Complete darkness enfolded the white house. Hermon saw only two windows
lighted, the ones in his friend’s studio, which looked out into the
open square, while his own faced the water.
What did this mean?
It must be nearly midnight, and he could no longer expect Myrtilus to
be still at work. He had supposed that he should find him in his
chamber, supported by his slaves, struggling for breath. What was the
meaning of the light in the workrooms now?
Where was his usually efficient Bias? He never went to rest when his
master was to return home, yet the carrier dove must have announced his
coming!
But Hermon had also enjoined the care of Myrtilus upon the slave, and
he was undoubtedly beside the sufferer’s couch, supporting him in the
same way that he had often seen his master.
He was now riding across the open space, and he heard the men who
carried the Gaul talking close behind him.
Was the wounded barbarian the sole acquisition of this journey?
The beat of his horse’s hoofs and the voices of the Biamites echoed
distinctly enough amid the stillness of the night, which was
interrupted only by the roaring of the wind. And this disturbance of
the deep silence around had entered the lighted windows before him, for
a figure appeared at one of them, and—could he believe his own
eyes?—Myrtilus looked down into the square, and a joyous welcome rang
from his lips as loudly as in his days of health.
The darkness of the night suddenly seemed to Hermon to be illumined. A
leap to the ground, two bounds up the steps leading to the house, an
eager rush through the corridor that separated him from the room in
which Myrtilus was, the bursting instead of opening of the door, and,
as if frantic with happy surprise, he impetuously embraced his friend,
who, burin and file in hand, was just approaching the threshold, and
kissed his brow and cheeks in the pure joy of his heart.
Then what questions, answers, tidings! In spite of the torrents of rain
and the gale, the invalid’s health had been excellent. The solitude had
done him good. He knew nothing about the carrier dove. The hurricane
had probably “blown it away,” as the breeders of the swift messengers
said.
Question and reply now followed one another in rapid succession, and
both were soon acquainted with everything worth knowing; nay, Hermon
had even delivered Daphne’s rose to his friend, and informed him what
had befallen the Gaul who was being brought into the house.
Bias and the other slaves had quickly appeared, and Hermon soon
rendered the wounded man the help he needed in an airy chamber in the
second story of the house, which, owing to the heat that prevailed in
summer so close under the roof, the slaves had never occupied.
Bias assisted his master with equal readiness and skill, and at last
the Gaul opened his eyes and, in the language of his country, asked a
few brief questions which were incomprehensible to the others. Then,
groaning, he again closed his lids.
Hitherto Hermon had not even allowed himself time to look around his
friend’s studio and examine what he had created during his absence.
But, after perceiving that his kind act had not been in vain, and
consuming with a vigorous appetite the food and wine which Bias set
before him, he obliged Myrtilus—for another day was coming—to go to
rest, that the storm might not still prove hurtful to him.
Yet he held his friend’s hand in a firm clasp for a long time, and,
when the latter at last prepared to go, he pressed it so closely that
it actually hurt Myrtilus. But he understood his meaning, and, with a
loving glance that sank deep into Hermon’s heart, called a last good
night.
After two sleepless nights and the fatiguing ride which he had just
taken, the sculptor felt weary enough; but when he laid his hand on the
Gaul’s brow and breast, and felt their burning heat, he refused Bias’s
voluntary offer to watch the sufferer in his place.
If to amuse or forget himself he had caroused far more nights in
succession in Alexandria, why should he not keep awake when the object
in question was to wrest a young life from the grasp of death? This man
and his life were now his highest goal, and he had never yet repented
his foolish eccentricity of imposing discomforts upon himself to help
the suffering.
Bias, on his part, was very willing to go to rest. He had plenty of
cause for weariness; Myrtilus’s unscrupulous body-servant had stolen
off with the other slaves the night before, and did not return, with
staggering gait, until the next morning, but, in order to keep his
promise to his master, he had scarcely closed his eyes, that he might
be at hand if Myrtilus should need assistance.
So Bias fell asleep quickly enough in his little room in the lower
story, while his master, by the exertion of all his strength of will,
watched beside the couch of the Gaul.
Yet, after the first quarter of an hour, his head, no matter how he
struggled to prevent it, drooped again and again upon his breast. But
just as slumber was completely overpowering him his patient made him
start up, for he had left his bed, and when Hermon, fully roused,
looked for him, was standing in the middle of the room, gazing about
him.
