"Hold!" cried Demetrius, with a menacing gesture. "Don't waste your gratitude. Greek you pretend to be, more the shame! Such as you it is that have brought Hellas under the heel of the oppressor; such as you have made the word of a Hellene almost valueless in the Roman courts, so that juries have to be warned to consider us all liars; such as you have dragged down into the pit many an honest man; ay, myself too!"
Phaon left off his thanks and began again to supplicate.
"Stop whining, hound!" roared Demetrius; "haven't I said you are free? Free, but on one condition!"
"Anything, anything, my lord," professed the freedman, "money, service—"
"On this condition," and a broad, wicked smile over-spread the face of the pirate, "that you quit this ship instantly!"
"Gladly, gladly, merciful sir!" commenced Phaon again; "where is the boat?"
"Wretch!" shouted the other, "what did I say about a boat? Depart—depart into the sea! Swim ashore, if the load on your legs be not too heavy. Seize him and see that he sinks,"—this last to Eurybiades and the seamen.
Phaon's terror choked his utterance; he turned livid with mortal fright. He pleaded for life; life on the terms most degrading, most painful, most joyless—life, life and that only. He cried out to Cornelia to save him, he confessed his villanies, and vowed repentance a score of times all in one breath. But Cornelia lived in an age when the wisest and best—whatever the philosophers might theorize—thought it no shame to reward evil for evil, not less than good for good. When Demetrius asked her, "Shall I spare this man, lady?" she replied: "As he has made my life bitter for many days, why should I spare him a brief moment's pain? Death ends all woe!"
There was a dull splash over the side, a circle spreading out in the water, wider and wider, until it could be seen no more among the waves.
"There were heavy stones to his feet, Captain," reported Eurybiades, "and the cords will hold."