"Nay, take vengeance on some other, then, for He is my friend! I have vowed him favor!"
"Why?" she demanded.
"Nay; do not stop—thou art to see this thing done! Why do I promise the Essene favor? Because, forsooth, he made an emperor of me! Come!"
CHAPTER XXIX
IN EXTREMIS
Marsyas left the promontory at once. He had hired one of the public passenger boats to cross from Baiæ to Misenum and the boatman had waited for the return of his fare.
Many went as he was going, but they were patricians singly and in groups that passed him, with sober faces and without a word to each other. He recognized senators, ædiles, consuls, duumvirs, prætors, legates all hurrying toward the landing. All noble Misenum seemed suddenly to have determined on an exodus. An anxious and distressed company they were, and had Marsyas' own brain been less hot with anger, he might have meditated on the meaning of it all.
By the time he reached the bay, the sunset-reddened water was covered with light-running coasters, by the signs on aplustre or vexillum, a fleet of patrician craft making across the bay to Neapolis, or scudding for the open sea and Ostia. He saw one or two vessels approaching Misenum, hailed by departing ones, and, after a colloquy, turned back.
Vaguely wondering whether Cæsar's latest whim was to drive his court from him, Marsyas got into his own highly-painted shell and told his oarsman to take him across to Baiæ.