"I was told that you lads were in trouble. But, certainly, you are lucky voyagers. I have sailed from Ostia to Marseilles and from Marseilles to Ostia forty-one times, and this forty-second is the easiest and quickest passage ever I made. I like you lads. Anybody Doris recommends I always help, for her sake. I'll also help you for your own. Tell me your plans and I'll do my best for you."
He agreed with us that both the Northern Harbor and Ostia were certain to be swarming with spies and secret-service agents and informers: so, for that matter, was the harbor-side of Rome along the Tiber: but Rome, being many times as large as Ostia, was likely to be proportionately easier to hide in.
"That's where a small merchantman like mine," said he, "beats any big one.
That's why I sail always a small ship, never a big ship. A big merchantman
must berth at Ostia or at the Northern Harbor. My ship can sail on up the
Tiber to Rome. And I shall. You come on up with me."
His advice seemed good. We decided to stay on the ship all the way up to Rome, and we did, lolling on deck to Agathemer's piping in the mellow sunshine.
So idling we spoke more than once of the Aemilian Sibyl and of this second fulfillment of her acrid prophecy.
Maganno promised to find us a ship loading for Antioch; seaworthy, roomy and with a trustworthy captain.
This could not be done quickly and, he found us, meantime, lodgings with a friend of his, a fat, bald, one-eyed cook-shopkeeper named Colgius, who rented us a tiny room over his eating-room, which was not far from the Ostian Gate, between the public warehouses and the slope of the Aventine.
At his table we fared pretty well, for his prices were low, his wine drinkable, and most of his food eatable, though we did not try a second time the viands for which he had the briskest demand: a very greasy pork stew of which he was inordinately proud, amazingly rank ham, and incredibly strong Campanian cheese; all three of which seemed to delight his customers, who were an astonishing medley of slaves and freemen: porters, stevedores, inspectors' assistants, coopers, mariners, jar- markers, gig-drivers, teamsters, drivers of all sorts of hired vehicles, drovers who herded cattle from Ostia to the cattle-market, vendors of sulphur-dipped kindling-splints, collectors of street filth and others equally low in class, equally novel to me.
Colgius took a fancy to us and undertook to show us Rome. It struck me oddly that, whereas Nona, in every fiber an Umbrian Gaul, and Maternus, who had spent all his life beyond the Alps, had both, at first glance, recognized us for what we were, Roman master and Greek servant, this Roman of the Romans, keen for personal profit, habituated to the sight of men from all ports, accepted us for Gallic provincials, and never suspected that we were anything else.