But she was far too quick for him, and leapt nimbly on one side, discharging, as she did so, a dart which transfixed him through and through. He fell groaning to the ground, writhing in agony.
“Now for thy turn, Xenacreon!” cried Elissa. “Take thou this for thy dastardly insult to ‘the king’s courtesan, now out of favour.’ ”
And she plunged her sword deep into his body below the upraised arms with which he held Cleandra. Snatching Cleandra from his grasp before there was time even for her to be stained with his blood, Elissa started running, dragging Cleandra after her, for she perceived that the king himself had rushed out of his tent, followed by such of his officers as could stand.
But, although raising hoarse, drunken cries, they ran in the direction of the women, they could not see them, or, indeed, their own way, for on coming out into the darkness from the brilliant light they were blinded, and caught their feet in the numerous tent ropes, and fell sprawling in all directions. Some of them even got so far as the prostrate bodies of Alexander and Xenacreon, over whose still breathing forms they fell heavily, while cursing loudly. But Cleandra and Elissa easily escaped, and soon reached the Roman entrenchments in safety, where Marcus Æmilius was waiting in person to receive them.
Welcoming them heartily, he quickly took them off to his ship. Then withdrawing his guard, but leaving his camp standing so as to deceive the Macedonians in the early morning, he set sail at once with his three vessels, and soon they felt the cool breezes of the Ægean Sea blowing in their faces. Long before dawn they were well out of sight of land, and steering a course for Tarentum on the Iapygian promontory.
END OF PART V.
PART VI.
CHAPTER I.
A SPELL OF PEACE.
For the first time for years Elissa was able to enjoy a space of peace of mind and body. Lying back upon her cushions, beneath the awnings on the deck of the stately ambassadorial quinquereme, she was at length at rest. Lulled rather than disturbed by the swishing sound of the five banks of oars moving in absolute unison, she gazed out languidly at the successive red-cliffed and grass-clad islands of Greece and felt happy. For now all suspense was over, she had resolved upon her future course; and, as Polybius has said, there is naught so terrible as suspense. Let the circumstances of life be good or bad, while they are hanging in the balance there is ever anxiety, agitation, impatience, to distress the mind. But once they be decided one way or another the soul is relieved; if decided for evil, then the worst is known already, if for good, the heart will cease from painfully throbbing in anxious agitation, and be at rest.
Thus, then, was it with Elissa, as, for want of wind, propelled merely by the oars, the ship glided steadily onward over the sunny summer seas. Now she had no longer any anxiety as to the port for which her life’s bark was steering. She had made up her mind at length to marry Scipio, and was clearly satisfied that her ship of life was having its course shaped by the great gods who ruled her destiny, and that therefore that course must be right, and her own determination a righteous one.