what, was happening to upset calculations. He glanced at Balbus, who was almost sleeping; Chloe with subtly caressing fingers was stroking the back of his head and his temples. She smiled and nodded, her eyes shining with excitement. Plainly she knew what was happening. Tros drew out a little bag of pearls, poured them into the palm of his hand, showed them to her and put them away again. She nodded, but he knew her delight in intrigue had run away with her. She would let the pearls go for the thrill of a dramatic climax.

The girls on the stage writhed naked in infernal symbolism. The stringed instruments and muted drums tortured imagination. Pkauchios got up and left the room by a door close to the stage and Balbus, staring at the dancers, did not notice him. Tros felt for the bugle underneath his cloak, wondering whether Orwic and the Eskualdenak were ready. It was not yet nearly midnight. Possibly some spy had seen them in the quarry; perhaps the soldiers coming through the city gate were on their way to surround them in the dark. But if so, why had nobody warned Balbus?

The suspense became intolerable. He made up his mind to wind a signal on the golden bugle. Better to summon his men and run for it than to run the risk of having them made prisoners. But as he clutched at the bugle Pkauchios returned and stood with his back to the stage, both hands raised, eyes ablaze, his body trembling with excitement.

"Balbus!" he shouted. "Cæsar is dead! The news has come from Gaul!"

Balbus sat up suddenly and stared. The music stopped. Chloe slipped away from him and stood at the edge of the dais. The dancers ceased their writhing. Pkauchios signalled to Tros with a gesture like a dagger thrust, then threw up his right hand and shouted:

"Let the trumpets peal the verdict of the sky!"

Tros clutched his sword. He thought he heard the tramp of armed men, but it was drowned by a flourish of trumpets. There was a clang of shields on armor. He leaped to his feet as the door behind the curtain opened suddenly. A hand wrenched back the curtains of the dais and revealed Julius Cæsar with an armored Roman veteran on either side of him!

Cæsar was in white, unhelmeted, a wreath of laurel on his brow, his scarlet cloak thrown back over his shoulder and his lean face smiling like a god's, inscrutable, alert, amused, as calm as marble.

The centurion at his right hand raised a richly decorated shield and shouted:

"Caius Julius Cæsar, imperator, proconsul and commander of the Roman troops in Gaul!"

CHAPTER XV

CÆSAR—IMPERATOR!

THE DANCERS vanished. The women sprawling on the couches fled. Balbus, and all his guests, staggered to their feet.

"Cæsar!" said Balbus.

Cæsar smiled genially. If he had noticed Tros yet, he gave no sign of it.

"No, no, Balbus! Pray be seated. Pray don't disturb yourself."

His voice, a shade ironical, was reassuring. There was no hint in it of violence. But behind him were more armed men than Tros could count from where he stood. They were formed up in a solid phalanx in the hall.

"Don't let me interrupt your gaiety," said Cæsar. "I have already had my supper."

"There came news of your death!" Balbus stammered.

"I overheard it. Does it seem true to you?" asked Cæsar, smiling again.

His eyes began to scrutinize the guests, who saluted as he noticed them, but he ignored Tros at the corner of the dais. He appeared to Tros to be deliberately giving Balbus time to recover his wits. Tros, the golden bugle in his left, kept his right hand on his sword-hilt, listening, trying to discover how many armed men Cæsar had with him. None noticed Pkauchios, until suddenly Chloe screamed as the Egyptian sprang at the dais from behind Tros—mad, foaming at the mouth.

"Slay!" he screamed, striking at Tros with his left hand, trying to push him forward toward Balbus, then rushing at Cæsar.

Tros tripped him. He fell on his back on the dais, striking with a wave-edged dagger at the air.

"Dog of a Samothracian!" he yelled. Frenzied, he leaped to his feet with the energy of an old ape at bay and sprang at Tros, who knocked him down again. A legionary stepped out from the ranks at Cæsar's back and calmly drew a sword across his throat.

"Now I am no longer a freed woman. I am free!" said Chloe. "And Balbus, you need never pay that debt!"

