"Quick! quick! follow me quick, Lucia. I hear footsteps, they are coming!"—
The caution was needless, for almost outstripping the heavy soldier, the fleet-footed girl stood with him on the farther bank.
Yet had it come a moment later, it would have come all too late.
For having with his wonted celerity ascertained the truth of these fatal tidings, and ordered the body of horse whom he had brought up with him, and who had returned from pursuing the infantry, on seeing a larger body com[pg 195]ing up from Antonius' army, to return with all speed to the camp of Manlius, retaining only a dozen troopers as a personal escort, Catiline had come back to bear off his lovely captive.
The clang of his haughty step had reached the ears of the legionary just as he drew poor Julia, unconscious of her rescue, through the barrack window; and as they stood on the brink of the ravine, thus far in safety, the red glare of the torches streaming through the embrasures, announced the arrival of their enemies, within almost arm's length of them.
The awful burst of imprecations which thundered from the lips of Catiline, as he perceived that his victim had been snatched from him, struck awe even into the hearts of those brave veterans.
A tiger robbed of its young is but a weak and poor example of the frantic, ungovernable, beast-like rage which appeared to prevail entirely above all senses, all consideration, and all reason.
"May I perish ill! may I die crucified! may the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field devour me, if she so escape!" he shouted; and perceiving the means by which she had been carried off, he called loudly for his men to follow, and was in the very act of leaping out from the embrasure upon the bridge, which they had not time to withdraw, when one of the legionaries spurned away the frail fabric with his foot, and drawing his short falchion severed the cords which secured it, at a single blow.
Swinging off instantly in mid air, it was dashed heavily against the rocky wall of the precipice, and, dislodged by the shock, the planks went thundering down into the torrent, at the bottom of the gorge; while upheld by the hooks to the stone window sill, the ladder hung useless on Catiline's side of the chasm, all communication thus completely interrupted.
At the same moment three of the heavy pila, which were the peculiar missiles of the legion, were hurled by as many stout arms at the furious desperado; but it was not his fate so to perish. One of the pondrous weapons hurtled so close to his temple that the keen head razed the skin, the others, blunted or shivered against the sides or lintel of the window, fell harmless into the abyss.