“You have eyes like a northern sea-eagle. It is indeed, a small boat, hardly visible among the tossing waves, it cannot have more than eight oarsmen at most.”
“There are but four, my lord,” said the Goth. “And with them three ladies.”
The wind was rising every instant; the trireme parted the water like an arrow, and the prow, now rising and now sinking on the billows, dipped in them far above the large metal ornaments.
“It may indeed be a serious matter,” said Aurelius; “not for us--it must be something worse than this that puts the proud ‘Batavia’[30] in peril--but for the ladies in that little bark....”
He turned round. “Amsivarius,” he cried to the head oarsman. “Tell your men to give way with a will; and you, Magus, go and desire Chrysostomus to alter our course.”
In a few seconds the vessel’s head was turned round a quarter of a circle and was making her way straight into the bay. The accelerated thud of the time-keeper’s hammer sounded a dull accompaniment to the piping wind; the sea surged and tossed, and the deep-blue sky, where there still was not a cloud to be seen, beamed incongruously bright over the stormy main. They were now within a hundred yards of the small boat, which was one of the elegant pleasure-barks used by the gay visitors to Baiae for short excursions in the bay. As the trireme came up with them, the rowers gave up their futile struggle with the raging elements and only tried to avoid being capsized. The ladies, it could be seen were much agitated; two of them, a richly-dressed woman of about forty and a young and blooming girl sat clinging to each other, while the third, tumbled into a heap at the bottom of the boat, held an amulet[31] in her hand, which she again and again pressed fervently to her lips.
Aurelius gave a shout from the trireme, which the boatmen eagerly answered, and a sailor on board the Batavia flung a rope with a practised hand to the foremost of the men in the smaller vessel--the slave hastily tied it fast and cried out “ready,” the sailor pulled firmly and steadily, the rope stretched taut, the little boat came on and in a few minutes lay under the lee of the galley like a fish judiciously hooked and landed. In two minutes more it was fast to the side of the trireme, and the ladies and the crew were placed in safety.