Cæsar looked bored by the interruption. Slaves came and dragged away Pkauchios' body, Balbus' steward superintending, making himself very inconspicuous. A wine-bearer poured choice Falernian over the blood on the dais carpet, and another slave mopped it up with his own long loin-cloth, running naked from the room. The steward threw salt on the carpet and covered the spot with a service napkin of blue linen.

Chloe stepped straight up to Cæsar and knelt smiling up at him with all the charm she could contrive.

"Imperator," she said, "I am Chloe, who danced for you in Gaul—she whom Horatius Verres trusted."

Horatius Verres stepped out from behind the ranks of legionaries and stood between Tros and Cæsar, watching with a quiet smile on his handsome face. He was dressed as a slave in a drab-colored tunic of coarse cloth.

"Tut-tut!" said Cæsar. "Go and clothe yourself!"

Horatius Verres made a humorous, helpless gesture. Balbus' steward touched him from behind and beckoned. He shrugged his shoulders and went with the steward to be rearrayed in borrowed finery. Tros made up his mind there were not so many men at Cæsar's back; he raised the bugle to his lips and Cæsar noticed him at last.

"Your men are here already," he said. "They are behind me!"

As if in answer to his words there began a roar of fighting. A centurion barked an order. About half of Cæsar's own men faced about and vanished toward the front of the house, but Cæsar took no notice whatever of the disturbance.

"Balbus," he said, "a noble enemy is preferable to any faithless friend. The story goes you sent men into Gaul to murder me."

Chloe was still kneeling. She caught her breath and glanced sharply at Balbus' face. Balbus, deathly white, threw up his right hand.

"Cæsar, by the immortal gods I swear—"

Something choked Balbus. He coughed. He had become aware that Tros was staring at him. He drew three breaths before he found his voice again:

"—that sorcerer, now dead, that Egyptian Pkauchios—and—"

He turned and looked straight at Tros, began to raise his arm to point at him. Tros drew his sword.

"Balbus," said Cæsar, "you have been well served! Well for you that Tros of Samothrace put into Gades!"

Balbus gasped. Tros stood with drawn sword watching Cæsar's face. A centurion came pushing past the legionaries and whispered to Cæsar from behind him. Horatius Verres reentered the room, handsome, smiling, splendid in a Roman tunic with a broad blue border, and stood close to Tros again, glancing at the drawn sword with a humorous expression.

Balbus' brain was wavering between surrender to the fumes of wine and a sort of half hysterical recovery. Tros' mind was on Orwic and his men, but he could not fight his way past Cæsar's legionaries. Cæsar fascinated him. The man's cool self-command, his manners, daring and superb contempt for any genius less comprehensive than his own stirred grudging admiration.

Chloe broke the silence—"Imperator—"

But Cæsar checked her with a gesture of his left hand. He was listening. Tros, too, caught the sound of footsteps surging over the porch into the house.

"Orwic!" he shouted.

There came an answering yell, and half the legionaries behind Cæsar faced about.

"Orwic, hold your men!" Tros roared in Gaulish. Then, watching Cæsar's face, "Let none escape! Let a hundred of your men surround the house and guard all exits!"

He laughed. He heard Orwic's boyish voice repeating the order to the Eskauldenak.

"Cæsar," he said, "I have more than five men to your one! The camp is empty, the Roman legion went to a burning village—"

"Yes," said Cæsar, "but that was not your doing, Tros, so you should not boast of it."

"Cæsar!" said Balbus suddenly, recovering his wits, "this is not your province!"

He glanced at Tros, a fever of excitement in his eyes. The legionaries behind Cæsar moved alertly to protect him.

"The illustrious Tros and I are enemies," said Cæsar, "whose activities are not confined to provinces or marred by malice. We use common sense. I have not interfered with your government, Balbus. You must pardon me if I have interrupted even your—" he glanced at the stage—"amusement."

TROS' brain was speculating furiously. There were only two things Cæsar could be doing. Either he had surprizes up his sleeve and was talking to gain time, or else he was deliberately trying to bring Balbus to his senses with a view to getting his gratitude and making use of him. In either event, time was all-important.

