At a signal from Lamia the mourners on the quarter-deck ceased to intone their wail.
He and Domitia stood in the bows and looked directly before them. They could see a large vessel ahead, of three banks of oars, but she floated immovable on the gently heaving, glassy sea. The oars were all shipped and she was making no way.
The deck sparkled with lights. Torches threw up red flames, lamps gave out a fainter yellow gleam. To the cordage lights had been suspended, and braziers burning on the quarter-deck, fed with aromatic woods, turned the water around to molten fire, and sent wafts of fragrance over the sea.
The twang of a lyre and the chirp of a feeble voice were faintly audible; and then, after a lull, ensued a musical shout of applause in rhythmic note.
“It is the Augustus singing,” said Lamia in a tone of smothered rage and mortification. “And he has his band of adulators about him.”
“But why do not the rowers urge on the vessel?” asked Domitia.
“Because the piper giving the stroke would be committing high treason in drowning the song of the princely performer. By the Gods! the grinding of the oars in the rowlocks and the plash in the water would drown even his most supreme trills.”
“Hast thou seen him on the stage, Lamia?”
“The Gods forbid,” answered the young man passionately, “this fancy to be the first of singers and mimes had not come on him before I left Rome for Syria. To think of it, that he—the head of the magistracy, of the army, of the senate, of the priesthood, should figure as Apollo, half naked, in a gold-powdered wig, and with painted cheeks before sniggering Greeks! The Gods deliver me from such a sight!”
“But you will behold it now. As we speed along we shall overtake this floating dramatic booth.”