“Fools,” I exclaimed, “what could I get by making away with your captain? I have no wish for your command. I have no want of your help. I disdain you: bold as lions over the table; tame as sheep on the deck; I leave you to be butchered by the Romans. Let the brave follow me, if such there be among you.”
The Monarch of a War Galley
A shallop that had just returned with the defeated boarders, lay by the galley’s side. I seized a torch. Eight or ten, roused by my taunts, followed me into the boat. We pulled right for the Roman center. Every man had a torch in one hand and an oar in the other. We shot along the waters, a flying mass of flame; and while both fleets were gazing on us in astonishment, rushed under the stern of the commander’s trireme. The fire soon rolled up her tarry sides and ran along the cordage. But the defense was desperate, and lances rained upon us. Half of us were disabled in the first discharge; the shallop was battered with huge stones, and I felt that she was sinking.
“One trial more, brave comrades, one glorious trial more! The boat must go down, and unless we would go along with it, we must board.”
I leaped forward and clung to the chains. My example was followed. The boat went down; and this sight, which was just discovered by the livid flame of the vessel, raised a roar of triumph among the enemy. But to climb up the tall sides of the trireme was beyond our skill, and we remained, dashed by the heavy waves as she rose and fell. Our only alternatives now were to be piked, drowned, or burned. The flames were already rapidly advancing; showers of sparkles fell upon our heads; the clamps and ironwork were growing hot to the touch; the smoke was rolling over us in suffocating volumes. I was giving up all for lost when a mountainous billow swept the vessel’s head round, and I saw a blaze burst out from the shore,—the Roman tents were on fire!
Consternation seized the crews, thus attacked on all sides; and uncertain of the number of the assailants, they began to desert the ships and by boats or swimming make for the various points of the land. The sight reanimated me. I climbed up the side of the trireme, torch in hand, and with my haggard countenance, made still wilder by the wild work of the night, looked a formidable apparition to men already harassed out of all courage. They plunged overboard—and I was monarch of the finest war-galley on the coast of Syria.
The Conflagration
But my kingdom was without subjects. None of my own crew had followed me. I saw the pirate vessels bearing down to complete the destruction of the fleet, and hailed them, but they all swept far wide of the trireme. The fire had taken too fast hold of her to make approach safe. I now began to feel my situation. The first sense of triumph was past, and I found myself deserted. The deed of devastation, meanwhile, was rapidly going on. I saw the Roman ships successively boarded, almost without resistance, and in a blaze. The conflagration rose in sheets and spires to the heavens, and colored the waters to an immeasurable extent with the deepest dye of gore. I heard the victorious shouts, and mine rose spontaneously along with them. In every vessel burned, in every torch flung, I rejoiced in a new blow to the tyrants of Judea. But my thoughts were soon fearfully brought home. The fire reached the cables; the trireme, plunging and tossing like a living creature in its last agony, burst away from her anchors; the wind was off the shore; a gust, strong as the blow of a battering-ram, struck her; and on the back of a huge wave she shot out to sea, a flying pyramid of fire.