The artist thought that fever had driven the wounded warrior from his
couch, as it formerly did his fellow-pupil Lycon, whom, in the delirium
of typhus, he could keep in bed only by force. So he led the Gaul
carefully back to the couch he had deserted, and, after moistening the
bandage with healing balm from Myrtilus’s medicine chest, ordered him
to keep quiet.
The barbarian yielded as obediently as a child, but at first remained
in a sitting posture and asked, in scarcely intelligible broken Greek,
how he came to this place.
After Hermon had satisfied his curiosity, he also put a few questions,
and learned that his charge not only wore a mustache, like his fellow
countrymen, but also a full beard, because the latter was the badge of
the bridge builders, to which class he belonged. While examining the
one crossing the canal, it had fallen in upon him.
He closed his eyes as he spoke, and Hermon wondered if it was not time
for him to lie down also; but the wounded man’s brow was still burning,
and the Gallic words which he constantly muttered were probably about
the phantoms of fever, which Hermon recognised from Lycon’s illness.
So he resolved to wait and continue to devote the night, which he had
already intended to give him, to the sufferer. From the chair at the
foot of the bed he looked directly into his face. The soft light of the
lamp, which with two others hung from a tall, heavy bronze stand in the
shape of an anchor, which Bias had brought, shone brightly enough to
allow him to perceive how powerful was the man whose life he had saved.
His own face was scarcely lighter in hue than the barbarian’s, and how
sharp was the contrast between his long, thick black beard and his
white face and bare arched chest!
Hermon had noticed this same contrast in his own person. Otherwise the
Gaul did not resemble him in a single feature, and he might even have
refused to compare his soft, wavy beard with the harsh, almost bristly
one of the barbarian. And what a defiant, almost evil expression his
countenance wore when—perhaps because his wound ached—he closed his
lips more firmly! The children who so willingly let him, Hermon, take
them in his arms would certainly have been afraid of this
savage-looking fellow.
Yet in build, and at any rate in height and breadth of shoulders, there
was some resemblance between him and the Gaul.
As a bridge builder, the injured man belonged, in a certain sense, to
the ranks of the artists, and this increased Hermon’s interest in his
patient, who was now probably out of the most serious danger.
True, the Greek still cast many a searching glance at the barbarian,
but his eyes closed more and more frequently, and at last the idea took
possession of him that he himself was the wounded man on the couch, and
some one else, who again was himself, was caring for him.
He vainly strove to understand the impossibility of this division of
his own being, but the more eagerly he did so the greater became his
bewilderment.
Suddenly the scene changed; Ledscha had appeared.
Bending over him, she lavished words of love; but when, in passionate
excitement, he sprang from the couch to draw her toward him, she
changed into the Nemesis to whose statue she had just prayed.
He stood still as if petrified, and the goddess, too, did not stir.
Only the wheel which had rested at her feet began to move, and rolled,
with a thundering din, sometimes around him, sometimes around the
people who, as if they had sprung from the ground, formed a jeering
company of spectators, and clapped their hands, laughed, and shouted
whenever it rolled toward him and he sprang back in fear.
Meanwhile the wheel constantly grew larger, and seemed to become
heavier, for the wooden beams over which it rolled splintered, crashing
like thin laths, and the spectators’ shouts of applause sounded ruder
and fiercer.
Then mortal terror suddenly seized him, and while he shouted for help
to Myrtilus, Daphne, and her father Archias, his slave Bias, the old
comrade of Alexander, Philippus, and his wife, he awoke, bathed in
perspiration, and looked about him.
But he must still be under the spell of the horrible dream, for the
rattling and clattering around him continued, and the bed where the
wounded Gaul had lain was empty.
Hermon involuntarily dipped his hand into the water which stood ready
to wet the bandages, and sprinkled his own face with it; but if he had
ever beheld life with waking eyes, he was doing so now. Yet the
barbarian had vanished, and the noise in the house still continued.
Was it possible that rats and mice—? No! That was the shriek of a
terrified human being—that a cry for help! This sound was the imperious
command of a rough man’s voice, that—no, he was not mistaken—that was
his own name, and it came from the lips of his Myrtilus, anxiously,
urgently calling for assistance.
Then he suddenly realized that the white house had been attacked, that
his friend must be rescued from robbers or the fury of a mob of
Biamites, and, like the bent wood of a projectile when released from
the noose which holds it to the ground, the virile energy that
characterized him sprang upward with mighty power. The swift glance
that swept the room was sent to discover a weapon, and before it
completed the circuit Hermon had already grasped the bronze anchor with
the long rod twined with leaves and the teeth turned downward. Only one
of the three little vessels filled with oil that hung from it was
burning. Before swinging the heavy standard aloft, he freed it from the
lamps, which struck the floor with a clanging noise.
