Pentaur sprang to his feet, and put out a shaking hand.
"No more!" he cried. "Oh, no more! No more! O Vivia, Vivia!"
With a groan of anguish, Pentaur looked upward, as if behind the desert's sky he might see again that youthful face, the face of that sweet Christian with whom he had been acquainted from childhood and whom he had last seen dying in Carthage's amphitheatre. Little did Timokles know how the memory of Vivia Perpetua's death hour had haunted Pentaur. They had been children together in Carthage, and the martyrdom that Vivia Perpetua had suffered in her young womanhood had impressed Pentaur more than all the agony he had seen other Christians endure. When she gave up her life, he had clinched his hands, and muttered fierce words against Carthage's gods, words he afterward trembled to recall. He served those gods now, yet he revered the memory of the Christian, Vivia Perpetua, as of one of the holiest of women.
Timokles ventured no further words.
Pentaur summoned a slave, and committed to his care the young Christian. The memory of Vivia Perpetua might pierce the merchant's soul, but would not avail for Timokles' release.
Bound to another slave to prevent escape, Timokles traveled with the company that night, and before morning the oasis of Ammon, "Oasis Ammonia," was reached. It was a green and shady valley, several miles long and three broad, in the midst of sand-hills. Here, over five hundred years before, had come the founder of Alexandria, Alexander the Great, to visit the oracle of Ammon, the god figured to be like a man having the head and horns of a ram. The statue of Amun-Ra had then been loaded with jewels, through the reverence of the merchants who halted their caravans at this oasis, and who left their treasures in the strong rooms of the temple, while resting the camels under the palm trees.
All this Timokles remembered, as he stood beside the steaming Fountain of the Sun in the oasis, and watched the bubbles that constantly rose to the surface of that famous body of water.
"O branded-cheeked cutter of dykes, art thou in very truth a Christian?" contemptuously asked the slave that guarded Timokles.
"I am, O friend," gently answered the lad.
"Ill shalt thou fare in this oasis, then," threatened the slave.