"Say it out, your excellency," pressed the seaman.
"He became a pirate, though my father did not blame him overmuch."
"Eu!" interrupted Cæsar, as if to prevent a moment of awkwardness. "Before King Minos's days nothing was more honourable. I have known some excellent men who were pirates."
But Demetrius had, in true Eastern fashion, fallen on his knees and kissed the feet of Drusus.
"The son of my preserver! I have saved him! Praises to Mithras!"
After this, there was no longer any constraint on the part of rescuers or rescued. And that evening, when all were safe behind the palace walls, Cæsar called the pirate chief into the hall where he had been banqueting with Cleopatra, Fabia, and Cornelia, and his favourite officers, and asked for an account of his life. A strange enough story it was Demetrius had to tell, though Cornelia had heard it before; of two voyages to wealthy Taprobane,[186] one as far as the Golden Chersonesos,[187] almost to the Silk Land, Serica, of voyages out beyond the Pillars of Hercules into the Sea of Darkness,—everywhere that keel of ship had ploughed within the memory of man.
"And the men that drove you to freebooting?" asked Cæsar, when the company had ceased applauding this recital, which the sailor set forth with a spontaneous elegance that made it charming.
"I have said that they were Lucius Domitius, whom the gods have rewarded, and a certain Greek."
"The Greek's name was—"
"Kyrios," said Demetrius, his fine features contracting with pain and disgust, "I do not willingly mention his name. He has done me so great a wrong, that I only breathe his name with a curse. Must you know who it was that took my child, my Daphne,—though proof I have not against him, but only the warnings of an angry heart?"