The man to whom he dealt a blow with this ponderous implement would
forget to rise. Then, as if running for a prize in the gymnasium, he
rushed through the darkness to the staircase, and with breathless haste
groped his way down the narrow, ladderlike steps. He felt himself an
avenging, punishing power, like the Nemesis who had pursued him in his
dreams. He must wrest the friend who was to him the most beloved of
mortals from the rioters. To defeat them himself seemed a small matter.
His shout—“I am coming, Myrtilus! Snuphis, Bias, Dorcas, Syrus! here,
follow me!” was to summon the old Egyptian doorkeeper and the slaves,
and inform his friend of the approach of a deliverer.
The loudest uproar echoed from his own studio. Its door stood wide
open, and black smoke, mingled with the deep red and yellow flames of
burning pitch, poured from it toward him.
“Myrtilus!” he shouted at the top of his voice as he leaped across the
threshold into the tumult which filled the spacious apartment, at the
same time clashing the heavy iron anchor down upon the head of the
broad- shouldered, half-naked fellow who was raising a clumsy lance
against him.
The pirate fell as though struck by lightning, and he again shouted
“Myrtilus!” into the big room, so familiar to him, where the conflict
was raging chaotically amid a savage clamour, and the smoke did not
allow him to distinguish a single individual.
For the second time he swung the terrible weapon, and it struck to the
floor the monster with a blackened face who had rushed toward him, but
at the same time the anchor broke in two.
Only a short metal rod remained in his hand, and, while he raised his
arm, determined to crush the temples of the giant carrying a torch who
sprang forward to meet him, it suddenly seemed as if a vulture with
glowing plumage and burning beak was attacking his face, and the
terrible bird of prey was striking its hard, sharp, red-hot talons more
and more furiously into his lips, cheeks, and eyes.
At first a glare as bright as sunshine had flashed before his gaze;
then, where he had just seen figures and things half veiled by the
smoke, he beheld only a scarlet surface, which changed to a violet, and
finally a black spot, followed by a violet-blue one, while the vulture
continued to rend his face with beak and talons.
Then the name “Myrtilus!” once more escaped his lips; this time,
however, it did not sound like the encouraging shout of an avenging
hero, but the cry for aid of one succumbing to defeat, and it was soon
followed by a succession of frantic outbursts of suffering, terror, and
despair.
But now sharp whistles from the water shrilly pierced the air and
penetrated into the darkened room, and, while the tumult around Hermon
gradually died away, he strove, tortured by burning pain, to grope his
way toward the door; but here his foot struck against a human body,
there against something hard, whose form he could not distinguish, and
finally a large object which felt cool, and could be nothing but his
Demeter.
But she seemed doomed to destruction, for the smoke was increasing
every moment, and constantly made his open wounds smart more fiercely.
Suddenly a cooler air fanned his burning face, and at the same time he
heard hurrying steps approach and the mingled cries of human voices.
Again he began to shout the names of his friends, the slaves, and the
porter; but no answer came from any of them, though hasty questions in
the Greek language fell upon his ear.
The strategist, with his officers, the nomarch of the district with his
subordinates, and many citizens of Tennis had arrived. Hermon knew most
of them by their voices, but their figures were not visible. The red,
violet, and black cloud before him was all he could see.
Yet, although the pain continued to torture him, and a voice in his
soul told him that he was blinded, he did not allow the government
officials who eagerly surrounded him to speak, only pointed hastily to
his eyes, and then bade them enter Myrtilus’s studio. The Egyptian
Chello, the Tennis goldsmith, who had assisted the artists in the
preparation of the noble metal, and one of the police officers who had
been summoned to rid the old house of the rats and mice which infested
it, both knew the way.
They must first try to save Myrtilus’s work and, when that was
accomplished, preserve his also from destruction by the flames.
Leaning on the goldsmith’s arm, Hermon went to his friend’s studio; but
before they reached it smoke and flames poured out so densely that it
was impossible even to gain the door.
“Destroyed—a prey to the flames!” he groaned. “And he—he—he—”
Then like a madman he asked if no one had seen Myrtilus, and where he
was; but in vain, always in vain.
At last the goldsmith who was leading him asked him to move aside, for
all who had flocked to the white house when it was seized by the flames
had joined in the effort to save the statue of Demeter, which they had
found unharmed in his studio.