"Cæsar," he said, "why did you come to Gades? What do you want?"

"Yes, Cæsar, what do you want?" demanded Balbus.

Cæsar smiled.

"For one thing, courtesy!" he answered. "Balbus, I consider you a churlish host! You offer me no seat, no welcome. You oppose me guiltily, as if I caught you in the act of treachery. Whereas I came for your sake."

But Balbus' reeling brain sensed nothing but his own embarrassment; he was too drunk to take a hint.

"You came unvited!" he said, sneering.

Cæsar smiled again and glanced at Tros.

"I think we both did! Tros, for what reason did you come to Gades?"

"To prevent you from invading Britain, Cæsar!"

"Imperator, that is the truth!" said Chloe, and she would have said more, but Cæsar silenced her with a frown.

"Are you a slave?" he asked.

"No, Cæsar, I am free!"

"Then go to Horatius Verres and keep still."

Chloe sprang gaily to Verres' side and threw her arms around him, kissed him, or else whispered in his ear. Tros suspected the latter. Orwic was having trouble with the Eskualdenak, who were anxious to begin looting Balbus' treasures. In the outer hall his voice kept rising sharply. There were hot answers in almost incomprehensible Gaulish, and every once in a while a Roman centurion added his staccato warning to the noise. Horatius Verres spoke at last.

"Imperator," he said quietly, "I had the honor to report to you that Tros refused to murder Balbus, and you saw that when Pkauchios rushed at you, it was Tros who prevented. Now Chloe tells me that while Tros and Balbus supped together they discussed—"

"Silence!" snapped Balbus angrily. "Cæsar, will you take the word of a dancing girl against me?"

Cæsar eyed him with amused contempt.

"If she should testify for you, should I accept her evidence then?" he asked. Then after a pause, "Let Horatius Verres speak."

"Tros even left a pledge with the committee of nineteen to guarantee that he would not kill Balbus."

Balbus snorted.

"A committee of nineteen? I never heard of them!"

"You shall know them well," said Cæsar. "Continue, Verres."

"And while Tros and Balbus supped together they discussed—"

"Stop!" commanded Balbus, almost choking. "Cæsar, this is not your province! You have no authority to—"

Cæsar raised his right hand with a gesture so magnificent that Balbus checked a word midway and stared at him open-mouthed. Chloe was whispering again in Verres' ear. Cæsar nodded to Verres.

"They discussed what Tros had previously said to me before the committee of nineteen—how that his father, dying, prophesied he should eventually render Cæsar a great service."

Balbus breathed heavily and felt for something to lean against. His steward stepped up to the dais and, lifting his arm, placed it on his own shoulder.

"My noble master has so burdened himself with public duties that he faints," he said, beckoning to a slave to bring wine.

"I suggest he has had wine enough," said Cæsar. "You may continue, Verres."

Chloe was watching Tros out of the corner of her eye. Her breast fluttered with excitement. Verres spoke:

"While Balbus and Tros supped together, they discussed whether it were true that you invaded Britain for the sake of pearls."

"I invaded Britain," said Cæsar, smiling slightly with the corners of his eyes as he saw Tros glare at Chloe, "because the Britons intrigued with the Gauls against me, despite all warnings. But I confess the thought of pearls did interest me. I have in mind to make a breast-plate of them for the statue of the Venus Genetrix in Rome, from whose immortal womb I trace descent," he added pompously. It was his first hint of vulgarity, his first betrayal of a streak of weakness. "What else, Horatius Verres?"

"Tros, who promised thirty pearls to Chloe to procure for him the interview with Balbus, discussed with Balbus at the supper table how he might offer three hundred pearls to yourself, Imperator, as an inducement to you to bury enmity!"

The lie slid off his handsome lips as smoothly as the passing moment. Balbus, his steward urging with a whisper, leaped at opportunity at last.

"I told him he should offer at least a thousand pearls," he blustered, avoiding Tros' eyes. "Cæsar, the words had hardly left my lips when you burst in on us!"

