Chapter 10

Now they were riding north on the broad and busy coast highway, their horses frisky after a three-day rest at the port; eventful days for Voldi, who had never seen a ship before and knew nothing of the ways of seafaring men.

Seemingly endless files of slaves, each with a huge cake of Dead Sea salt on his shoulder, had plodded up the gangways and down the ladders into the dark holds of eleven sturdy ships. There was no haste, nor was there any rest for these empty-faced toilers. Overseers stood, small distances apart, along the wharf, occasionally flicking their bull-whips expertly, as if to keep in practice, but not often letting the lash bite into a slave’s bare hide. It was enough for the burdened men to know that the whips were in experienced hands.

As each ship was loaded and the hatches battened down, she would move slowly away from her temporary berth and find a mooring half a mile away in the quiet harbour, and another vessel would be warped into the vacancy at the dock. Voldi spent most of his time alone at the stern of the flagship, listening dreamily to the lap of the waves against the barnacled piles and the screams of careening gulls; more enjoyable entertainment than might be had where the work was in progress. Indeed, Voldi was glad to find any distraction from the sight and sound of that slave-labour. With his belligerent Arabian background, he was anything but thin-skinned; but this monotonous scuff—scuff—scuff—scuff of spiritless sandals had taken on an ominous significance. Some day—according to Mencius’ confidential forecast—this hopeless, helpless scuffing of enslaved sandals would suddenly attain a swifter tempo! It would spontaneously break into a run! It would be accompanied by savage shouts for vengeance! And the Empire’s Fifth Act would open with a clash of angry metal!

For two hours, on that first day, Voldi had stood leaning against a forward capstan, watching and listening, until he became oppressed by an hallucination that the steady scuff—scuff—scuff—scuff was, even now, this instant, accelerating to a threatening SCUFF!— SCUFF!—SCUFF!—SCUFF! that would raise the curtain for the final events of the old tragedy. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that, after all, the well-merited collapse of the Roman Empire need be of no concern to Arabia. But, on sober reflection, Voldi decided that the wreck of the Empire would be everybody’s business; Arabia’s too!

Bewildered and moody, he had moved away from the pattern and symbols of this threat, finding a measure of serenity in the blue sky and bluer sea. This sky and this sea had witnessed many an enactment of the inevitably recurrent drama and would doubtless witness many more repetitions of it in the ages to come. Nations would come and go, rise and fall, but the same sky would look down upon these mutations with calm detachment. The tide would roll in twice a day, no matter if all the nations in the world destroyed one another—and themselves. It was comforting to let one’s eyes rest upon something that would endure—for ever and ever.

At high noon on the third day, the last laden vessel was ready to put out to sea. Mencius and Voldi stood together on the wharf as the flagship drew in her frowsy hawsers and drifted from the dock. Commander Fulvius, with a letter in his pocket for personal delivery to Mencius’ wife explaining his delay, cupped his mouth to shout into a brisk seaward breeze, ‘What shall I say if she asks me when to expect you?’

‘Tell her you don’t know,’ yelled Mencius.