Seventeen men, by the exertion of all their strength, were dragging the
heavy statue from the house, which was almost on the point of falling
in, into the square. Several others were bearing corpses into the open
air- the old porter Snuphis and Myrtilus’s body servant. Some
motionless forms they were obliged to leave behind. Both the bodies had
deep wounds. There was no trace of Myrtilus and Bias.
Outside the storm had subsided, and a cool breeze blew refreshingly
into Hermon’s face. As he walked arm in arm with the notary Melampus,
who had invited him to his house, and heard some one at his side
exclaim, “How lavishly Eos is scattering her roses to-day!” he
involuntarily lifted the cloth with which he had covered his smarting
face to enjoy the beautiful flush of dawn, but again beheld nothing
save a black and violet-blue surface.
Then drawing his hand from his guide’s arm, he pressed it upon his
poor, sightless, burning eyes, and in helpless rage, like a beast of
prey which feels the teeth of the hunter’s iron trap rend his flesh,
groaned fiercely, “Blind! blind!” and again, and yet again, “Blind!”
While the morning star was still paling, the lad who after Hermon’s
landing had raced along the shore with the burning torch glided into
the little pronaos of the Temple of Nemesis.
Ledscha was still standing by the doorpost of the cella with uplifted
hand, so deeply absorbed in fervent prayer that she did not perceive
the approach of the messenger until he called her.
“Succeeded?” she asked in a muffled tone, interrupting his hasty
greeting.
“You must give the goddess what you vowed,” was the reply. “Hanno sends
you the message. And also, ‘You must come with me in the boat
quickly-at once!’”
“Where?” the girl demanded.
“Not on board the Hydra yet,” replied the boy hurriedly. “First only to
the old man on the Megara. The dowry is ready for your father. But
there is not a moment to lose.”
“Well, well!” she gasped hoarsely. “But, first, shall I find the man
with the black beard on board of one of the ships?”
“Certainly!” answered the lad proudly, grasping her arm to hurry her;
but she shook him off violently, turned toward the cella again, and
once more lifted her hands and eyes to the statue of Nemesis.
Then she took up the bundle she had hidden behind a pillar, drew from
it a handful of gold coins, which she flung into the box intended for
offerings, and followed the boy.
“Alive?” she asked as she descended the steps; but the lad understood
the meaning of the question, and exclaimed: “Yes, indeed! Hanno says
the wounds are not at all dangerous.”
“And the other?”
“Not a scratch. On the Hydra, with two severely wounded slaves. The
porter and the others were killed.”
“And the statues?”
“They-such things can’t be accomplished without some little
blunder-Labaja thinks so, too.”
“Did they escape you?”
“Only one. I myself helped to smash the other, which stood in the
workroom that looks out upon the water. The gold and ivory are on the
ship. We had horrible work with the statue which stood in the room
whose windows faced the square. They dragged the great monster
carefully into the studio that fronts upon the water. But probably it
is still standing there, if the thing is not already—just see how the
flames are whirling upward!—if it is not already burned with the
house.”
“What a misfortune!” Ledscha reproachfully exclaimed.
“It could not be helped,” the boy protested. “People from Tennis
suddenly rushed in. The first—a big, furious fellow-killed our Loule
and the fierce Judas. Now he has to pay for it. Little Chareb threw the
black powder into his eyes, while Hanno himself thrust the torch in his
face.”
“And Bias, the blackbeard’s slave?”
“I don’t know. Oh, yes! Wounded, I believe, on board the ship.”
Meanwhile the lad, a precocious fourteen-year-old cabin-boy from the
Hydra, pointed to the boat which lay ready, and took Ledscha’s bundle
in his hand; but she sprang into the light skiff before him and ordered
it to be rowed to the Owl’s Nest, where she must bid Mother Tabus
good-bye. The cabin-boy, however, declared positively that the command
could not be obeyed now, and at his signal two black sailors urged it
with swift oar strokes toward the northwest, to Satabus’s ship. Hanno
wished to receive his bride as a wife from his father’s hand.
Ledscha had not insisted upon the fulfilment of her desire, but as the
boat passed the Pelican Island her gaze rested on the lustreless waning
disk of the moon. She thought of the torturing night, during which she
had vainly waited here for Hermon, and a triumphant smile hovered
around her lips; but soon the heavy eyebrows of the girl who was thus
leaving her home contracted in a frown—she again fancied she saw, where
the moon was just fading, the body of a gigantic, hideous spider. She
banished the illusion by speaking to the boy—spiders in the morning
mean misfortune.
The early dawn, which was now crimsoning the east, reminded her of the
blood which, as an avenger, she must yet shed.
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