Horatius Verres, hand to his mouth, stepped back a pace.

"I told you I serve Cæsar!" he whispered to Tros.

"Have you the pearls?" asked Cæsar, and Tros saw light at last, knew he must make a sacrifice, but saw he held the situation in the hollow of his hand.

"I have them on my ship," he answered, standing forth and facing Cæsar.

But his eyes were busy numbering the men at Cæsar's back. Beyond the legionaries, in the gloom of the fountained courtyard, he could dimly make out Orwic and the Eskualdenak crowding the Romans.

"I have here five men to your one, Cæsar, and I care nothing for your friendship."

"Have I offered it?" asked Cæsar, adjusting his wreath with one forefinger. "Let us have no brawling, Tros. The place smells like a tavern—" he sniffed disgustedly—"but—" he bowed with mock politeness—"perhaps our host Balbus will excuse us if we act like sober men!"

"Cæsar, I could have slain you when you entered. I could slay you now," Tros answered. "I would hold my own life cheap at the price of serving Gaul and Spain, but the gods have laid no such task on me. Ten tyrants might replace you if I slew the one. I came here for my own sake. I will pay three hundred pearls for what I want. Agree with me or—"

He raised the golden bugle to his lips. Orwic began shouting to him:

"Tros! Tros! What is happening?"

"Await my bugle blast," Tros answered. "Cæsar, is it yes or no?"

THE LEGIONARIES raised their shields an inch or two, but Cæsar spread both arms out to restrain them.

"Better to die a thousand times than to live in fear of death," he said, "but I see, Tros, that you know that. Since neither you nor I fear death, we may stand on common ground. What is it you require of me?"

"You named me pirate," Tros growled at him.

"I withdraw that gladly, though you sunk my ships. You have served Rome by saving Gades from the mob. I will write it," said Cæsar.

"You owe my friend Simon of Gades three million sesterces," said Tros.

"If that were only all!" said Cæsar, smiling with an air of mock humility. "Debts, Tros, seem as necessary to a statesman as is the appetite that makes us eat. Your friend Simon shall be paid."

"How? When?" Tros asked him.

A flash of humor blazed in Cæsar's eyes. He looked at Balbus long and keenly.

"Balbus—how? When?" he asked calmly.

Balbus bit his lip.

"Come now, Balbus. Tros saved your life, and it is easier for me to act against you than to threaten you. How shall Simon be paid? That legion that went to Porta Valleculæ is on its way back, Balbus, shouting, 'Cæsar is imperator!' No, no, Tros, there is a truce between us. Stay! I merely wish that Balbus should choose his allegiance of your free will, Balbus—of your free will! You are under no distraint. As you wisely remarked, I have no authority in Gades, even though the committee of nineteen has begged me, on my way between the harbor and your house, to add Spain to my province and appoint my own officials. They amused me, but it might amuse me more to—"

"Cæsar, I beg you to permit me to assume the debt!" said Balbus.

"I am afraid it will keep you poor and out of mischief for a long time," Cæsar remarked. "If I consent to allow to escape my mind irregularities that I have heard of, would it be agreeable to you to confer in future with that committee of nineteen with respect to all local issues?"

Balbus nodded sulkily.

"And to remember, Balbus, that they have my individual protection? If the world were my province—then would you wish to rebuild Gades?"

"Cæsar, I yield," said Balbus. "When the day comes that you strike at Pompey, I am with you."

"Tut-tut!" remarked Cæsar. "Who spoke of striking at Pompey? But I see Tros grows impatient. He is thinking of that legion on its way back from Porta Valleculæ. Tros, you are a greater man than I believed you. A mere pirate would have plundered Gades with the opportunity that you have had. Had you been a rash fool, you would have tried to kill me. You might even have succeeded and the world would have been the worse for it. So the world owes you a reward, Tros."

"Reward my men!" Tros answered. The Eskauldenak were growing noisier every minute and Orwic's voice was hoarse from trying to restrain them.

