Sabine Baring-Gould - Domitia

“They are all quacks,” she said.

“They must needs be seekers, and the best they can produce, is out of themselves, and that conjecture. From the depths of the intellect what can be brought up than a more or less plausible guess?”

“And on these guesses we must live, like those who float across the Tigris and Euphrates – on rafts supported by inflated bladders. There is then no solid ground?”

“Man inflates the bladders – God lays the rocky basis.”

“What mean you?”

“No certainty can be attained, in all these things man desires to know, the basis of hope, the foundation of morality, that cannot be brought out of man. It can only be known by revelation of God.”

“And till he reveals we must drift on wind-bags. Good lack!”

“Do you think, Lady, that He who made man, and planted in man’s heart a desire for a future life, and made it necessary for his welfare that he should know to discern between good and evil, should leave him forever in the dark – like as you said Theseus in the labyrinth, without a clue?”

“But where is the clue?”

“Or think you that He who launched the vessel of man, having carefully laid the keel and framed the ribs, and set in her a pilot, should send her forth into unknown seas to certain wreckage – to be wafted up and down by every wind – to be carried along by every current – to fall on reefs, or be engulfed by quicksands, and not to reach a port, and He not to set lights whereby her course may be directed?”

“But where are the lights?”

At that moment, before Luke could answer, Lamia, who had been in the fore part of the vessel, came hastily aft, and disregarding the physician, heedless of the conversation on which he broke in, said hurriedly and in agitated tone: —

“The Imperial galley!”

The Imperial galley!

Domitia leaped to her feet. Everything was forgotten in the one thought that before her, on the sea, floated the man who had caused the death of her father.

“Lucius I must see – ”

He drew her forward, but at the same time checked her speech.

“Every word dropped is fraught with danger,” he said. “What know you but that yon physician be a spy?”

“He is not that,” she answered, “show him to me – him – ”

They walked together to the bows.

With the declining of the sun, the light wind had died away, and, although the sea heaved after the recent storm, like the bosom of a sleeping girl, in the stillness of the air, the sail drooped and the ship made no way.

Accordingly the sail was furled, and, by the advice of the mate, the rowers, who had rested during the day, were summoned to their benches and bidden work the oars during the night.

The sky was clear, and the stars were beginning to twinkle. No part of the voyage in calm weather would be less dangerous than this, which might be performed at night, across open sea, unbroken by rocks and sand-banks.

So long as the vessel had to thread her way between the headland of Araxus and the Echinades, and then betwixt the isles of Cephalonia and Zacynthus, an experienced navigator was necessary, and caution had to be exercised both in the management of the sail and in the manipulation of the helm. But now all was plain, and the mate had retired below to rest. During the time he reposed Lamia took charge of the vessel, assisted by the second mate.

“You take your meridian by Polaris, Castor and Pollux, steer due west; if there be a slight deviation from the right course, that is a trifle. I will set it right when my watch comes.”

Such was the mate’s injunction as he retired below.

“The steersman is done up,” said Lamia; “he shall rest now, and no better man can be found to replace him than Eboracus, who has been accustomed to the stormy seas of Britain, and whose nerves are of iron.”

Indeed, the gubernator or helmsman had hard work for his arms. The two enormous paddles had short cross-pieces let into them, like the handles of a scythe, and the clumsy and heavy mechanism for giving direction to the head of the vessel was worked by leverage in this manner.

The sailors managed everything on deck, the cordage, the anchors, the sail and the boats. In rough weather they undergirded the ship; that is to say, passed horizontal cords round her to brace the spars together so as to facilitate resistance to the strain when laboring against the waves. The sailors were under the direction of the captain or trierarch, so called whether he commanded a trireme or a Liburnian of two benches.

On deck the steersman occupied a sort of sentry-box in the stern, and beside him sat the mate, the second mate, and often also the captain, forming a sort of council for the direction of the vessel.

It was a favorite figure in the early Church to represent the Bishop as the helmsman of the sacred vessel, and the presbyters who sat about him as the mates occupying the stern bench. As already said, in a Roman vessel, there was a lack of that unity in direction under the captain to which we are accustomed. A military officer was always supreme everywhere on sea as on land.

When the sailors were engaged in sailing, then the rowers rested or caroused, and when they in turn bowed over the oars, the sailors had leisure.

The sun went down in the west, lighting up the sky above where he set with a rainbow or halo of copper light fading into green.

The night fell rapidly, and the stars looked out above and around, and formed broken reflections in the sea.

In winter the foam that broke and was swept to right and left had none of the flash and luminosity it displayed in summer, when the water was warm.

Already in the wake the Greek isles and mountain ridges had faded into night.

The oars dipped evenly, and the vessel sped forward at a speed equal to that of a modern Channel steamer.

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.”

“I will give her a wide berth, and stop my ears with wax, though, by the Gods! this is no siren song.”