“Kyrie! kyrie!” was her shriek, but quickly ended, for Hasdrubal knitted his fingers around her throat.
“A gag,” he ordered, and with a few more struggles Lampaxo stood helpless and silent.
A little later the band was threading its stealthy way down the black streets. Four of the Carthaginians carried Glaucon, slung hands and feet over a pole. They dared not trust him on his feet. Phormio and Lampaxo walked, closely pinioned and pricked on by the captain’s dagger. They were soon at the deserted strand, and their ship’s pinnace lay upon the beach. Democrates accompanied them as far as the dark marge, and watched while the boat glided out into the gloom of the haven. The orator paced homeward alone. Everything had favoured him. He had even cleared himself of the curse of the Furies and the pursuit of Nemesis. He had, he congratulated himself, shown marvellous qualities of mercy. Glaucon lived? Yes—but the parching sand-plains of Libya would be as fast a prison as the grave, and the life of a slave in Africa was a short one. Glaucon had passed from his horizon forever.
CHAPTER XXXV
MOLOCH BETRAYS THE PHŒNICIAN
Even whilst the boat pulled out to the trader, Hiram suggested that since his superior’s “unfortunate scruples” forbade them to shed blood, at least they could disable the most dangerous captive by putting out his eyes. But Hasdrubal, thrifty Semite, would not hearken.
“Is not the fellow worth five hundred shekels in the Carthage market?—but who will give two for a blind dog?”
And once at the ship the prisoners were stowed in the hold so securely that even Hiram ceased to concern himself. In the morning some of the neighbours indeed wondered at Phormio’s closed door and the silence of the jangling voice of Lampaxo; but the fishmonger was after all an exile, and might have returned suddenly to Attica, now the Persians had retreated again to Bœotia, and before these surmises could change to misdoubting, the Bozra was bearing forth into the Ægean.