"Balbus shall pay them handsomely," said Cæsar. "They have saved his life. The world is richer for our noble Balbus, although he personally will be poorer for a long time! Yes, Tros, I will accept your gift of pearls for the breastplate of the Venus Genetrix, be it understood—a very amiable goddess, my immortal ancestress."

He strode forward to a couch and sat with grace and dignity, letting the scarlet cloak fall carefully to hide his knees.

"You are in haste, I don't doubt. Yes, of course, that legion is returning. Yes, yes. Balbus, may your secretary bring me ink and parchment? I carry my own pen. Tros, I believe you have my seal. Will you return it to me? Balbus, will you kindly see that Tros' men are handsomely paid? They were my men until Tros ran off with them, hah-hah! Very clever of you, Tros, but beware next time we meet! There was three months' pay at that time owing to each man. So I suggest it would be very handsome of you, Balbus, to give each man three months' full pay of a Roman soldier. It might encourage them not to loot the house! Then, will some one go for Simon and for the committee of nineteen? Balbus, I would like to introduce them to you and to recommend them personally to your generous consideration. By the way, Tros, where are those pearls?"

"On the ship," Tros answered.

Chloe came and stood in front of him and smiled. She held her hand out. Tros counted thirty pearls into her palm, holding his sword under his armpit.

"Cæsar!" she said excitedly. "Imperator! Grant me a permission to wear pearls!"

Glancing up from the parchment he was writing, Cæsar frowned. Horatius Verres put a word in:

"Imperator, no permission will be needed. She will be a Roman's wife!"

"Very well. Why interrupt?" said Cæsar, and went on writing. "Balbus," he jerked over his shoulder, "are Tros' men being paid?"

"My treasurer is paying them."

"Has Simon been sent for? Very well. Be good enough to sign this undertaking to pay to Simon three million sesterces in equal payments of three hundred thousand sesterces every three months. You understand, of course, this payment is not taxable. He must receive the whole of it. Tros—"

He stood up, holding out a parchment.

"This confers on you authority to go anywhere you please, including Ostia and Rome. It specifically withdraws the charge of piracy against you and names you the friend of the Roman people. You will find the committee of nineteen on the porch. They will return your one-eyed hostage to you. If you should remove his other eye, he might see his way into trouble less easily.

"However, that is for you to decide. You will meet your friend Simon on your way toward the city gate. Be good enough to take him with you to your ship and to give him those three hundred pearls, which he may bring to me and I will give him this liquidation of his debt in exchange for them. I understand you have a hostage on your ship, one Gaius Suetonius. Release him, please. Not that he has any virtue, but for the sake of his beautiful armor. Have you any other prisoners?"

"Herod, the Jew," Tros answered.

"That scoundrel?" Cæsar nodded. "Send him to me in charge of Gaius Suetonius! Be good enough to avoid collision with the little ship on which I came. It is anchored rather close to yours. You will go to Rome now?"

"Aye!" Tros answered, accepting the parchment.

"Hah! You will try to prevent me from invading Britain! You will find the Romans less reasonable than myself. When you have failed, come and make your peace with me. I will receive you! Thanks for the pearls for the—"

"For the wives of the Roman senators!" said Tros and, bowing, first to Cæsar, then to Balbus, marched out straight through the ranks of Cæsar's bodyguard. He was greeted by a roar from the Eskauldenak:

"Wine! Women! Wine!"

His answering roar, bull-bellowed, cowed them into silence.

"To the ship! Behind me, march! Or I will give the lot of you to Cæsar! Ho there, Conops! Run ahead of me and keep a bright lookout for Simon."

Then he strode under the gloomy cypresses to Balbus' front gate and Orwic fell in step beside him full of eagerness to know exactly what had happened.

"Happened?" he said. "I have promised Druids' pearls to Cæsar's fight o' loves, and I have served Cæsar, though I had the best of him. Rot me all death-bed prophecies. They dull men's wits!"

"What next?" asked Orwic.

"Oar and sail for Ostia, before Cæsar has time to set a trap for us in Rome!"

THE END

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