"Thais!" he muttered, "where art thou?"
The old woman uttered a quivering cry and fell upon her knees beside him, trying with her robe to stop the flow of blood. Mena ran back to the front of the house, leaving her alone with the body.
"Speak to me! Speak to me!" she wailed, not knowing what she said; but Phradates made no reply.
Tyre was in a turmoil of riot and license. The real fighting was at an end, but the soldiers were everywhere pillaging and drinking. Costly fabrics were trampled in the mud of the gutters. Rare vases and priceless statuary were shattered upon the pavements. Rough Thessalians ransacked the houses of rich merchants for gold and gems, destroying with laughter and jests what they did not want. The stifled screams of women mingled with their voices. Here a soldier emerged from a great house with his arms full of rich silks. Another shouted to him that a hoard of gold had been discovered close at hand, and he straightway dropped his burden that he might get his share of the more convenient plunder. There a man who had found a huge tusk of ivory tried to carry it away on his shoulder, while his comrades wrestled with him for it, uttering shouts of laughter as their fingers slipped upon its polished surface. Sometimes swords were drawn and blood flowed over a bag of gold or a necklace of pearls. Bands of mercenaries paraded with wine-skins on their backs, singing the hymns of Dionysus and squirting the precious vintage into each other's faces. Gorged with blood, the army glutted itself in a delirium of indulgence.
In the universal license the baser elements of the city's population joined in the pillage with none to hinder, for the Macedonians were too intent upon their revenge to heed them. Like Mena, slaves rose against their masters, and entire families were slain for the sake of plunder or to requite harsh treatment. The prisons were broken open and their inmates set at liberty. The sailors about the harbors, who had been kept inactive by the blockade of the fleet, desperate men from all quarters of the sea, satisfied their ferocious appetites at will. In the frenzied carnival of lust and slaughter, neither age nor innocence was spared.
The swirl of the battle drew Syphax and his companions from their haunts among the great warehouses near the waterside, where they had been drinking. The bloated face of the freebooter grew purple with eagerness as he heard the sounds of conflict and of panic spread through the city.
"Ho, comrades!" he shouted, "to-day we pay ourselves for all we have had to endure from Fortune! The spoil lies ready for us."
"Break open the warehouses and load a ship with ivory and silk," cried one of his followers.
"You are a fool," Syphax replied contemptuously. "We should be sunk before we could get out of the harbor. Take nothing but gold and jewels. We can hide them until the time comes to escape. Look there!"
An old man, a member of the council, came running toward them, glancing back over his shoulder to see if he was being pursued. Syphax grasped him by the arm and tore the heavy golden chain of office from his neck. The man made no resistance, but fled away without a word as soon as he was released.