He pointed to a place just astern of the stroke-oarsman. The potter sat down and became again absorbed in his reflections.
The slaves were all picked men of large frame and muscle, and they urged the boat through the water at a swift pace. The dusk was beginning to fall, and the distant shore was barely visible, though the dark masses of mountain above were sharply outlined against the clear sky. They skirted the stupendous cliffs, upon the brink of which, far above, rested the walls of the villa Jovis. The sea broke with a sullen, dismal plash against the perpendicular wall of ragged rock, [pg 333]and the boat was still moving in the shadow of the overhanging cliffs, when Plautus, in his deep tones, bade the men cease rowing.
They lay on their oars, and the boat, with its freight of motionless forms, glided silently along like a phantom. Masthlion looked up to account for the sudden command. The frowning, towering rocks, the portentous gloom, and the cold inky water sent a shudder through his frame.
‘Surrentine,’ said the voice of Plautus, ‘you are the potter who came to show to Caesar a curious kind of glassware?’
Masthlion answered in the affirmative. The question took him by surprise, so completely had all thoughts of his unlucky invention been displaced by those of Neæra.
‘Are you alone possessed of the secret of making that same glass?’
‘I alone—why, friend?’ replied Masthlion.
‘Why,’ said the cloaked Plautus in his grating tones, ‘because it has been decreed that you shall take your secret with you elsewhere.’
‘Elsewhere!’ cried Masthlion, with a sharp foreboding; ‘what mean you—where am I to take it?’
‘Where it can never be found again—to the bottom of the sea!’